Exclusive interview: Morrissey on sexual harassment and why he defends Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein.
“Sexual harassment can often be just a pathetic attempt at courtship”.
Interview by Chrissy Iley
(It's a long interview behind a registration gate).
Part 1:
I'm inside Morrissey’s hotel room at the Sunset Marquis, West Hollywood. It smells incensy, instantly exotic with a dangerous edge rather like the man himself. He’s in LA because he’s performing at the Hollywood Bowl and because Friday, November 10 has been declared Morrissey Day by the mayor of Los Angeles.
He lived near here until a few years ago, but now he’s just visiting. Where does he live now? A sigh. “I’m in a different place all the time. I’m not sure why everyone wants to know where I live, what that says about me. It means my credit card is permanently blocked for security reasons. They think I’m an anonymous person if I’m never in the same place. I never ask people where they live, but they always ask me as if it would reveal anything about me. I’m here now, as you can see.”
Because he’s performing. “Well … I don’t perform. I’m occasionally on a stage, but I don’t
ever perform.”
How very Morrissey. It’s as if he never wants to be really seen — except by tens of thousands every time he is on a stage, or when he makes one of his trademark outrageous comments, whether that’s about politics, or last week, defending Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey (more of that later).
He no longer lives in the house next to Johnny Depp? “No, he bought it to put his argumentative relatives in when they came to stay and since then I have been homeless. I just move around the world, which is a fascinating way to live. People say, ‘But surely you need your own kitchen.’ But I’ve managed for many years doing without.”
Does he cook? “Yes I do, and it’s a very nice idea to have a kitchen ...” But room service will provide? “It tries, but it’s difficult sometimes. We don’t like to wait do we, really, for anything?” Does he travel light? “I have a sickening volume of possessions. They’re all stored away in different parts of the world waiting for that moment when I stop and buy a house and relax.” Does he ever relax? “No.”
This is a moment where I want to tell him about the first time I heard his voice. So soul-curdling and deep-reaching when he sang How Soon Is Now? The Smiths are remembered by their fans with a huge amount of romanticism. It seems that they were around for ever, but in fact it was only five years — 1982 to 1987 — and four studio albums. But so many songs, such poetry that spoke for a generation about love and loss and waiting.
Post Smiths, there was a series of solo albums, starting with Viva Hate, some of which were less loved. There was a dark autobiography in 2013 and a strange foray into novel writing — List of the Lost was reviewed as “turgid” and received the Bad Sex Award in 2015 for a scene describing a “giggling snowball of full-figured copulation”.
But now Morrissey is back, as unconventional as ever. And with the release of the new album, Low in High School, he is on the radio, the television, that voice strangely more fluid and insistent than ever.
Some of his views must jangle with his new generation of younger fans. He has said that he thought Brexit was magnificent, and the new single Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up on the Stage ends with a haunting chorus of “exit exit”, which some people have translated as “Brexit Brexit”. He denies it. “No, it’s not a Brexit song. There’s no Brexit in it,” he insists. “The line is, ‘All the audience head for the exit when she’s on stage’, so it’s nothing to do with Brexit. People just rush to stupid conclusions and create facts and create their own truths and slaughter the issue.”
But he did say Brexit was magnificent, right?
“I thought it was a fascinating strike for democracy, because the people said the opposite to Westminster, and that was extraordinary. David Cameron didn’t imagine the result could be as it was, but at least he did the honourable thing and slid away. The unfortunate thing is that politicians only speak to other politicians. They don’t speak to the people, so on that day their bubble burst. And now I don’t think Brexit has taken place, or even will, because Westminster don’t want it. It’s not that difficult. They’re just finding a way to not make it Brexit.”
Is it true that he banned David Cameron from ever listening to a Morrissey-penned song? “No, that was never true, but these are the things I have to live with.” Big sigh. “I didn’t say it and it’s nice if everybody listens. It really is.”
There’s nobody he wants to ban?
“Well, only the obvious — the obvious international pest.” The orange one? “Yes.” “He’s beyond salvation. Beyond any help. The biggest security threat to America and the world. He’s like a two-year-old constantly reaching for something, damaging it and then moving on to something else and destroying it.”
Indeed, the next day when I go to his show at the Hollywood Bowl, one of the backdrops is Morrissey holding a toddler with Trump’s head superimposed. A tiny tyrant. It goes down well.
Morrissey is still mesmerising on stage as he lashes and whips his microphone cable. He gives us the songs that still speak to us even though they’re decades old. This audience — a diverse collection: black, white, brown; young, old and very young; men, women, gay, straight — seems to be with him all the way. No one minds that on Morrissey’s orders the only food sold is vegetarian. I’ve been to that same stadium many times and seen artists of similar years with pretentious trousers and hair plugs. I’ve seen them sing their old songs to a crowd of middle-aged spread. This concert was not like that. Though I could have done without the bit where the 58-year-old threw his jacket into the crowd and flaunted his unworked-out torso. But it was unselfconsciously done.
On the sofa in his hotel room we sip bottled water and he asks me if I would like anything more dangerous. I suggest a coffee. He shrugs in despair. “That’s not what I meant.”
The new album has created a buzz. “It feels good. People always want their latest offspring to be the cutest, I believe,” he says. He doesn’t have children. He has songs. Does he have a particular track that’s more important than the others?
“No. I mean if you gave birth to quads you wouldn’t say which quad is the best one, would you? You would love all your quads equally for different reasons.” I tell him I’ve got four cats. “There. I rest my case. I bet you don’t pick one out and say you’re the one I love and boot the others in the linen cupboard.”