Life's a bitch, and then you interview Morrissey. He is a journalist's nightmare: infinitely quotable, but endlessly press-wary. A month before the release of his fourth solo LP, Your Arsenal, his most striking, diverse, and commercial collection of songs since he and the Smiths parted company in 1987, I petition for an audience. Folks at his record company wish me luck and laugh about the time they arranged a Morrissey press junket to London in 1984. He never appeared, so visiting journalists interviewed Andy Partridge, giving XTC their best press in years.
Still, I persist. Morrissey visits New York on a cross-country promotional tour. We make a date. It is broken. He's simply exhausted. He does not travel well, I am told. A fine whine. So I fly to London to interview him and see him perform. Midway through "Glamorous Glue" he sings "London is dead, London is dead..." Boink! An orange juice carton hits Morrissey in the head. He goes home to recuperate. I sit by the phone anxiously. Two days later it becomes apparent that the interview and photoshoot are on hold when a cellular phone call comes from Morrissey's people: In the background there is the sound of someone banging on Morrissey's front door, pleading with him to open up.
Weeks pass. Morrissey returns to New York and one fine day I am ushered into his hotel suite. I pinch myself. He gives me a firm handshake and tells me to take a seat. "No, not there," he says, as I attempt to. "That's my favorite chair." He goes to the window. "There's no use jumping," I say. "I've got you now."
As he sits down I study his face. He is handsome in an intelligent way, though he doesn't always think so. Recently he told a British magazine that one of the few times he took Ecstasy, "I looked in the mirror and saw somebody very, very attractive. Now, of course, this was the delusion of the drug." Today his hair is cropped close on the sides, making it look like it's graying. His sideburns are indecisive in length, his eyes are a dazzling blue. He has a remarkably jutting jaw like Dudley Do-Right's, and during the interview he frequently pinches his chin to form a cleft. Then he strikes the cleft.
We caught you smiling in these photos.
Well, I can smile, you know. (half-smiles) I have mastered the art.
What is this thing with your tongue, sir? You stick it out rather a lot.
(making a raspberry noise) My mouth doesn't close properly, it never did, and I suppose my tongue just falls out. (laughs) It's like leaving the garden gate open.
You've got your tongue out all over the cover of your new album. Any reason?
If you're asking me if I'm trying to pass in a darkened room as a sex symbol, the answer is definitely no. I'm not trying to excite anybody in Illinois, if that's your question.
But you do. What about those people who jump onstage and kiss you?
That's more romantic than sexual. I think it is love, not rock stardom. It is quite personal. I just love that. Wouldn't you?
That would depend upon the kisser.
Would it?
What is the source of this love?
Trust. I think admiring me, shall we say, is quite a task. Because if you say you like Morrissey, then you have to explain why.
What is wrong with youth today?
I think the question is what's wrong with people today. I think these are very hard times. There is a lot of pressure, financial and otherwise, and people are suffocated by isolation. A lot of people feel very, very lonely, which is very confusing to them.
Do people confess their loneliness to you?
Yes, and I am honestly moved, because I know it's very unusual to be allowed to speak on intimate terms with anybody.
Do you feel loneliness even though you could easily be surrounded by people?
Yes I do, because loneliness has nothing to do with how many people are in the room with you. I'm now thirty-three, which is not young, and I feel I'm just a very lonely person, and will remain so.
Is unhappiness epidemic these days?
I think it was probably always there, but never addressed. People never used the term "depression" until the '70's. Before then it was always the least important illness, something for which one just took medication.
Do you suffer depression?
Yes, I do. I am depressed most of the time. And when you're depressed it is so enveloping that it actually does control your life, you cannot overcome it, and you can't take advice. People trying to cheer you up become infuriating and almost insulting. It's all a part of that "pull-yourself-together" approach, isn't it? Depression is very, very powerful. You can't simply go to a nightclub and have a quick Miller draft light, or whatever you call it, and come out of it.
Have you sought any kind of help for it?
Yes, I have in the distant past, but to absolutely no effect.
You're not a believer in Prozac or lithium?
I've tried them. A lot of extreme things happen to you on them, which sometimes cannot seem to be worth it, because I don't want something that's going to effect me in any way other than to perhaps cure me. I don't want anything that's going to make me different. But having said all this, I function very well. I'm a reasonably well balanced person. (laughs) I'm as strong as 90 percent of the people I know who would never, ever admit to depression. I think admitting it and talking about it is a strength.
How often does the seriousness end and the irony begin in your work?
Many times. I have a grand and endless capacity to find myself slightly ridiculous. I'm not pretending to be some wallowing prophet, for heaven's sake. I think we all have to sit down and look in the mirror and think, What is that absurd monstrosity?
By way of example, is there a particular line that screams out from the repertoire?
The repertoire itself really.
Some people say depression is your art.
I think it makes me extraordinarily unique. Who on earth would want to be Van Halen?
How do you define evil?
Well, if I said McDonald's you'd yawn and sit on a chair over there and read a book. But I do see McDonald's as the core of modern evil, because it is the death industry. I just feel rage that they will promote themselves from every possible angle but they will not show the process by which the hamburger is made, they will not show the cows' throats being slit, the bull trying to commit suicide by banging his head against the stone floor.
And those leather shoes you're wearing?
Yes, and this is a leather belt.
Explain, please. Don't you feel complicit?
I don't recall at any time asking people to stop eating dead animals or to stop wearing leather. I think if you ask people to do everything, they become so confused that they do absolutely nothing.
Do you ever feel guilt?
No, I don't. It's absolutely useless. And I don't understand people who feel guilt about sexual matters, but then I don't know people who have extreme sex lives; most people I know do very standard things.