What Do We Do About Morrissey?

In the mid-80s you had plenty of choice. You could be with the ultra cool crowd and be part of the new wave or post punk movement – going around with big hair, fancy clothes or goth clothes. Or you could be part of the hair-metal brigade. Or you could be into the big guns of the 80s – Prince, Madonna, Michael Jackson.

But then, in 1984, we were introduced to something new. From the North of England came a painfully shy but reasonably pretty boy, riddled with all the neuroses that many of us felt as teens. This was Stephen Patrick Morrissey, and his arrival allowed us to be ourselves.

He gave a voice to all of us who yearned to find love but failed, fawned over film stars long gone, or simply were socially awkward. We were some or all of these things. And this voice was underscored by a set of musicians who worked brilliantly together.

And then, by 1987, it was all over. The Smiths final release, the live album Rank, came out in the same year as Morrissey’s debut solo LP, Viva Hate (initially called Education In Reverse in some territories, a title I much prefer).

At the time, it was a way to continue the love affair we started with Morrissey in The Smiths. While we were blinded by the devastation of the demise of The Smiths, the metamorphosis into something else, however, was already beginning.

Morrissey’s lyrics in The Smiths were powerful, mostly amusing, occasionally dark, and sometimes biting. With Meat Is Murder, his attention turned to school life and vegetarianism amongst the humorous digs at his own inadequacy. The Queen Is Dead continued the humour with digs at unnamed real people (Frankly Mr Shankly) and his thoughts on the royals. The final studio album, Strangeways Here We Come, was a fitting end, with quality throughout. While the trademark humour is still there, these songs seem much more earnestly personal.

When we get to Viva Hate, things start to change. Maybe Marr and the others kept him in check, or maybe his new found freedom allowed him to express himself more. The tone is less humorous (but not devoid of it) and is becoming more commentary about other people and features a short and sweet anti-Thatcher song. But also we see his first lyric referring to race – Bengali In Platforms. It might be meant to be about someone who doesn’t fit in, but there’s an undertone, underscored by the line “life is hard enough when you belong here” – implying that the Bengali does not. Misguided? Maybe. Problematic? Certainly. But one song doesn’t make a pattern.

The second album comes out three years later and it’s another musically great album. But here we have another song referring to race – Asian Rut. Remember there is not a single Smiths song with lyrics like this.

Things took a turn for the worse by the time Your Arsenal was released in 1993, with songs like The National Front Disco and Morrissey wearing the Union Jack on stage. He famously fell out with the UK music press around this time, particularly the NME.

Since then Morrissey has managed to keep race out of his lyrics (but is not afraid to dabble in politics), but the comments in interviews kept coming. In a 2010 interview while discussing animal rights it turned to the Chinese treatment of animals and he referred to the Chinese as a “subspecies”.

More recently he voiced his support for For Britain, a far-right political party in the UK. And every time he tried to clarify his position he just made things worse, always sounding like “some of my best friends are Muslims”. Maybe they are. But, like the arrow from the bow, these words once spoken can never really be retracted.

So how do we square what we see of the man we know as Morrissey today, with the young man we loved in the 80s and the great music he continues to make? With the possible exception of Maladjusted, every album has been musically very good and mostly critically lauded.

So can we, as Morrissey (of old) fans continue to enjoy his music while despairing for (or even disliking) the man he has become? Only the individual can make this kind of choice. You can take all your albums to the op shop and never listen to him again, and you probably wouldn’t be poorer for it. Or you can listen to the albums and think of the young pretty boy with glasses who is no longer with us.

It’s a dilemma, and it’s one that deserves some thought.