Morrissey

The Year Of The Smiths

Comment by Barney Hoskyns, The Virgin Yearbook, 1984

GAY MEN PAVED pop’s way this year. With Boy George’s wardrobe fully open, all the closet cases came spilling forth: Burns and The Bronskis, Frankie ...

Morrissey: Kill Uncle (Sire)

Review by Simon Reynolds, Village Voice, April 1991

"OH MANCHESTER, so much to answer for..." Contradiction has always been at the heart of Morrissey's mythologization of his hometown: this was nostalgia for a ...

AUDIO: Morrissey interviewed, part 2 (1989)

Interview by Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages Audio, Fall 1989

Revenge is his motive and shaved are his armpits.

File format: MP3 File size: 20.3mb, Interview length: 22 minutes 10 seconds, Sound quality: ***

AUDIO: Morrissey interviewed, part 3 (1989)

Interview by Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages Audio, Fall 1989

On topicality and politics in songwriting, his depressions, and touring and audiences.

File format: MP3 File size: 32.3mb, Interview length: 35 minutes 15 seconds, Sound quality: ***

Morrissey interviewed, part 1 (1989)

Interview by Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages Audio, Fall 1989

Part 1 of Mat Snow's monumental interview with Morrissey in 1989

File format: MP3 File size: 25.8mb<br> Interview length: 37 minute 42 seconds Sound quality: ***

Not the Jones: Morrissey

Interview by Roy Trakin, Musician, June 1984

AMERICA MAY HAVE been charmed by Boy George, but it's more difficult to imagine it embracing the Smiths and their poetic singer/writer Morrissey, the U.K.'s ...

An Infamous Interview With Stephen Patrick Morrissey

Interview by Antonella Black, Sounds, April 1985

You have stars in your bath. They just fall off me... ...

Antonella Strikes Again: Morrissey Revisited

Interview by Antonella Gambotto, ZigZag, May 1985

Absurd Person Singular Antonella grapples with the shining Morrissey, now larger than life than ever before. Is there any offal truth to discover? ...

Morrissey: Wilde Child

Interview by Paul Morley, Blitz, 1988

THE FIRST QUESTION, when we finally met, was supremely simple and obvious. As I very gracefully asked it, I felt a great deal of joy. ...

Morrissey: Desecrating Wildly

Report and Interview by Len Brown, NME, February 1988

"How could they do this to Oscar Wilde's grave?" Len Brown asks of Morrissey, but finds his genitals reduced to paperweights. (Oscar's that is...) ...

Morrissey: Borne To Be Wilde - interview part 1

Interview by Len Brown, NME, February 1988

"WE HAVE a warrant here, Mr. Wilde, for your arrest on a charge of committing indecent acts." "Where shall I be taken?" "To Bow Street." ...

Morrissey: Born to be Wilde - interview part 2

Interview by Len Brown, NME, February 1988

"I THINK that very strong intelligent artists should dictate practically everything, but they don't. If we talk about Tiffany and Belinda Carlisle and the whole ...

Morrissey: Songs Of Love And Hate

Interview by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, March 1988

I THINK I'VE MET THEM ALL NOW. For me, there are no more heroes left. And no new ones coming along, by the look of ...

Morrissey: Songs of Love and Hate, Part 2

Interview by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, March 1988

"Did that swift eclipse torture you?/A star at 18 and then – suddenly gone/down to a few lines in the back page/of a teenage annual/oh ...

Morrissey: Viva Hate

Review and Interview by Len Brown, Spin, June 1988

"Perhaps I'm unique because people are so dull. I'm not very good at being dull." – Morrissey"I have nothing to declare but my own genius." ...

Hate Male

Interview by Len Brown, NME, July 1988

The Smiths were "like a life-support machine" to Morrissey. Without STEPHEN STREET – co-writer/producer of Viva Hate – it's conceivable that Les Miserable himself would ...

Morrissey: Wolverhampton

Live Review by Len Brown, Guardian, The, December 1988

WITH A soft Charles Hawtrey-style "hullo" and a shower of flowers. Steven Patrick Morrissey returns to the stage. It's two years since his uniquely English ...

Morrissey: Civic Centre, Wolverhampton

Live Review by Paul Lester, Melody Maker, January 1989

MORRISSEY COMES to the Midlands to play eight songs, two of which receive their first airing tonight, and only 1,700 followers adorned with the Stephen ...

Morrissey: The Soft Touch

Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, December 1989

Your fans are fiercely loyal but always "with an aura of love and gentleness". You’re being sued by two former band members but accept it ...

Morrissey: The Deep End

Interview by Nick Kent, Face, The, March 1990

Walking backwards into the Nineties, has Morrissey finally lost all sane 'focus' on his career? ...

Bona Contention

Interview by Len Brown, Vox, November 1990

Morrissey could probably have done without the last year, and there's a been a few none too kind hacks and hackettes who say we could ...

Morrissey: I'll Astonish You

Interview by Len Brown, Details, March 1991

"IF GEORGE MICHAEL had to live my life for five minutes, he'd strangle himself with the nearest piece of cord," says Morrissey as he walks ...

Morrissey: Kill Uncle

Review by Mat Snow, Q, April 1991

NO STRANGER TO the extravagant gesture, on the sleeve of his first all-new long-player since 1988's Viva Hate, Morrissey is pictured from below as if ...

Morrissey: Inside Looking In

Interview by Mark Kemp, Option, May 1991

MANCHESTER IS 185 RAILROAD MILES NORTH OF LONDON, LINKED BY SIGNPOSTS THAT READ RUGBY, BIRMINGHAM, AND STOKE-ON-TRENT; BY SPRAWLING MISTY GREEN MEADOWS, GUSHING STREAMS, AND ...

Morrissey: "A gentle adoration"

Report by Robert Sandall, Q, January 1992

Morrissey's US shows have been the scenes of riotous affection. And nobody can figure it out. "It's the intensity of the reverence..." ...

Morrissey: Ooh I Say!

Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, September 1992

The lighter side of football violence. The death of pop music. Getting the urge for sex. Being racist. The TV star who is "a pig ...

Brett Anderson & Morrissey: Suedegate

Comment by Sheryl Garratt, Face, The, May 1993

Does this magazine print deliberate lies? Well actually no, we don't ...

Morrissey: Beethoven Was Deaf

Review by David Stubbs, Melody Maker, May 1993

BEETHOVEN WAS indeed deaf. And, Lord, upon looking at the CD panel and realising that after a full prison stretch of maudlin warbling that there ...

Morrissey: Vauxhall and I (Sire)

Review by Simon Reynolds, New York Times, 1994

IF TWO WORDS come close to encapsulating Morrissey's sensibility, they are isolation and insularity. ...

Morrissey & I

Interview by Dave DiMartino, Raygun, March 1994

THE FIRST TIME I met Morrissey was nine years ago, when the thin, seemingly mild-mannered singer was slightly in need of a shave; when he ...

Morrissey: Hello, Cruel World

Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, April 1994

Goodbye, big-bloused flower-fondler; cheerio, depressed devotee of deathly doom; toodle-oo teetotal football-fearing perma-hermit; we'll sithee, bespectacled Billy NoMates. At 34, Morrissey is no longer the ...

David Bowie/Morrissey: London, Wembley Arena

Live Review by Sylvie Simmons, MOJO, 1995

THE THIRD OF four nights of two thinnish white pop Dukes with great barbers and a well-honed sense of alienation. Seventies icon Bowie and 80s ...

Morrissey: The King of Bedsit Angst Grows Up

Profile by Will Self, Observer, The, 1995

Heaven knows he was miserable then. Morrissey was the archetypal mixed-up young man: anti-fun, seemingly tortured by his sexuality, with a detached and ironic worldview. ...

Morrissey: This Charming Mandroid

Interview by David Sinclair, Times, The, February 1995

I FIRST MET MORRISSEY in 1984. I was a researcher on the BBC television show Eight Days a Week and he was on the programme's ...

Morrissey: Do You F***king Want Some?

Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, September 1995

Morrissey's back in the ring with a violently good LP, Southpaw Grammar, and he's having a Cantona-styled pop at anyone in his path: Hugh Grant, ...

Morrisey: Southpaw Grammar (RCA)

Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1995

Wherein Morrissey discovers the missing link between The Byrds' jingle-jangle and Young/Cobain grunge. In contrast to Vauxhall And I, often gentle of mood and sentiment, ...

This Disarming Man: In Defence of Morrissey

Retrospective by Djuna Parnes, Rock's Backpages, September 2001

WHAT A CURIOUS POSITION Morrissey holds in the pop firmament of the early 21st century. For a man who was one of the defining heroes ...

"Somebody Has To Be Me": Morrissey

Interview by Dorian Lynskey, Guardian, The, April 2004

NOW 44, STEVEN Patrick Morrissey is, to quote one of his songs, a handsome devil. ...

Morrissey: Who's The Daddy?

Interview by Keith Cameron, MOJO, June 2004

MORRISSEY IS SICK. By his own estimation, he is sick of the sound of his own voice. In a suite at the Dorchester Hotel on ...

Morrissey

Interview by Adrian Deevoy, GQ, October 2005

The former Smiths frontman has had "20 very odd years": from indie outsider to LA's least typical expat, via court battles and enjoying self-imposed exile. ...

Tony Visconti: Bolan, Bowie, Morrissey And Me

Interview by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, March 2006

"WHAT A LOT of people don't realise about Morrissey," says the producer of his new album, Tony Visconti, "is that he has a sense of ...

Morrissey at The Lowry, Salford

Live Review by Stephen Dalton, Times, The, April 2006

THE SENSE OF feverish anticipation that Morrissey still generates before each live performance, record release and even interview is a remarkable testament to the cult ...

Morrissey: Gmex, Manchester

Live Review by Len Brown, Rock's Backpages, December 2006

A DICKENSIAN SMOG shrouds the city centre and the increasingly familiar ghost of Manchester's Christmas' past shuffles onto the stage. "Well, they look friendly," he ...

Morrissey: Troxy, London ***

Live Review by Nick Hasted, Independent, The, July 2009

AT LONDON'S Wireless Festival last year, Morrissey was a hilarious showman in easy command of his powers, playing rollicking unreleased songs and Smiths favourites. That ...