Morrissey has shared a rare interview, discussing COVID, cancel culture, and losing his mother.
The interview was posted on Morrissey Central – the site he uses to communicate directly with fans – and features Morrissey in conversation with his nephew Sam Esty Rayner.
There's a lot to absorb – moving from Ukrainian pop to the pandemic, via some barbed remarks about Sparks and Bowie – but here's a few key points.
Discussing COVID, Morrissey says the British public "are quite used to the political scene being dominated by someone whom they can’t stand."
"The bigger problem is that nobody can any longer agree with anyone else, and this is the main outcome of Con-vid. It has brought the worst out in people, and we weren’t ever in this together. We are deprived of seeing and hearing other people, and above all, you want to be with others who see and hear what you see and hear, because this is basic oxygen for the human soul. Take it away and people are dead."
Rayner says "Covid Society is also the precise description of slavery" to which Morrissey agrees: "Precisely. And more people are now forced into poverty which is another form of slavery, as is tax and Council Tax and all the other ways in which we are pinned down and tracked. Our present freedom is restricted to visiting supermarkets and buying sofas. The government act like Chinese emperors… 'We will allow you to live as we do if you behave yourself.'"
Asked about cancel culture, Morrissey says "unintentionally invented" being cancelled. He says: "You can’t cancel someone who has always been cancelled. When did you last see me on television, or hear me on the radio? I unintentionally invented the condition of being cancelled! [laughs] The music industry hasn’t ever celebrated me or offered me free food".
"I’ve always been treated like a scientific experiment gone wrong. I’m used to it. I’ve been immune to enemy fire for many years. I wear a bullet-proof vest in the bath. It seems to me that as soon as one person boo’s they all start to boo, and then when someone cheers they all start to cheer… but that’s just a loose theory."
It's not all COVID and cancellation, however; at one point, Morrissey lets down the veil, and discusses grief. Losing his beloved mother in 2020 caused "an emotional breakdown".
"It was the first feeling of being alone… in the true sense of the word. It brings something that you cannot cope with … the final stage of growing up, perhaps. And apart from your own nervous breakdown you realize that there remains only one more important event in your life and that is your own death. When you give that unimaginable final hug, you also die. How can you not? I haven’t recovered, I’ve simply adjusted to the pain. It doesn’t get better."
The full Q&A can be found HERE.
Morrissey's new album 'Bonfire Of Teenagers' is complete, and available to the highest bidder.
