Paul A. Woods

Author: Paul A. Woods

Title: The Importance of Being Morrissey

Publisher: ISBN

Translation: Giuseppe Marano

Pages: 352

Price: Euro 27,00

There are many ways to tell the story of an artist's journey: the path of Patrick Steven Morrissey is reconstructed here in historical-biographical form by Paul A. Woods, through a chronological selection of the key interviews given by the former Smiths frontman to the British press from 1983 to the present day.

“The Importance Of Being Morrissey” was the title of a well-known documentary produced by the British TV network Channel 4 in 2002, which can still be found on YouTube: the most compelling video portrait of being Morrissey, complete with notable testimonials (Bono, Noel Gallagher, Nancy Sinatra and several others). That title was chosen by the Italian publisher (ISBN) for the translation of “Morrissey In Conversation: The Essential Interviews”, an illuminating collection of face-to-face encounters between the “Charming Man” and some of the finest British music journalists.

A vibrant text, an intense and rewarding journey that brings back to life the essential Smiths albums, their singer's up-and-down solo career, and the second youth embodied by his recent work. A book not only for new wave devotees, but for anyone curious to discover, or dig deeper into, one of the most important, intriguing and influential personalities of the last forty years of British music.

Across the 28 selected pieces, the interviewers examine the strictly professional sides of Morrissey, while also trying to probe the most hidden, recondite corners of the man himself. References are unavoidable: to his sexuality (the question about his proclaimed celibacy comes up again and again), to his aesthetic choices (the gladioli so often flung from the stage), to the myths of the eternal boy (his unconditional love for James Dean and Oscar Wilde), to the accusation that he wrote lyrics alluding to the grooming of minors (“Handsome Devil”), to animal rights (“Meat Is Murder”), to the attacks from certain sections of the press over alleged racist undertones in some songs, and to the legal fallout from the 1996 court case, in which the judge ruled against Morrissey and Johnny Marr in a dispute over Smiths royalties brought by former drummer Mike Joyce.

These pages truly contain the whole world of Morrissey: his attraction to despised and overlooked people, his curiosity about transsexuality, the pain of having been ignored by everyone during his teenage years, his conservative streak (“I have no interest whatsoever in pushing musical boundaries, I simply follow a particular instinct”), and his clear-eyed awareness of what his public persona has come to mean over the years (“part of me has become an unpleasant cliché”).

There's also room for the “political” Morrissey, with his showy Englishness (“I don't want to be European, I want England to remain an island”), and his invectives against famous figures, especially from the worlds of music and politics, never missing a chance to speak up for the working class.

In his words, just as in his songs, there is always a riot of existential unease, melancholy, poetic depression, troubled beauty, introversion, insecurity, a yearning for human contact, a sense of tragedy, dreamlike ambiguity, isolationism, inadequacy, loneliness, all seasoned with that strain of miserabilism that is inevitably the offspring of Manchester, the archetype of the bleak, devastated, provincial city.

Morrissey shares countless anecdotes that are essential reading for anyone looking to dig deeper into the man, and fiercely claims credit for having expanded the poetic vocabulary of the pop song, introducing an innovative language through the use of revolutionary words, often employed to build ordinary stories of everyday sadness.

Through his work with the Smiths, the Manchester artist managed to change a generation's views on what pop records actually were, what they meant, and what place they could occupy in people's lives. And so an entire nation fell at their feet, thanks to a creative leap with few precedents in history, and the release of what amount to genuine pillars of modern English music — which allowed Morrissey to become one of the most popular spokesmen for the disillusioned of our times.

The first part of the book gathers the more obscure facts and trivia, but it's in the second part that things get really interesting, as the English artist looks back on events both present and past with a more mature outlook, with the kind of distance that allows for a clearer assessment of his own history. Light is shed on many moments from the Smiths' journey (it becomes clear on page 155 that the band's split was caused by Johnny Marr's choices), there's discussion of the album covers, of the bitterness over the band's disintegration, and towards the end the book highlights the incredible popularity achieved in the United States and the move first to Los Angeles and then to Rome, right up to the albums of the rebirth (from "You Are The Quarry" onwards), outlining the "happiness" finally achieved.

Today Morrissey remains an acclaimed and beloved icon, a poet of our times, an arrogant yet entertaining character, always sharp and brilliant in his answers, and it's clear just how much the history of "pop" music owes to this extraordinary artist, not least because the seeds of his work continue to influence countless contemporary bands.

By the end of the book it becomes clear that no one truly knows who Morrissey is, what he does or with whom, and this is one of the reasons for his lasting appeal: a master at muddying the waters, the architect of an ironic edifice built around his own persona, all steered by a man who, year after year, demonstrates a remarkable command of the game every time a journalist's tape recorder starts rolling.

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05/11/2025