Daily Record: "Morrissey used to be a charming man..."

The Daily Record placed this article behind a survey/advertising question, so I've taken the liberty of reproducing the entire thing here.
Written by / all credit: John Niven.

Morrissey used to be a charming man. Now it's more big mouth strikes again. And again. And again - Daily Record
John Niven muses on his teenage idol who has fallen off his pedestal in recent years as his political views have changed.

“Pictures of Strummer that fell from your wall, and nothing was hung in their place...” So sang Roddy Frame on Aztec Camera’s single Walk Out to Winter, all the way back in 1983.

I always took that lyric to be about the death of teenage hero worship.
Funnily enough, 1983 was about exactly the year the pictures of Strummer finally did fall from my wall, but, back then, at the age of 17, it was pictures of Morrissey that hung in their place for the next couple of years.

I worshipped the Morrissey of 1983 -1985. Every NME interview was an occasion, every Smiths Top of the Pops performance a jaw-dropping landmark moment of your teens. (A bush you could actually have hidden in hanging from his back pocket when they did Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now, the words Marry Me scrawled across his chest during William It Was Really Nothing.)

He hated Thatcher, played benefits for the GLC and openly praised CND.

It would have been hard indeed for me to connect the Morrissey of then with the Morrissey now, who a week ago said: “Last night Marine Le Pen easily won the French Election debate. Today both the BBC and CNN say Macron won the debate.

"This is precisely the reason why mainstream news media outlets cannot be trusted to tell the truth. Their private agendas are more important than facts, reality, or their duty to the people.”

It’s hard to know where to start with the unpacking of all this.

What’s most infuriating? Is it the parroting of the Trumpian “fake news” and “mainstream media lies”?

Or is just the fact that he’s expressing any kind of admiration of Marine Le Pen at all?

This is the Marine Le Pen who very recently pretty much denied France’s role in deporting Jews to the concentration camps.

The Marine Le Pen who worships Trump and Putin and who thought Brexit was great and who would have pulled France out of the EU too, had she not been (thankfully) defeated at the polls.

The same Marine Le Pen that any right-thinking person believes is about as close to an actual fascist that you would want to get.

Then you cast your mind back to Morrissey’s comments last year. He said: “As for Brexit, the result was magnificent, but it is not accepted by the BBC or Sky News because they object to a public that cannot be hypnotized by BBC or Sky nonsense.”

Or, a couple of years before that, when he said in a Loaded magazine interview: “I like Nigel Farage a great deal. His views are quite logical – especially where Europe is concerned.”

Well, as Father Ted said to the man with an enormous collection of Nazi memorabilia: “They say you do get more right wing as you get older...”

It has reached the point where Morrissey fills pretty much the same function for me as the Red Hot Chili Peppers do for Nick Cave.

The Smiths feature on an NME front cover from 1984:
JS119364700.jpg


In case you don’t know the quote, Nick Cave famously said: “Whenever I’m near a stereo and I say, ‘What the hell is this rubbish?’, the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.” NB He didn’t say “hell” or “rubbish” but this is a family newspaper, kids.

Similarly, whenever I hear an outrageous racially sensitive quote and I say: “Dear God, what idiot said that?” The answer is almost always Morrissey.

If you’d told the 17-year-old me back in 1983 (the me who would have taken the proverbial flying bullet for Morrissey) that his Labour-campaigning, vegetarian, pro-CND, Thatcher-hating god would one day be a Farage and Le Pen-loving Brexiteer, he wouldn’t have believed you. He’d probably have attacked you.

But that’s hero worship for you, always tending towards disappointment in the end.

Or, as Julie Burchill once said: “The same pop star that you would have laid your life down for at the age of 15, a couple of years later you’d have to be coaxed across the road with red hot pokers to pour water on them if they were on fire.”

NB She didn’t suggest using water to put out the flames, it was another liquid. But this is a family newspaper, kids."

Regards,
FWD.
 
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Some people have a life and grow. Others remain as eternal teenagers. But they don't have the right to ask others to stop evolving and remain as their teen idols forever. People grow or freeze as copies of their past selves. Morrissey decided to grow keeping some core thoughts through his whole career. Take it or leave it. If you miss your teen years there are a lot of teenagers in musical industry right now to lay your life down for. Go ahead and good luck.
Anyway, stating Morrissey is a racist and suggesting it's a good thing to feed the fire of his pyre because you don't like him anymore... that's pathetical barbaric ignorance.
 
I don't think Morrissey's political views have changed at all. On some matters he is extremely left wing, on others extremely right wing. Some people have just been denial for decades.
 
I do, and will always love Morrissey's music. When he opens his mouth to sing, all is right with the world.
But... When he opens his mouth to speak? That's an entirely different matter. The world changes around us, and some of us adapt, others remain mentally in the past. For a hardcore nostalgia junkie like Morrissey- who refuses to join the rest of us, is it any surprise he would eventually turn into his (grand)Parents?
 
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"If you’d told the 17-year-old me back in 1983 (the me who would have taken the proverbial flying bullet for Morrissey) that his Labour-campaigning, vegetarian, pro-CND, Thatcher-hating god would one day be a Farage and Le Pen-loving Brexiteer, he wouldn’t have believed you."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Morrissey never campaigned for the Labour Party...
 
I think this is a reasoned, articulate article and I have to concur with the sentiments. A lot of younger fans won't understand the NME reference but basically Moz was a great interviewee..even all these years on I remember his answer to "why did you sing it was a good lay?" because "I thought it might amuse somebody on the bus to Blackburn". Nobody else in the music world was or indeed is that funny and dry. Smiths and early Moz solo releases were treasured events..the sleeve layouts were great, b-sides as good if not better than the a-sides etc but the signs of Moz being difficult were always there and eventually broke up the band. Could it have been any different in hindsight? I don't think so. Self-sabotage as an art-form.

Plenty of bi-polar, high maintenance divas in the entertainment world but it's hard to think of anybody else more unmanageable. Strange that it's ended up with a clunky, chugging steam train meandered by an obtuse curmudgeon who seems to thrive on supposedly standing up to injustice while treating his fans with contempt (cancellations, walk-offs, 75 quid standing tickets for barely 75mins). Silly arguments with record companies, t-shirt vendors etc in which whenever he offers any comment I simply don't believe what he says anymore. The one common denominator in all this fey pantomime posturing duplicity is obvious..especially to anybody who visits this site and reads these posts. Unfortunately your heroes always seem to let you down but it's especially sad that the great pale white English hope couldn't be the one exception
 
How many more articles are people going to write on Morrissey's supposedly 'new' political views? His views on Brexit (National identity etc) have been around since the late 80's. Time and time again its written by people who only listen to The Smiths's stuff and completely ignore everything else. This article, like the countless others, can be summarised as follows "Grown adult angry Morrissey doesn't share their political views"
 
A lot of younger fans won't understand the NME reference

I think they do. The point of Morrissey fans is (largely) that they know every snippet of his life and career inside out. It doesn't matter if they are 50 or 25.
 
It's pathetic how the far left deal with anyone whose views doesn't fit in with way of thinking. Anyone who is concerned about the topic of migration is immediately attacked and labelled as a racist these days. It's completely ludicrous.
 
Steve's only purpose in life these days is selling dodgy t-shirts and stinking out music venues with his tin-pot backing band performing the same old songs again and again.
It's all he can do as he hangs around just waiting for her majesty to pass away so he can climb on his soapbox and sing The Queen is dead.
L O L ! :rofl::laughing:

Benny-the-British-Butcher :greatbritain::knife:
 
This is typical of the Daily Record, poor journalism looking for a reaction, most people in Scotland no longer buy this rag, it's aimed at the lowest common denominator

It isn't written by a journalist, and is competely correct on Morrissey's far right tendencies
 
This is typical of the Daily Record, poor journalism looking for a reaction, most people in Scotland no longer buy this rag, it's aimed at the lowest common denominator
The people of Scotland are all descendents of the nordic vikings and most of those were swedish. Scots even use swedish words without knowing it.
 
I think they do. The point of Morrissey fans is (largely) that they know every snippet of his life and career inside out. It doesn't matter if they are 50 or 25.
I find the opposite true. I work with several 21-25 year olds who are passionate about the Smiths, indifferent to his solo output, and completely disinterested in Morrissey as a person.
 
Some people have a life and grow. Others remain as eternal teenagers. But they don't have the right to ask others to stop evolving and remain as their teen idols forever. People grow or freeze as copies of their past selves. Morrissey decided to grow keeping some core thoughts through his whole career. Take it or leave it. If you miss your teen years there are a lot of teenagers in musical industry right now to lay your life down for. Go ahead and good luck.
Anyway, stating Morrissey is a racist and suggesting it's a good thing to feed the fire of his pyre because you don't like him anymore... that's pathetical barbaric ignorance.

When you are young and you are not left, you don't have a heart.
When you are old and you are still left, you don't have a brain.
 

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