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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
"What is your ideal sexual experience?
I don't have a vision of it at all. Why do people ask me questions like this?
Because you ask for it. You're the only person who can seriously be asked those questions.
Oh, come now.
Is there any sex in Morrissey?
None whatsoever. Which in itself is quite sexy."
-- Blitz, 1988
"Well, I don't believe you haven't ever gone out with anyone, Stephen [sic].
Well, I haven't, so put that in your Sony cassette and ... [laughs sharply] I really haven't.
But you're a human being.
You've no evidence of that. Artists aren't really people. And I'm actually 40 percent papier maché."
-- Melody Maker, 1997
One biographer even announced that he was writing a book about Morrissey's "love life," an exceptional, if slightly disturbing, accolade (though, oddly, years later, there's still no sign of it). Clearly, by making his private life a tabula rasa, Morrissey succeeded in provoking everyone to write all over it.
"What is the greatest myth about fame? That someone somewhere consequently wants to sleep with you."
-- Morrissey
Interviewers frequently asked him point blank if he was gay. When this got nowhere, in their terms, some would resort to cutting out the question altogether and just going straight to the answer they wanted. One grilling him for an American rock magazine in the early Eighties announced: "Morrissey is a man who says he's gay" -- without providing any quotes to back the statement up. As a consequence of this, Morrissey and The Smiths were perceived in the US almost from the beginning as a "gay act," something which did not exactly help them, but rather more importantly it simply wasn't true. This journalist was merely doing his job, however. He was just simplifying things for his readers, just filling in the gaps, just helping Morrissey "out" -- as more and more people have been inclined to do as Morrissey's career has progressed. Since Morrissey was openly admitting, nay flaunting -- in his work -- the fact that he wasn't "straight," he must, therefore be "gay." Stands to reason, dunnit?
What these very helpful, very kind people forgot, however, was that the law "what's not one thing must be t'other," absolutely correct and inviolable as it is, is a law which only applies to stupid people. And journalists.
"Are you gay?
I feel that I am quite vulnerable and that's quite good enough because I wouldn't want to be thought of as Tarzan or Jane. ... I don't recognize such terms as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual and I think it's important that there's someone in pop music who's like that. These words do great damage, they confuse people and they make people feel unhappy so I want to do away with them."
-- Star Hits, 1985
"There was that quote in ...
Here we go, here we go ...
that you were gay or something like that.
Yes I know.
How do you view that?
Well, I just think it's all so untrue and I think it's so unfair, I mean, obviously, any kind of a tag I'll dodge. I'll really dodge any kind of a tag, whatever it is ... I'm not embarrassed about the word 'gay' but it's not in the least bit relevant. I'm beyond that frankly."
-- Australian Radio, 1985
