Morrissey, the snide young man with the unbuttoned shirt and perfect hair, singer of The Smiths, and now solo artist who might play a laundry list of your favorite songs or not show up at all, turns 65 years old today.
Certain people are forgiven. A few get a pass. Steven Patrick Morrissey, simply for the five short years he fronted The Smiths and gave us four albums and bonus tracks, is off the hook.
It's OK he's erratic and temperamental and snotty and sometimes completely wrong and stuck up and obstinate; because even his solo work has few peers.
Dude's eponymous autobiography is crazy good and the writing is even better than the high expectations one might come to the table with.
"My childhood is streets upon streets upon streets upon streets. Streets to define you and streets to confine you, with no sign of motorway, freeway or highway," Moz's tome begins.
"Local kids ransack empty houses, and small and wide-eyed, I join them, balancing across exposed beams and racing into wet black cellars; underground cavities where murder and sex and self-destruction seep from cracks of local stone and shifting brickwork where aborted babies found deathly peace instead of unforgiving life," he continues.
"Naturally my birth almost kills my mother, for my head is too big, but soon it is I, and not my mother, on the critical list at Salford's Pendlebury Hospital. I cannot swallow and I spend months hospitalized, my stomach ripped open, my throat pulled wide, my parents are warned that I am unlikely to survive. Disappearing beneath a mass of criss-crossed blanket stitches, I grip onto the short life that has already throttled me. Once I am discharged from hospital, my sister Jackie, older by two years, is interrupted four times as she attempts to kill me, whether this be rivalry or visionary no one knows," Moz wrote.
Morrissey is forgiven because we don't have any right now. Like, who is the younger Moz today? The guy from The 1975?
Has The 1975 written about being taken out by a double decker bus? Or a girlfriend in a coma? Or an obese fan?
Which Millennial or Gen Zer is claiming in public he's rooting against his friends and literally laughing as the chorus?
Part of the fun of going to a concert is experiencing a one-of-a-kind moment. The improv. Art imitates life. You may think you know what's going to happen at a Morrissey show but you should never be certain that it will happen and if it does, if it will be a complete show. That is exciting, whiners. That is also how life is. No guarantees. Be in the moment. Get off your phone and soak up every second.
The night Morrissey ended the show early at the Greek in Los Angeles will forever be one of the most-talked about concerts any of those in attendance have, and as someone who often takes tourists past the amphitheater on the way to nearby Griffith Observatory, when I point and say, "that's where Morrissey got cold," the reaction is "oooooooooh" and they take a photo.
In this era where bands are reuniting for huge paydays, the easiest thing Morrissey could have done with Johnny Marr would have been to bury the hatchet and back up the Brinks trucks.
No need to even write any new songs, there are plenty of unreleased ones, ideal for a guy like Morrissey to sing on his sellout tour.
Top of the list would be "I Couldn't Understand Why People Laughed"
Spotlit on the stage
For the whole world to see
I sang "I am she
And hе is me, he is me"
In full flight on thе stage
I am now so poorly lit
I sing it because I
Could never speak it
I could never speak it
But he has not. He has stuck to his values or morals or bitterness.
Which is fine, as he is forgiven.
But if he does suck it up and give the kids what they want.
And they headline Coachella, as they should.
Bro better toss his designer shirt into the pit, like he did last year in Brussels.
Morrissey currently has no shows booked. But if you'd like to hear some Smiths tunes live, Johnny Marr will be in the UK this summer playing some of those classics you grew up with.
Tickets available on his website.
