MUSIC: Morrissey And Other Animals

So, everyone’s favourite misanthropic ex-singer of The Smiths has caused minor controversy with his latest statement comparing meat-eating with paedophilia.  Oh, and the holocaust.  And, only very slightly less insanely compared to those comparisons, cannibalism.  Much faux-outrage ensues (more from embarrassed veggie Morrissey fans than from offended meat-eaters).

Charming Man

Now let’s get something clear straight away – Morrissey is a clever guy and a wind up merchant.  It is extremely unlikely that he literally believes that eating meat is a crime on the same level as child abuse/murder/cannibalism.  It’s not really worth going into why meat-eating is not like raping children because that’s exactly why Morrissey says things like this. I am aware that writing a post about it is doing precisely that, but let’s sink to the bait anyway…

There’s a well-known rule for internet forums: ‘Don’t Feed The Trolls’; and trolling is exactly what Morrissey is doing here.  If someone said all these things on a chat forum you’d probably just ignore them but because he used to be in The Smiths this kind of thing gets published in The Guardian.  The thing is, Morrissey comes from a time from before the internet and the democratisation of outrage and stupidity.  His USP in the 80s was being a contrary bastard who could have a voice, but now people being contrary are two a penny.  You can piss off more people by setting up a Twitter account and being a jerk in 15 minutes than doing interviews with the NME.  And comparing things to Auschwitz for shock value?  Please, Nazi shock tactics are soooo 20^th century.

Morrissey is savvy enough to know that musically he is no longer particularly interesting except to a rabid fanbase, and that nowadays to get wider attention he has to use other methods than releasing songs.  The thing is, he’s never been a muso, he just comes from an era where the best way to be provocative – to get that voice - was to be in a guitar band.  Music has probably always been a means to an end in his mind in the same way it has been for Mark E Smith and of course, Johnny ‘Lydon’ Rotten.  Morrissey’s been in the news a few times in 2013, but how much of it was to do with his music and how much of it has been to do with his autobiography being published under the Penguin Classic imprint?

The reason why Morrissey is so infuriating is not because of what he does or says.  I think it’s perfectly valid to have our artistes behaving like dicks and being wind-up merchants, pulling stunts and playing devil’s advocate.  It’s because he seems to have so little fun when doing it, and he’s lost his sense of humour.  Either that or his sense of humour has become so dry and witty it goes above everyone’s head which makes it the same thing.  We mentioned Johnny ‘Rotten’ Lydon and contemporary, Mark E Smith – both prickly personalities with similar reputations for controversial soundbites.  So let’s compare them all and see if anything interesting happens.

Money Changes Everything

Rotten/Lydon is someone who has always made a virtue of doing whatever he feels like doing that will irritate as many people as possible.  In the 70s the best way of annoying people was to attack the establishment, but he was never really an Anarchist with a capital ‘A’; he was and is a natural force of anarchy, unpredictable and impish.  In the 21^st century he obviously thought it would be more fun annoying po-faced punks and indie snobs by selling butter and appearing on game shows.  Sources about punk – Jon Savage’s ‘England’s Dreaming’ or Julien Temple’s ‘The Filth And The Fury’ – show very clearly that Lotten essentially lost interest in punk when it stopped being about individuality and started being about having the right safety pin accessories.  He was always rebelling against having to fulfil peoples’ expectations.  Whether these expectations were those of the Establishment or his fans was irrelevant.  If anything it is more satisfying seeing middle-aged punks being incensed by Rottyn ‘selling out’ than reading about the Jubilee barge business, because it’s so much more of an individual statement to alienate people nominally on your side.  Oor Johnny never claimed to stand for anything in particular – or rather, he stood for what he believed was the truth whilst claiming that whatever he happened to be thinking at the time counted as his truth.  That’s true chaos, not some cookbook manifesto.  My Dad doesn’t like the Pistols (or PiL) for that matter but thinks Johnny’s brilliant for being a piss-taking bastard.  And being liked by peoples’ Dads is how he can achieve iconoclastic status in the 21^st century.  Unlike Morrissey, he kept with the times so that he could at the very least be relevant.

Mark E Smith on the surface has much in common with Morrissey – both misanthropic Mancunians inspired by the Sex Pistols (both at the same Free Trade Hall gig, at least according to ’24 Hour Party People’, so probably not but whatever), both very definitely ‘words’ men with little interest in musicianship (and in Smith’s case active disdain for it).  Both are control freaks although Smith is the more successful, eating through musicians like nobody’s business.  Morrissey never fully managed to dominate Marr let alone sack him (in the end it was Morrisey who was jilted); ex-members of The Fall are somewhere in the 50s by now.  And this is one of the key differences between them – Smith strives for change, and if he does revisit the past it is normally to completely revise it. 

Handsome Devil

He is an alcohol and amphetamine fuelled surrealist force, whereas Morrissey is essentially conservative, verging on puritanical.  The Fall – famously described by John Peel as “Always different, always the same” – have a fluid identity, instantly recognisable by virtue of changing direction at every availability. 

Morrissey is only recognisable by being always the same.  Both singers (and of course Jotten) have distinctive voices and humorous lyrics but whereas Morrissey’s genre is despondent music-hall, Smith’s is Dali ranting in your dodgy local, a much more interesting spectacle.  Morrissey’s best lyrics (and though this post is a bit of a hatchet job on Morrissey he has written some of the wittiest lyrics in popular music) tend towards the wry and aloof, Smith’s the accessibly incomprehensible. 

Mark E Smith’s just as capable of being unpleasant and provocative to people as Morrissey can be, but he’s also a jocular Walter Mitty barfly in Salford who still has artistic validity on his side - and so is tolerated with affection (apart from guitarists one presumes).  The reason why Rydon is quite loveable and is treated with affection is because he so obviously enjoys his role as a Puckish contrary bastard.  And the reason why Morrissey comes across as being a prick is he looks like he’s having a such a rubbish time going through the motions of being a pantomime of Morrissey.  No Lytten-like glint in the eye, no Fall-like whimsical psychosis, just supercilious misanthropy that seems as dated as shoving some daffodils up your arsenal and spinning around on Top Of The Pops.

It is perfectly permissible to be an ageing icon making bombastic, attention-seeking statements when you have something else of interest.  But seeing someone resorting to unintentional self-parody so unnecessarily is a shame.  All three of the rebellious jukebox icons we’ve looked at continue to hold our attention not so much through their music but by playing cultural court jesters (with the possible exception of Mark E Smith).  The problem is that Morrissey isn’t funny, which makes for a pretty poor jester.

Admittedly though, the fact that I went and bought his autoubiography for £1.99 on the Kindle makes me a complete sucker, and probably renders everything you have just read as completely invalid.  Sorry for wasting your time.