Fletcher gives a bit more inside into Owen's background and apparently even spoke to him about the interview in question (he's thanked in the Acknowledgements).
Relevant section quoted here in full:
It was fellow IPC publication Melody Maker—long considered the most traditional of the music weeklies—that made frequent cover stars of the Smiths, and it was for yet another such feature that journalist Frank Owen was flown to Cleveland, early in the American tour, to interview Morrissey “on the road.” Owen was, like Morrissey, a Mancunian of working-class Irish stock.
He had come of age alongside Morrissey in the city’s thriving post-punk environment, and had played in the band Manicured Noise, of which Morrissey had been a fan. A devotee from childhood of disco, reggae, and soul, and already a keen proponent of house music, Owen sought in his feature to establish the connection between punk rock, gay clubs, discos, black music, the Smiths, the DJ, and “Panic.” Given the hastily written nature of the British music weeklies, he failed to pull it off successfully. Verbally, however, he gave it his best shot. After an initial back-and-forth about Morrissey’s “no sex” agenda (Owen dared suggest in writing that in years to come, Morrissey would be into “fisting and water sports”), he raised an accusation recently made by Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside, that “the Smiths and their ilk were racist.”
Morrissey not only took the bait, he swallowed it hook, line, and potential career sinker. “Reggae … is to me the most racist music in the entire world,” he was quoted as responding in part. This was no more true of a genre that admittedly had its share of black nationalist Rastafarians than it was true of rock music, which likewise had its share of white supremacists performing under the Oi! banner in Britain and infiltrating the hardcore scene in America. Not content to leave it there, Morrissey went on to express how much he detested the “black modern music” of Motown descendants Stevie Wonder, Janet Jackson, and Diana Ross, stating, per the lyrics to “Panic,” that “in essence this music doesn’t say anything whatsoever.”
Owen claimed to understand this thinking. “When NME and Melody Maker started putting black acts on the cover,” he recalled, “there was a huge backlash to it. I used to get letters all the time. And it wasn’t explicitly ‘We don’t want blacks on the cover,’ it was more like ‘This is our scene and what do blacks have to do with it?’ ” And so, in his Melody Maker feature, as a response to Morrissey’s own response, Owen tried to answer that question: “What it says can’t necessarily be verbalised easily,” he wrote. “It doesn’t seek to change the world like rock music by speaking grand truths about politics, sex and the human condition. It works at a much more subtle level—at the level of the body and the shared abandon of the dancefloor. It won’t change the world, but it’s been said it may well change the way you walk through the world.” Within a year or two, as acid house exploded (the kindling lit on the Haçienda dance floor) and the rave movement emerged in its wake, a large section of British youth would come to share Owen’s sentiment, the Smiths’ Johnny Marr and New Order’s Bernard Sumner among them. In the summer of 1986, though, Morrissey was still the voice of his generation, which was perhaps why he then dared issue the most ludicrous comment yet of a continually outspoken career: “Obviously to get on Top of the Pops these days, one has to be, by law, black,” which he followed up with an equally ridiculous claim of personal persecution. “The last LP ended up at number two and we were still told by radio that nobody wanted to listen to The Smiths in the daytime. Is that not a conspiracy?” As a simple point of fact, the Smiths were on Top of the Pops, in absentia, the very week before Morrissey and Owen conducted this interview. And while it was true that seek to change the world like rock music by speaking grand truths about politics, sex and the human condition. It works at a much more subtle level—at the level of the body and the shared abandon of the dancefloor. It won’t change the world, but it’s been said it may well change the way you walk through the world.” Within a year or two, as acid house exploded (the kindling lit on the Haçienda dance floor) and the rave movement emerged in its wake, a large section of British youth would come to share Owen’s sentiment, the Smiths’ Johnny Marr and New Order’s Bernard Sumner among them. In the summer of 1986, though, Morrissey was still the voice of his generation, which was perhaps why he then dared issue the most ludicrous comment yet of a continually outspoken career: “Obviously to get on Top of the Pops these days, one has to be, by law, black,” which he followed up with an equally ridiculous claim of personal persecution. “The last LP ended up at number two and we were still told by radio that nobody wanted to listen to The Smiths in the daytime. Is that not a conspiracy?” As a simple point of fact, the Smiths were on Top of the Pops, in absentia, the very week before Morrissey and Owen conducted this interview. And while it was true that the Smiths were treated cautiously as a pop act with regard to daytime airplay on Radio 1, they received all due attention and respect as a rock band across the BBC’s many channels, with televised concerts, in-studio performances, on-air interviews, radio sessions, and unedited Derek Jarman premieres.
Even the singer’s attempt to restore proceedings mid-interview sounded suspect. “My favourite record of all time is ‘Third Finger, Left Hand’ by Martha and the Vandellas,” he said, citing a (black) Motown single from 1966, “which can lift me from the most doom-laden depression.” And yet this was as stereotypically romantic, conventionally sexist, and thereby nonfeminist a song as had ever been written. It would have said nothing about Morrissey’s life when it came out, and said even less about his life and that of his fans twenty years later. He was in essence employing a double standard, based on what Owen correctly referred to as a “nostalgia … that afflicts the whole indie scene.” A subsequent debate about the use of technology in music, especially the rhythm of rap, revealed what could only be described as Morrissey’s Luddite attitude: “Hi-tech can’t be liberating. It’ll kill us all. You’ll be strangulated by the cords of your compact disc.”
As it turned out, Owen wasn’t particularly put out by Morrissey’s comments in defense of “Panic.” “
I never thought Morrissey was a racist,” he said. “I always thought it was just a big put-on, that it was just a way to wind people up, the same way that punks wore swastikas.” [(edit: ha!)] Morrissey’s subsequent, considerable anger over the published interview, Owen felt, was inspired by the section that followed, in which the journalist tried to engage the singer in a walk down Manchester’s gay-punk-disco memory lane. “
Morrissey is the biggest closet gay queen on the planet,” said Owen, “
and he felt that I was trying to ‘out’ him by bringing this up. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that if you were a punk rocker in Manchester, you couldn’t go to straight clubs ’cause you’d get the shit kicked out of you. So there was a very close relationship between the gay scene and the punk scene. Like the Ranch … it was essentially an old gay club, like one of those cowboy gay clubs. That’s why it was called the Ranch—it had saddles for seats.”
On this issue, Morrissey did not take the bait. “The gay scene in Manchester,” he said, “was a little bit heavy for me. I was a delicate bloom.” If he wanted to play coy, that was his prerogative, although with Thatcherite policies coming down increasingly hard on homosexuality, many other artists had decided to “come out” in response. As Len Brown wrote, “It was a time when everyone—artists and journalists—seemed to be asking the question (politically and sexually) ‘Whose Side Are You On?’ To which Morrissey insisted on being individual … a card-carrying member of nothing but his own cult of personality.” Worse than that, in this Melody Maker feature, he appeared to be projecting some prejudices of his own. When the interview was published, it caused, understandably, a more heated and visceral reaction than any previous Smiths feature. Some Melody Maker readers vowed to boycott the band’s music; over at NME, Morrissey’s comments appeared to confirm the “soul boy” brigade’s worst suspicions. There were, nonetheless, those who believed that Morrissey had been quoted out of context; their numbers included the singer himself. “
He called up Melody Maker, said that I had invented those quotes, and they were going to sue us for libel,” said Owen. “So I said, ‘Fine, here’s the tapes.’ We gave them to Melody Maker’s lawyers—and of course he never sued.”
Did he... did Owen call Morrissey, who from the very beginning has said that he was attracted to men
and women, a closet queen and then said it wasn't on his agenda to out him?
I love it when (straight) people try to enforce
their understanding of how one should display one's own sexuality upon other people.
Edit:
His name when he was in Manicured Noise was Gavin Owen, which explains the remark in Autobiography. Looks like they did indeed have some history.
In one of the essays in the collection "Why pamper life's complexities?" Morrissey is quoted with
"I find these pieces that are written are usually written by people that I know, who I’ve known for a very long time … Frank Owen (the writer) is really Gavin Owen, who was the lead singer in the Manchester band Manicured Noise, they made some good singles … how can I hate black music? 55% of all my records are by black artists. Everything I said justifying the things he left in was taken out … All those gay clubs he mentioned, and there was a reference to Whitworth Street toilets – that was
his past, not mine. We’re suing the Melody Maker, and they tell us they can’t find the tapes."
(Quoted from a Piccadilly Radio interview, October 31, 1986)
illnessasart.com
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