New Morrissey Interview in German musicmag "Spex"

sistasheila

tjekket
scan+translation of the spexinterview to follow soon the next days
the teaser-one sentence-intro written on their site
"Spex talks to Morrissey in the Londoner five-Stars-Hotel Claridge’s . Moz ,dressed in black,
constantly smiling, drinking tea,asking the interviewer":
»Would you care to join me for a cup of tea or do you prefer mineral water?«
http://www.spex.de/322/backissues.html
avaiable up from the 20th of FEB

thnks to maynard morrissey for the heads up conc spex

spex is as mentioned before the longstanding ( indie) musicmag since 1980, writing about bands unpopular to the masses which mags like Rs pick up only years later if they bother to anyway..but often they way they write sound comes across abit gobbledygook but still theyre very important....and if they writing about mainstramacts then in an anlytical kind of way...
here is an overview of the backissue-covers beginning from 1980
http://www.spex.de/backissues.html
moz on cover in the year 86 and 87:
87 scanned in another thread here in the forums
looking forward to that interview..we have been really pampered with interviews for the foreign press compared to the quarry where only RS did get an interview

oh and the musikexpress interview translation is in the progress too..forgot about it..will see the light soon
http://forums.morrissey-solo.com/showthread.php?t=95895&highlight=musikexpress
.edit:done
 
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Thank you so much Sista!!! :thumb:
all the praise to maynard.:D..

so who will buy the spex?theyre quite costly...lets gamble who has to buy it...:lbf:
 
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I cannot remember that I ever saw the Spex in real life anywhere, not even the train station newsagent. At least the Musikexpress was there and I picked my copy up there, because it wasn't available anywhere else. Luckily they still had the one that I had paid for and remembered me. :) So there is no need to scan that anymore?

theyre not that easy to find and not in a big amount like RS or ME,yes but still always there in some stores.mostly in (haupt)bahnhofbuchhandlungen....or in english :_train station agent;-)
even in smaller cities you can find it there in this stores....also the foreign languages mafs/newspapers ( english music/fashion.magazines or newspapers) are there to find....



edit 26 th feb: have started tranlating it give me some time ..an hour a ore more[;-)
 
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What's mineral water?

Oooh, the stuff in plastic bottles that popstars drink but that all evolved mammals boycott, along with non-ecological interviews of non-ecological postars? :rolleyes:


"You've survived the anti-abattoir lobby? Meet the others".:lbf:

(When you've been subjected to PETA for years, you become an expert for techniques to do people's heads in. That was a test. Thank you to my mentor.:thumb:)
 
here are the scans and the english translation of the Spex interview ..the tranlation divided into two posts...
Im happy for any corrections-suggestions concerning grammatics etc from my fellow germans ... (please write them into my guestbook and not via PM if possible)
THANKS VERY MUCH MOZZIA FOR UPLOAD MY SCANS INTO YOUR PHOTOBUCKET, since my photobucket account shuts down when i try to upload new pics
and thanks for maynard for helping me with a few words
The Moz Spex interview from 1987 which the Interviewer showed to Moz and which they briefly talk about it at the beginning to be found(inc the cover pic ) in this Thread(foreign language interviews):
http://forums.morrissey-solo.com/showpost.php?p=863886&postcount=4
not tranlated yet though, the interviewer from 87 did have a long winded way to speak/write
Something more about this foreign language^ thread in the linernotes*

mozspexmag09.jpg


mozspexmag092001.jpg


mozspexmag0903.jpg


mozspexmagpic.jpg


Part 1

"What on earth was exactly reinvented?"

On his new album "Years of refusal" Morrissey follows the path/direction,
that he had choose to go in the year 2004 with his Comebackalbum
"You are the quarry":-with a powerful hardening of his own sound in the direction
of a direct, raw rock blueprint.
Steven Patrick Morrissey,who his going to celebrate his 50th Birthday in May,is
considered as England's most enigmatic Songwiter.
He has summonded to a rare Interview apointment in the 5th floor of the Londoner
5-Star hotel "Claridge"in a plushy equipped,spaciously suite. Dressed completely
in black , perfectly-groomed, with a pasted grin on his face, Morrissey nips on his cup of tea
and asks: "Would you care to join me for a cup of a tea or do you prefer mineral water?"

Question: Morrissey, two years ago when you last played a concert in Berlin, you said to the audience:"Your city is very beautiful..assuming it is Warsaw."

Answer: Oh god, did i really say that?


Q: Yes. One part of the audience did find that funny, the other part didnt.*

A: I'm afraid, I have to make a point at this time now. I use the wrong Words at the wrong Time once in a while.

Q: You often make Statements that hits a raw nerve..

A: I know. That's the way it goes. Every performer takes high risks in a stage situation-and can loose. But when you never takes risks, life is simply not worth living.

Q: I brought along two old Spex issues, where you did grace the cover. I found them in our Archive.

A: Thats where I am to be found . Down in the cellar!
In the archive! Thats where you find Morrissey...


Q: One issue is from 1986,the other..

A: ..is from the year 1967.

Q: Why so sarcastic? The cover is from the year 1987*.
You look into the camera, behind you is a montage : a Union jack with Margaret Thatcher.

A: The innocence in that eyes..I'm talking about Margaret Thatcher`s eyes.


Q: Innocence... are you a Thatcher fan all of a sudden?

A: I'm joking.

Q: What do you feel, when you have a look at old Pictures of yours?

A:Sometimes I think, I see no difference compared to today, then on the other hand
I see all the Years that went by, all the pain, all the joy.
The biggest Trouble (/arduousness) is that the Human being is trapped
in his Character,is inclined to always feel identical with himself, no matter how old he is.


Q:Is that so?

A: For the most persons its shocking,watching themselves growing old. I do view that completely different.
My motto is:"Let it go,let it go.,let it go"
Time adjusts and Time heals.. I never wanted to look back, I never wanted to be young again.
At no point of time. Why should I?


Q: Maybe to do things different back then?


A: Every experience in your life ,even when its a bad one, brings you forward.
Without that experience, you stuck and perish.
That is called: Depression. Depression means not getting nowhere/not getting forward.
I have absolutely no interest in the Past.


Q: But what is so bad about the Past?
You seems to be quite dedicated to the Past with your Preferences
of long deceased writers and Hollywoodactors...

A: I'm talking about my own personal past here.
I never ever wanted to get thrown back and being 25 again. Never.
I dont regret that time goes on and myself growing old.
But You are right of course. I'm very interested in this World-and their past.
"Older better, older better" that is my daily mantra..
...When I am, in 3 years time,have to walk with a walking Stick, hunchbacked, without teeths...accepted. I wont have a Problem with that.


Q: In 3 years?

A: In 30 years.


Q: Your preferences of authors like Oscar Wilde, Emily Bronte or
for Directors like Visconti are well known. Do you have the feeling of being born to late?

A: All the artists that you name are indeed persons I admire very much.
But that doesnt happen to me alone. A lot of human beings share my taste.
Mary Shelleys`s Debut Novel "Frankenstein,or the modern Prometheus"
for example, who was published anonymous in the year 1818,
is about a swiss named Victor Frankenstein, who creates an artificial
human being, a Frankenstein.
This Novel still sells enormously good.
And nobody can tell me that only sick human beings who live in constant darkness
buy this Book!
Everybody who has a academic mind, and for having that
no academic education is necessary, as you can see with me, can
develop an opinion on that Topic.
Just because i never did go into outer space, that doesn't mean I can't reflect about
The Universe. In the End its all about your own imagination and Fantasy.
And my own fantasy, I must admit is unbridled and uncontrolled.
Sometimes even frivolous (/daft).


Q: Frivolous?

A: Yes in my fantasy I am constantly frivolous.
My fantasy is my constant Compagnion and escorts me into sleep every night.
It is a part of me and I do ask myself honestly: where would I be without fantasy?


Q: You want to say that without your daft fantasy , you wouldnt have witten a convincing Album like YOR?

A:That is very civilised of you.


Q: Talking to you means automatically talking about the Smiths. How do you handle your own Past?

A: Its obviously in the nature of a Human being, repeately, more than anything else and exclusively thematize the past.
This moment of us sitting here, will be the Past by tonight.
The future will be the past and the human Race regrets this since the Scripture was invented-
so its probably a natural Habit.
But you cant bring back the past.
You can not adjure it. And also the audience can not resurrect a band,
no matter if they had broke up,or where a member died or
they just simply have choose to run another path.
It cannot bring back the time where everything "is in order" back then.
That is absurd. I personally don t fell that impulse.
And even if we would assume , just hypothetically, that its possible, being catapulted back
into the past, then one will , when he arrives, will discern disenchanted, that some things
doesn't matter that much to oneself back then,as it seems to matter in retrospect.
I prefer the present.


Q: What do you like about the present?

A: It is so easy to complain about modern life: All the inhumanities and atrociousnesses,these noises, the cell phones, the decay of our language and all that. But I won't join in into this Lamentation. In my eyes the comforts of our modern Time outweighs everything else.
There are so many things (happening)today that make me happy or I could get exited about.
I never want to wish back the old times.
I grow up in darkened Years. I'm talking about post war period England in the early 60ties.
It was, ,to come back to the topic music,a time, where it was extremely difficult
hearing good music. To be interested in Popmusic was seen as something perverse.
Very contrary to nowadays, where everybody`s making music and looks like a Popstar.
But of course the today's omnipresence of muic has their disadvantage.
Music is everywhere, just ev-er-y-wh-e-re! I perceive this,by all means,as disturbing.
Not only, because very often its music I despise.
I just don't want to coerced to hear music in a certain kind of way, to be constantly get persecuted by it: in TV, in the commercials, as a ringtone.


: So everything was better in the past..still?

A: In my youth music was, in spite of all provisos (/reservations), something special, that you did take time for, to fully cherish it. And you had to search a long time for other people who did share this love and listen to the same bands as yourself. we discussed about music, we did take them seriously.
In contrast to today where music has lost lots of their identity-establishing (/generating)power.
Most of the contemporary music mags are meaningless, the current pop charts have no significance anymore. even people who deal with musicians on a professional level, no matter if its musicians or journalists, just don't care anymore about who is in the top 10. Why? Because the charts have become irrelevant! Very regrettable, very regrettable.


Q: You do critisise, in that context, Madonna quite some time...

A: Madonna can sell 60 million records worldwide and that still doesn't mean anything.
We did get used to the fact that trivial artists are spread over all those mag-title-covers
without the people in charge taking care, if the audience get any gain
of knowledge (/cognition, insight) for themselves from them.
But that's the status quo of our time. Everybody has arranged themselves with it.



.
 
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Part 2

Q: How do you deal with this dilemma personally?

A: I only follow some a few ideas and ideals and try to perfect these over the years. Every true artist will tell you the same.
Only a few have the perseverance to organize this progress in a way that its is interesting in long term for the audience and always stays interesting continiously.
Elvis has shaped the word "comeback". and he is for a lot of people the Role Model of an Artist, who is not meetings his own standards.
On the other hand I read on a inflationary level of artists who reinvent themself.
Also about Madonna that is said about repeately, and I ask myself
every f*cking* time: What on earth exactly was reinvinted then?
There was nothing there-never! Most musicians dont have no ideas and they are lacking individuality.


Q: You, on the other hand...

A: I do get better and better (as time passes).
Time and life leads me and pushes me forward. I do find, in the most rarest cases, an explanation for what I do. If you buy a poetry book, take your time to read it (/unhurriedly)and then get to know the Author and ask him about the meaning of one of his Poems, the Disapoinment is big.
The Crux* of Music is, that in the core its a very private and personal art form-according
to this every individual listener sense something different.
I rather refrain from Explanations. I dont want to know about the Intention of the Composer. Explanations are actually always misleading.


Q: In the last years,your lyrics did shorter, curtlier and more reduced. Pasolini, whom you admire so much that you dedicate a line to him in the song "You have killed me: "Pasonlini
is me/Accatone you`ll be". He does have a big influence on your poetry.

A: Thats completely right.


Q: Pasolini`s Accatone: This young man speaks a harsh, clear, very simple language.
When you sing:"It's not your birthday anymore/there's no need to be kind to you" That is reminiscent of Accatone.


A:I found that part to be rather amusing.


Q:You are quite mean, arent you?

A: Mean? No! We have all been there. Just because a person celebrates a birthday, we have to be nice to that person the whole, without exception. I always can't wait for the day to be over. ....Ha,Ha, Ha....I really do find that part very amusing.

Q: Only 12*(sic) words.

A:The art of Reduction.

Q: You wrote "i will be at the bar/with my head on the bar" in the year 1994.Yet Another reduction. You dont replace the 2nd mention of the word "bar" with just another word.

A: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!....

Q: Why are you laughing?

A: Because you say that in such a funny way: "I vill be at ze bar wis my head on ze bar"
That sounds so funny. That sounds so german.


Q:Brilliant!

A:I`m sorry. The line express, with only a few words, total desperation.
To be sitting in a bar , with your head on the bar: You cant sink hardly any lower than this.


Q: "When last I spoke to Carol" from your new album, on that song you sing "When last I spoke to Carol". With that change of the word`s position, which you dont recognize at first,, but then cant get you out of your head. Thats a quite formal English.
The language of traditional folk ballads?

A:It means nothing.. "When last I spoke to carol" just flows better.
I achieve through the inversion that myself, the "I" lose some of its meaning. At that moment,when "I"last spoke to Carol,it is not about "me".
But lets just get back to what you just said.
If you get that association "syntax of an english folk song" that`s fine.
Your Observation is better than any explanation I could give you.


Q: The german author Walter Serner did say once: "Its bearable everywhere, but the most bearable its overseas" You dont live in England anymore, did move to L.A., to Rome and then back to L.A. Also, you are on tour since Spring 2007 and have played countless concerts up until then. What does travelling mean to you?

A:I only travel that much because I do get asked to depart again and again. By now I feel completely dis-rooted. but i do must have some kind of home, because I wake up somewhere everyday.
Only I do not realize very often, where I exactly I am at that moment.
I didn't intented that way of life for me, it just developed in that direction. I don't fight it.
But I'm sure that there will be a point in time where I will settle down in a remote village out in the sticks near Leipzig and become the Fear of the other Village resitents there.
But until that happens Im still an transatlantic Commuter.


Q:Would you like to keep one of the old Spex issues?

A: That's very kind of you to offer,thank you, but No. Why should I keep it? Why should I look at old pictures of myself?


Q. Good question

A:If you have no answer for this Question, I dont have one either. Do send them to Margaret Thatcher then.


Q: How is she doing nowadays?

A:She waits to get interviewed by you. No, seriously. She is very senile by now. She cant read and cant hardly see anymore. "She`s lost her marbles" as the saying goes here.. But who cares? She can go to Hell! Just think about all the argentinian boys, whom she killed in the Falkland War. I can not think about Margaret Thatcher my whole life and I do feel no compassion towards her.


Interview: Martin Rossbach :picture:travis shinn

Linernotes

*1
spex 87
is found here:
http://forums.morrissey-solo.com/sho...86&postcount=4
note to Foreign language thread:
http://forums.morrissey-solo.com/showthread.php?t=86900&highlight=translation some of the interviews have been tranlated recently like a dutch interview((84) recently by jose..
a couple of german interviews have been tranlated as well
or I did found a translated version :like of the intro moz interview 2006
more translations to come soon: japanese,another dutch one an more


*2 I just have a say /something to add concerning the berlin concert and morrissey`S warsaw comment: actually i think the persons who didnt laugh simply doesnt understand what he said and therefore didnt laugh , not because they dont find it funny
they just didnt understand the words.
I personally didnt fully understand what he said,.like the last words: warsaw
and even if I would have heard the word warsaw articulate and clear
I still wouldnt know about what he is talking about.
I for one have never heard Warsaw pronounced in english. So I only know the german word "Warschau"
I just heard that he found the city("your city is beautiful") beautiful....the word assuming i didnt hear as well...
when i later heard it on the radio programm,I understand it...wonderered about warsaw asked and was told it is warscau..yeah I was a bit slow on that....
and i found it funny after i had understand the words;-)



*3 f*cking.. he could have said goddamm there..I dont know
"verdammt" has more than one translation
he does use the f-word not very often in interviews.
I do remember he did though in one interview during his lost years.

*4 CRUX: latin heritage,meaning for problem , critical point
issue
http://www.yourdictionary.com/wotd/crux

*5 actually 13 words not 12 words..;-)
also the interviewer quotes it wrong as:
It's not your birthday anymore/ no need to be kind to you anymore


B]all other interviews Morrissey did so far:
filter mag (US):
http://forums.morrissey-solo.com/showthread.php?t=94738&highlight=filter&page=5[/B]
and the
foreign language mags which were posted and translated so far beside this spex one:
german rolling stone:
http://forums.morrissey-solo.com/showthread.php?t=95398&highlight=rolling+stone&page=2
http://forums.morrissey-solo.com/showthread.php?t=95398&highlight=rolling+stone

-(german) spiegel:
http://forums.morrissey-solo.com/showthread.php?t=95004&highlight=spiegel

-danish mag gaffa:
http://forums.morrissey-solo.com/showthread.php?t=95622&highlight=gaffa

-(german) musikexpress interview
http://forums.morrissey-solo.com/showthread.php?t=95895&highlight=musikexpress


edit:
one fact mentioned in the musikexpress interview that he already has a publisher./publishing company ,.i thought he has just began writing but that he already has a publisher...wow
 
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Thank you very much:bow:
 
Thanks for translating that sistasheila! Good read it was :D.
 
Thank you sistasheila, this is great! :flowers:
Am I the only one who hopes he did actually say "f*cking"? I would love to hear Morrissey say that. :o
 
Thanks indeed, sistasheila.

I liked this bit particularly -

M/A:...Just because i never did go into outer space, that doesn't mean I can't reflect about the Universe. In the End its all about your own imagination and Fantasy.
And my own fantasy, I must admit is unbridled and uncontrolled.
Sometimes even frivolous (/daft).

Q: Frivolous?

A: Yes in my fantasy I am constantly frivolous.
My fantasy is my constant Compagnion and escorts me into sleep every night.
It is a part of me and I do ask myself honestly: where would I be without fantasy?

Q: You want o say that without your daft fantasy , you wouldnt have witten a convincing Album like YOR?

A:That is very civilised of you. -

:guffaw:
 
Thank you.

That interview is one of the better, I think, because the questioner actually asked some questions, and wasn't some pie eyed ignorant who just repeated the questions asked ad nauseam before.
 
And also the audience can not resurrect a band,
no matter if they had broke up,or where a member died or
they just simply have choose to run another path.
It cannot bring back the time where everything "is in order" back then.
That is absurd. I personally don t fell that impulse.


But he did resurrect The New York Dolls!
 
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