Bigmouth Strikes Again - Number One (June 28, 1986)
Scans of print edition from:
Number One (June 28, 1986) - illnessasart.com
Transcript
BIGMOUTH STRIKES AGAIN
The Smiths are back, and that means more rantings from the original "old misery guts", Mr Steven Morrissey. Max Bell listens very carefully. Pics by Ian McKell. [sic]
Once upon a time, during the early days of glam rock, a teenager called Steven went to the Manchester Apollo to see Roxy Music. Loitering round the backstage door beforehand, Steven was rewarded with a vision that shaped his entire life. What he saw wasn't Roxy Music in their decadent glory but Roxy's tour bus, and hanging from its door - Brian Eno's psychedelic ostrich feather cape. Morrissey, for the lad was he, recalls the incident with a tremor.
Thirteen years later Morrissey, now turned 27, comes across Roxy singer Bryan Ferry in a studio, only this time the parties are more equal. 'I didn't bother asking him for his autograph. I'd had it since I was fourteen.' To finish the tale, Ferry asked Johnny Marr to play guitar on his new LP only weeks after Rolling Stone Keith Richard had called up the mop-haired wonder boy; proof that if you're a good boy and eat all your spinach one day you can emulate your heroes.
S. P. Morrissey is something of an intellectual squirrel. While he doesn't keep a diary he remembers everything from his past and stores it away, not just the musical artefacts of youth like his front row David Bowie ticket ('seven shillings and six pence!') and his records, but aspects of his own upbringing which most of us would conveniently file away under Out Of Date.
There are several versions of Morrissey's story. The one about 'never being a teenager. I was the one with the furrowed brow and the rolled up New Statesman. I've caught up now with my teenage years and it is a great social embarrassment I can tell you,' is familiar. But of course there is more to Morrissey than the boy who hung around parks and cemeteries reading poetry. There's also the pop fan. In the golden age of the glam Top of the Pops Morrissey got girlfriends to make him David Bowie costumes.
1986 is just beginning for the Smiths. Bigmouth is back and on form with a new LP, 'The Queen Is Dead', indicating that Morrissey is not overkeen on the Royals.
"They are so staid and uninteresting. Has Diana ever uttered a sentence of any vague interest or use to the world?
"The establishment - the Monarchy and the government - don't care as far as I can see. Many of them are of advanced years but they do nothing for old people. People in Britain are dying from poverty and cold because they can't afford heating. Others will never ever work again. But if you say these things people stare at you as if you're mad. If Live Aid had been about English poverty it would never have got off the ground, never received a minute's airplay. Because it was far away and somehow glamorous you could get lost in the charitable hypnosis."
The Smiths in 1985 had troubles of their own. Bassist Andy Rourke had "personal problems. He was ill and it seriously invaded the Smiths, it infested our place. He rejoined because his leaving seemed more wrong than his staying. It was too easy to turn like a pack and say, "You're useless! Get Out!" Now Craig Gannon has also joined we sound more formidable as you'll hear on the next single "Panic", so perhaps Andy's brief departure was a benefit."
Rourke's troubles weren't helped by legal battles between the band and their company Rough Trade which prevented 'The Queen Is Dead' from being released in February. Last year's album 'Meat Is Murder' also ruffled too many prickly consciences and the Smiths felt the backlash on a trio of singles, 'Shakespeare's Sister', 'That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore' and 'The Boy With The Thorn In His Side'.
In 'The Queen Is Dead' Morrissey still protests loudly but he is more relaxed.
On the inner sleeve of the album the band are standing outside the Salford Lads Club in the real Coronation Street and Morrissey is smiling!
"We took our lives in our hands getting that photo. While we were setting up a gang of ten-year-old girls came and terrorised us. Everyone in the street had a clubfoot and a vicious dog!"
Morrissey chose that location because he associates it with another hero, the actor Albert Finney, star of the magnificent Sixties film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
"Finney was the Northern boy made good which is why I can relate to him even more.
"I find that mood of a Northern person going to London and then returning home very poignant. You can't describe how you feel when you go from South to North, stopping at the service stations. It hits a deafening note. The beauty of Finney was his natural quality as an actor. Even when I'm asleep I can't look natural."
While Morrissey says he hates nostalgia he admits that not much excites him about the 1980s. The closer he feels the 21st Century breathing down his neck, the more he panics.
Morrissey is so far removed from the jet setting image of the happy-go-lucky pop millionaire that people assume he is an old misery guts. When you meet him this isn't true at all. He is extremely funny and delivers many statements knowing they should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt.
"My self view is that I'm more cynical than romantic and I do appreciate the value of sarcasm. I'm not a jolly character, a life and soul of the party type and I suppose I asked for the misery tag. I just didn't expect such a generous response! However I dispute that I'm the Ambassador of Misery.
"I'm still embedded in a fascination for suicide and intensified depression. I feel a great deal inside me that must be tapped. I have to sing about what is ensnared in me."
Suicide, depression, death! All good grist to Morrissey's mill. His current favoured form of relaxation is visiting London cemeteries with old Manchester pal Howard Devoto (ex-Buzzcock).
"It's a most gripping pastime I can assure you. Gravestones have a very dreamlike quality. It's a private pleasure that Howard and I share because we're such boring people."
Conversation turns from the morbid to the macabre. He goes on to talk about the Moors Murders case, the Chalk Pit Murders, mass murder in the past 100 years and is an expert on the cannibal Albert Fish ('You passed on just one Mr. Morrissey') but then he starts spluttering.
"I can't imagine this boosting record sales! I must stress I have no personal interest in murder, I'm not nurturing any plans but I may give it some thought in the future. It's a good job for you I don't have a back garden. Any minute now I shall press a button and your armchair will disappear through the floor."