Fri. Oct. 5

Morrissey -- the lean, lanky, one-named English pop star - will kick off a solo tour in Boston at the Citi Wang Theatre Friday Oct. 5. Tickets go on sale June 22 at 10 AM. My last Morrissey experience was over three years ago at House of Blues. A review of what I saw then, followed by an afternoon spent with Mozz back in the mid-90s.
    Morrissey was happy to be amongst a packed room of adoring fans Sunday night, but not so happy to be in Boston’s House of Blues, or, as he called it “House of Rules.” Seems the English singer-songsmith-icon and longtime vegan wanted to cook brown rice in the backstage kitchen to take with him on the bus to Ann Arbor. “You know what they said?” Morrissey asked. “’No.’ … People are just horrible, aren’t they?”

        People. Eech. As both the Cramps and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds have sung in different songs, “People ain’t no good.” Morrissey, the one-time Smiths singer, has had trouble with the human race for years. What saves him from misanthropy is his tuneful songwriting, his self-lacerating wit and inclusion of himself in humanity’s troubles. In “Seasick, Yet Docked,” he sang, “Wish I had the charm to attract the one I love/But you see, I’ve got no charm.”
      Never has any rocker gotten so much mileage out of such solipsism and misery. Joy Division’s Ian Curtis might have matched him had he not hung himself at 23. But Moz – tall, stocky and asexually sensual at nearly 50 - carries on as the leader of this pack. He’s currently on a US tour supporting his “Years of Refusal” CD with a backing quintet featuring songwriting collaborator-guitarists Jesse Tobias and Boz Boorer. He’s again staking his claim for making the most melancholic, melodramatic contemporary rock ‘n’ roll. This irritates the hell out of some people.
In “How Soon Is Now,” which came five songs in, he sang, “I am human and I need to be loved/Just like everybody else does.” If there were ever a key couplet for his audience, this is it. Finding love? Aye, there’s the rub. “Love, peace and harmony?” he sang in “Death of a Disco Dancer.” “Oh very nice … but maybe in the next world.” You take your pleasures when and where they come, in small chunks.
      Even if the music has a vaguely uplifting lilt, Morrissey bites down on the lyrics. “ I can amuse you/But there is nothing I can do to make you mine,” he sang in “Black Cloud.” Near the end, in “Sorry Doesn’t Help,” he artfully dissected the spurious nature of the word. Morrissey’s music is pitched a certain way, but it’s not a one-note parade. He’s a clever wordsmith, and, musically, his band can negotiate new-wave guitar/synth rock, neo-rockabilly and the odd soft ballad. He relishes plunges into darkness, but also values the positive vibrations music can bring. It’s his job to tie them in a knot.
     When, near the end of the 90-minute set, a fan presented him with an album cover, Morrissey took it, signed it and said, “If I can give someone one second of happiness … ”

And from that afteroon, long ago ...

Morrsissey holding court in a suite at the Four Seasons was talking about raves, DJ music. He did not want to party all the time. In fact, he says, not any of the time. The former lead singer-songwriter of the Smiths and a solo artist for six years, has not attended to any of those fabled, all-night raves. "Could you imagine me at a rave?" he asks with a laugh. "I might be hanging up the coats, but nothing else. And going through the pockets."

Fri. Oct. 5

Morrissey -- the lean, lanky, one-named English pop star  - will kick off a solo tour in Boston at the Citi Wang Theatre Friday Oct. 5. Tickets go on sale June 22 at 10 AM. My last Morrissey experience was over three years ago at House of Blues. A review of what I saw then, followed by an afternoon spent with Mozz back in the mid-90s.
Morrissey was happy to be amongst a packed room of adoring fans Sunday night, but not so happy to be in Boston’s House of Blues, or, as he called it “House of Rules.” Seems the English singer-songsmith-icon and longtime vegan wanted to cook brown rice in the backstage kitchen to take with him on the bus to Ann Arbor. “You know what they said?” Morrissey asked. “’No.’ … People are just horrible, aren’t they?”
    People. Eech. As both the Cramps and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds have sung in different songs, “People ain’t no good.” Morrissey, the one-time Smiths singer, has had trouble with the human race for years. What saves him from misanthropy is his tuneful songwriting, his self-lacerating wit and inclusion of himself in humanity’s troubles. In “Seasick, Yet Docked,” he sang, “Wish I had the charm to attract the one I love/But you see, I’ve got no charm.”
     Never has any rocker gotten so much mileage out of such solipsism and misery. Joy Division’s Ian Curtis might have matched him had he not hung himself at 23. But Moz – tall, stocky and asexually sensual at nearly 50 - carries on as the leader of this pack. He’s currently on a US tour supporting his “Years of Refusal” CD with a backing quintet featuring songwriting collaborator-guitarists Jesse Tobias and Boz Boorer. He’s again staking his claim for making the most melancholic, melodramatic contemporary rock ‘n’ roll. This irritates the hell out of some people.
    In “How Soon Is Now,” which came five songs in, he sang,  “I am human and I need to be loved/Just like everybody else does.” If there were ever a key couplet for his audience, this is it. Finding love? Aye, there’s the rub.  “Love, peace and harmony?” he sang in “Death of a Disco Dancer.” “Oh very nice … but maybe in the next world.” You take your pleasures when and where they come, in small chunks.
     Even if the music has a vaguely uplifting lilt, Morrissey bites down on the lyrics. “ I can amuse you/But there is nothing I can do to make you mine,” he sang in “Black Cloud.” Near the end, in “Sorry Doesn’t Help,” he artfully dissected the spurious nature of the word. Morrissey’s music is pitched a certain way, but it’s not a one-note parade. He’s a clever wordsmith, and, musically, his band can negotiate new-wave guitar/synth rock, neo-rockabilly and the odd soft ballad. He relishes plunges into darkness, but also values the positive vibrations music can bring. It’s his job to tie them in a knot.
   When, near the end of the 90-minute set, a fan presented him with an album cover, Morrissey took it, signed it and said, “If I can give someone one second of happiness … ”
  
   And from that afteroon, long ago ...

   Morrsissey holding court in a suite at the Four Seasons was talking about raves, DJ music. He did not want to party all the time. In fact, he says, not any of the time. The former lead singer-songwriter of the Smiths and a solo artist for six years, has not attended to any of those fabled, all-night raves. "Could you imagine me at a rave?" he asks with a laugh. "I might be hanging up the coats, but nothing else. And going through the pockets."

   Discussing what he perceives to be the difference between rock fans of his native country and those in America, Morrissey says, English fans "are very conscious of the importance of their history. They're much less inclined to `want to party,' which is very much the state of affairs here. I certainly do not want to party. And would not wish to be invited to party. Ever."

   "I've somewhat of a deft hand at making trouble, if you like, for myself," Morrissey says later. "But, really, I remember the actor Glenda Jackson making a statement in the late '80s saying she was so tired of apologizing for her intelligence, and I partly understand that. I'm not a simple person. I'm quite complicated and I take music very, very seriously, and that's more or less a felony in the States."

    He's also trying to break through to a larger audience. Morrissey is a huge star in England, and has been since the Smiths broke onto the scene in the early 1980s. In the United States, he's less of a star -- his current album, "Vauxhall and I," has sold a respectable but non-blockbusting 200,000 copies. But if given the chance to, say, go to an in-store appearance, every one of his fans would do so. And shower him with flowers, hugs and kisses. Both genders.

     Morrissey, in a broad body of work, has often written persuasively about angst and despair, finding the beauty in sad things. Which, of course, has gotten him typecast in certain corners as an ever-tortured depressive.

     "It's partly true," he admits, "but if one thinks of Billie Holliday or Bessie Smith, would the same be said of such creatures if they existed now? Yes, probably. I think many serious artists have suffered because they aren't willing to comply so easily; they're not terribly desperate for fame. I'm one of those people. Yes, I believe I deserve it to happen, but I'm not an easy touch. I'm not ready to advertise."

     Approaching his 35th birthday, Morrissey -- born Steven Patrick Morrissey -- is as enigmatic, smart and sharp as ever. Confident in his abilities but self-deprecating about himself. An insomniac, he says, he's prone to an afternoon nap around 4 -- "like all old people."

     During an early-afternoon chat, he waxes about the rockers he loves (Nico, the New York Dolls, Ramones, Patti Smith), the rockers he loathes (Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Rolling Stones, "The Who's Tommy"), fame, racism, vegetarianism, sexual ambiguity and sex itself -- or lack thereof.

    He's one of rock's most sexually charged performers. "People say that," says Morrissey, "but it's beyond me. I don't feel sexual release at all."

    He admitted some time ago that he's essentially celibate -- though he hates the word. "Celibacy is an unfortunate tag," he says, "and I wear no tag at all. I don't have any sexual life of any description and for the most part never have. That's simply been my life. We all have our crosses to bear. I know absolutely that I am {missing something}, but it's something very deep-rooted that I can't solve. Certainly, I have friends and some are very close, but sexuality does not enter my life at all. Ever. And never really has."

     There is, however, a clear erotic -- and often homoerotic -- strain that has run through both the Smiths work and Morrissey's own. "Certainly," he says. "Surely I feel that we've gone beyond . . . this is not 1972 where we all must be standing in separate rooms doing separate things. I like men; I like women. And for that, I suppose, I'm very peculiar. I just think in terms of people. There's nothing cunning and there's nothing scurrilous in anything I do. I'm not suddenly trying to burst forth with a new, fifth-sex movement or such. I'm very accepting of most people."

     The Smiths played a crucial role in early-to-mid-'80s English post-punk. With his mellifluous moaning voice -- "It's certainly individual, but they said that about Tiny Tim" -- Morrissey expressed trenchant thoughts about loneliness and isolation. His persona was one of someone who strived to reach out, but had a difficult time connecting. Alone in a crowd. A classic Smiths'long, "How Soon Is Now?," featured the telling line, "I am human and I need to be loved/Just like anyone else does."

     Yet if there was a maudlin quality, there was also a Kinks-ian wit about the Smiths. That's continued through his five solo albums. Uncomfortable truths surface in songs like "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful" and lyrics like "Wish I had the charm to attract the one I love/But you see I've got no charm."

    How much do the songs reveal? Morrissey feels that to discuss a song's content tends to shut down its meaning. "I can't talk very well about songs," he says. "What should rock music be? Where is the written law that it should be lightweight and flossy? The value of music cannot be determined by whether it's deep or lightweight. It stands to the individual."

    The Smiths, a Manchester-based quartet, had a falling-out in 1988, thereby sending Morrissey spinning out into the world. "I never wanted to be a solo artist," he says, "but I had no choice. So I just jumped onto the plank and I walked it. And I've been wet ever since.

    "I think people are beginning to no longer mention the Smiths, which is reasonably gratifying. Not to decry the memory, but time is actually moving on. The Smiths, if you like, created my fame, but nonetheless I am an individual who also manages quite well by myself."

    Morrissey's sensiblity was shaped by, as he says, "artists that nobody else liked but had some sense of deviancy and upset the apple cart" -- the mournful Nico and the glam/trashy New York Dolls. He sees those qualities in his own music, too. "What you're exposed to at 12, 13, 14 remains with you and shapes you in some way," he says.

    Morrissey has created some controversy on his own, a couple of years ago with a song called "The National Front Disco," which garnered headlines in England for its alleged racism. "It's tiresome," says Morrissey of the racism charge. "It's a strong song and a very good song, and it frightened a lot of people. The thrust of the song is about somebody who joined the National Front and a sense of losing one's friend to that mode of thinking and the regret at losing a friend."

     Morrissey is very particular in his habits -- he doesn't believe in mind-altering stimulants or in eating meat. Morrissey, who co-wrote the chilling "Meat Is Murder" with the Smiths, chides a reporter: "Do you have pets?" Yes. "Would you eat them?" No. "Then you're a hypocrite."

    Yes, but the dapper Morrissey is sporting sharp, black leather shoes.

    "What's the alternative?"

     Sandals.

    "In snow?"

     It's spring.

     "I don't ask people to be humanly perfect," Morrissey allows, "and give up everything and live in a kibbutz and wear loincloths, but I ask for people to do their best, and I think the most I can ask for is people to stop eating animals and wearing fur."

    Then Morrissey, about to depart for an in-store appearance at Tower Records, muses, "I hate to have high expectations, but so far everybody's been astonishing, remarkable, very moving. There seems to be a larger acceptance of me."

     Yet Morrissey, who will tour in the fall, finds himself frustrated at not being able to conquer MTV or make a major radio breakthrough. Suddenly, a thought: If he were to pull a Syd Barrett, to fall apart and become a recluse, his stock might rise.

    "I would think it would be more of an attraction to people," he says. "The curiosity . . . "

     On second thought, "Eh, no, I don't think I will."

Tix: They're not cheap. (This is the Morrissey to Neil Young connection. You want to see him, you open your wallet.) $103.75-$38.75

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