Morrissey currently hangs his oyster-coloured tuxedos right next door to Johnny Depp's digs, high atop the Hollywood Hills, in a mini-mansion that was designed by '30s heartthrob actor Clark Gable. Although he is living the Hollywood life, it doesn't mean he has lost his impish sense of humour.

Morrissey has kept a low press profile for the past couple of years, ever since his disastrous Mercury deal and the lacklustre sales of 1997's Maladjusted. Although still without a label, he hasn't given up the fight. In 1999 he signed with Neil Young's manager, Elliott Roberts. When that arrangement foundered, he met with former Sting manager Miles Copeland, the honcho behind Ark 21 Records, and toyed with signing with the label, promising that he could recruit Moby to produce his next opus. Unfortunately the tab was too steep for Copeland, and the singer has been forced to look further afield.

Mozz and fans at his solo debut, Wolverhampton, December 1988: "It's not violent, it's a gentle ballet."

Morrissey isn't quite the hermit of repute — there was a recent appearance at former New York Dolls guitarist Sylvain Sylvain's solo show in Los Angeles, and he surfaced late last year at the Whiskey on Sunset Strip to witness the Snake River Conspiracy perform a version of The Smiths' How Soon Is Now?. So, we thought, why not get in touch? After vague promises from management associates, including president of Reprise and friend of Morrissey, Howie Klein, an interview was set up and the next thing to do was sit and wait. And wait. Until the phone rang late one afternoon.

"It's a better version than ours," the voice on the phone sardonically confides about the Snake River Conspiracy cover. MOJO wonders whether this isn't a friend engaged in some elaborate spoof. "Who is this really?" we demand. He insists it is indeed Steven Patrick Morrissey.

Following MOJO's good-tempered banter with the Moz in which the man remained jovial, charming, witty, upbeat and a little self-depracating, we thought it would be easy to get back in touch for an update. However, news came back that he had disconnected his phone and fax, and was all but unreachable, elegantly slipping back into the Los Angeles night, no doubt plotting his next return.

Then, as MOJO went to press, there were more spottings — Morrissey watching the Stereophonics at Los Angeles' El Rey Theatre and dining with Courtney Love and Michael Stipe at The Cat And Fiddle restaurant off Hollywood Boulevard. Finally, contact with Boz Boorer confirmed that yes, we had spoken to the real Morrissey. As British represetntative for the man, Boz confirmed that, while Morrissey doesn't have a record deal at the moment, an album's worth of tracks have been completed with another eight in development.

"He would just love to put out a load of singles and record an album," said Boz. "But how do you get hold of him? Phone him? Oh, we haven't got his phone number. Well, I'm a bearer of messages and he'd love to do it. Who knows?"

Did you really show up outside The Roxy in Los Angeles, where some of your fans were staging a bash for your 40th birthday — and while you didn't go in, you stood under the marquee, which read: 'Morrissey's 40th Birthday Party' and have your picture taken?

You know, I may be crass, but I'm not that crass. Turn up at a birthday party at The Roxy? No, you know, I was just flying past that sign, and we all looked up and saw that dreaded name beginning with 'M', and somebody had a camera on their shoulder and a picture was taken, but I certainly wasn't jumping from a cake in the party.

I thought it was a much better story because you didn't attend the celebration but stayed outside. That was so ironic.

You're reading far too much into it.

Can we talk about what you're doing now in terms of your career?

That will be a very brief conversation. I'm looking for a deal. I don't have a deal, and I haven't had a deal since Mercury collapsed two-and-a-half years ago. So, I'm searching. And I'm open and free and available — well, not free, but I'm available.

Are you writing stuff these days?

Yes, yes. I have an album which I'm itching to record if anybody on the planet will let me. And I finished an eight-month tour in April, which was really astonishingly successful. I went to South America and it was Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and just absolutely extraordinary. So you see, the world doesn't really exclusively want people like Broccoli Spears and the Backstreet Boys and so forth. There is a great, intelligent audience of music listeners out there waiting for something interesting to happen.

The West Ham fan, on his last British tour, 1999.

I so agree, and there is a current dearth of anything interesting.

Well, but this time it's not going to be turned around by something like punk, or somebody with a swastika or anything, it's just going to be turned around by intelligent, understanding, compassionate people. That's what the music industry is completely bereft of. And of course, the people to blame are all the music industry executives. They've made this mess and, as always, it's up to intelligent artists to save everybody. I'm not saying I'm head of the queue but I'm certainly trying to jump on the back platform.

I'm not sure whether putting things out on the internet, bypassing the record companies, is a good way either.

Well, it's not proven to be really useful, has it? I think human beings still want to walk into a record store and buy their music. And I think they still want to be vividly involved in everything. And I don't think the internet offers that. It's so easy. And when we get things very easily, we don't really appreciate them that much, and we just throw them aside.

I still have those great moments of having to wait for a single and having a great picture sleeve.

Maybe we're just really old-fashioned.

Do you think that Britain needed Britpop to fill the vacuum created by the demise of The Smiths?

Yes, well, I think that was because when The Smiths began there really wasn't independent or alternative music. I mean, 'independent' was the English word and 'alternative' was the American word. Yes, it did exist, but it wasn't in — as we say in England — 'high street shops'. It wasn't in the high street chains, and The Smiths brought it — we were the first independent group to put music into places like Woolworths and WH Smith's and all the big boring conglomerates. But suddenly, in the late '80s, everybody tried to be independent and alternative, and it just became such a terrible cliché.

You didn't ever have, say, a Brett Anderson or a Damon Albarn breathing down your neck. Did you feel that as a threat?

There was nobody at all. For a while it was a race between The Smiths or R.E.M. to see who was really going to break America first. And I think it was the summer of '89, Michael came to see me in London and told me he was tired and he wanted to finish the group. And suddenly they just exploded and became absolutely enormous.

Are there things you really keep in your memory? Is there a pinnacle moment with The Smiths that you still think back on a lot?

Well, it was always a victory with The Smiths, always, because although we were never accepted by the American press — which was very, very difficult — we did extraordinarily well considering what we came from and that we had zero finances behind us. I mean, if anybody these days with no financial backing can do well, it's an absolute miracle. I mean, it doesn't actually really happen any more. But with The Smiths, every day a small barrier was breaking down. And there was extreme resistance to us in England because we were independent and we were shabby and we were poor, and we didn't play any game at all.

Besides being poor, you really did have that sense of style. You had such a balance of all the necessary ingredients.

Thank you. I mean, I agree.

You had a great sense of dress. Do you still pay attention to that?

Well, I think it's just what the person is, really, isn't it? I do look back at some of those pictures and run out of the house screaming. Some of those so-called videos are just very, very frightening. But on the whole, there was more good than bad.

Was there a sad moment for The Smiths — a down time? Did you have a Michael Stipe moment?

No, I personally never did. Perhaps other group members did, but I never did, because I was always forging ahead as much as I could. And a great deal happened. It was a very, very busy time. And once you start riding on that wave, and the British press at last lets you in and lets you ride, it's an incredible feeling. And it lasted for five years, which is a long time to be really sailing.

I remember interviewing Noel Gallagher right before Oasis made it big and he told me: "All anyone ever gets is five years." Do you believe that?

Yeah, I think so. I think so.

Do you feel The Smiths changed the world with their independence?

I think they did completely. I think they changed lots of things, because also, if you remember the start of the '80s, if you remember the accepted sound of pop music, well, The Smiths were not a part of that. And The Smiths made music which sounded very affordable to people. And I'm afraid perhaps it was tied in with the whole punk ethic, you know — the boring expression of 'everybody can do it'. And I think that really did inspire people, because at the time everything was so overbearingly glittery, overbearingly rich, and very conservative. And The Smiths were a group and a sound and a look and a meaning that had no ties to anything that had previously happened.

If you were to meet the Morrissey of 1983, what would that be like for you? Can you make peace with your former persona?

I'd have no wish to meet that person. I'd be down the fire escape before you could sound the alarm bells.

You can't say that!

I have! I just said it!

Do you still have an attachment to Manchester or England at all?

Well, yes, I do, I do. You can hack away at those ties — you can go and live in Hawaii, but really, I'm afraid we're all dyed-in-the-wool and dipped in something else, and it's impossible to really scape it off.

What do you think your role is today? You mean so much to so many people as an icon. Is that uncomfortable?

You know, my position has never really changed. People talk about 'The Smiths' and the solo years, but they really have been the same in many regards because I've never been accepted by the music industry. I've never been a part of anything. I've never been invited to take part in VH1 or MTV, which is extraordinary. I have had very significant minor achievements, and I still hold the record for selling out the Hollywood Bowl faster than anybody else. But I still think people view me as being a crank on the sidelines, which isn't true because I do have a very big audience. A lot of people are interested in me. The audience I have realises I've been disregarded by the music industry, and they find that very astonishing because artists who achieve much less than I do get more media space. And people are saying, "Why, why, why, why — what's going on? What is it about Morrissey that nobody wants to touch?"

What about press in England? It seems like you've really been staunchly opposed to talking to your homies lately.

Well, I think it was really a mutual misunderstanding in the early '90s and I'm not sure whether you can ever really go back, because again it was such a great time in the '80s, and then in the early '90s they accused me of everything from extreme racism to other extremes, which has always been absolute crap. And you can't really go cap in hand to people and say, Oh please accept me — I'm not racist, really. It just doesn't work. So you have to retain your dignity and step away...

Perhaps you are such a mysterious character to them now that they will want you back.

Well, that's a nice theory but the backlash has lasted a very, very long time. And when you also consider that the music scene in England is quite bereft of anything interesting, you'd think they'd want somebody who was faintly challenging?

How do you find America? Is it good living here? I always found LA a little bright.

But that's the main reason why I like it. I like the brightness. I find it very uplifiting. Even though I don't go out and I don't mix with people — which in LA is, believe me, a survival instinct.

What is the biggest misconception about you?

That I'm unpleasant. I think people — there seems to be some small reputation that goes around that I'm argumentative and strutting and violent, yet I'm the most gentle person in the universe. So it's quite baffling. But you know, once those little reputations are passed around, they become truth in some ways.

You were the president of the New York Dolls fan club in the UK. Did you ever get to meet David Johansen?

I did. I met him three years ago. He was the final Doll I hadn't met.

And was he the best?

Well, although he was very pleasant to me, he seemed weary of talking about that time and those two albums. And of course, because I'd had all these questions burning inside of me for the past 40 years, they all just splurged out. He kept saying, "Well, it was so long ago."

I feel artists have a responsibility to keep their legacy alive.

What happens, though, is they don't like their legacy. David certainly changed my life, though. Johnny Thunders did as well, but David was the one for me because he was so witty, really taking control of everything, and had a complete disregard for the American music industry. And everything was just so, so funny.

What about all those rumours last year with you and Johnny Marr? I remember you playing at the Coachella Festival at the same venue, but not, of course, together.

I don't think he played there. I don't think he did, as far as I know.

Is there ever a road back, if only as compatriots?

Too much has happened really, and in actual truth, we don't actually like each other.

Are you thin still?

Um, in a crowd, yes. In a crowd of very heavy people.

Does it bother you that fans still throw flowers at you?

It surprises me. People, things — we don't forget something and don't forget the past. And it's very surprising but extraordinary. Lots of people make the stage and it can seem very violent and over the top, but it's not really. It's always a kind of gentle ballet.