Morrissey, Autobiography, Penguin Classics (book review)

I have read Morrissey's autobiography.  I state this as a proud achievement, because lots of people will pick up this book and put it down and say 'I started something I couldn't finish'.  I myself became becalmed at Page 4 but then soldiered on, like a London Marathon runner who finishes the course several days after the rest of the competitors.

Unless you are a rabid fan (and I have had Morrissey arbitrarily cancel too many concerts for which I have bought tickets to count myself in that category) this is indeed a marathon, clocking in at over 450 pages.

It takes a particularly determined soul to plough through Morrissey's repetitive whinge about the High Court action brought against him by Mike Joyce and which Morrissey lost.  I would advise skipping pages 307 to 342 - all you need to know is that the Smiths will never reform if that entails Moz sharing a stage with Mike Joyce.  Oh, and Morrissey doesn't particularly like Judge Weeks either.

Actually, Morrissey doesn't particularly like lots of people, and if this book had been published with an index it would have included entries such as: 'Marr, Johnny, dislike of; Sioux, Souxsie, dislike of; Travis, Geoff, dislike of;' and so on.

There are some unnecessarily vicious barbs handed out - Apple Records' Neil Aspinall refuses Moz permission to use a song and, when he later dies, Moz's response is 'that's what you get for being so nasty.'

Record companies and their failure to promote Smiths and Morrissey product is also a common theme, as is the notion that Moz's singles and albums have the number 1 chart position in the middle of the week but due to the singular or combined conspiracy or incompetence of the record companies, radio stations and chart compilers are languishing mid table by Sunday evening.  Think David Moyes blaming the referee against Sunderland last week for Man United's poor performance.

Morrissey sprinkles Smiths' and his own lyrics and song titles throughout the text, a clever device to keep afficiandos interested when they have ploughed their way through a particularly heavy few pages.  ('I have no idea what he was on about there, but he's just name checked an album I've got so let's carry on.')

For someone who has battled with record companies (Rough Trade, Sire, Sanctuary) over cover art and the lack of care shown towards the finished product, Morrissey doesn't seem to have proof read his own autobiography.  Apart from the annoying use throughout of American spellings rather than English, there appear to be a couple of pages missing.  At the bottom of p391 we are at the end of a paragraph in Paris but by the top of the next we are mid paragraph in Yorkshire.  I feel a law suit coming on.

There are bright spots - the cameo appearances by David Bowie, popping up like Arthur Tolcher attempting to play a few bars of harmonica on the Morecambe and Wise Show to be told 'not now, Arthur'; Morrissey adopting or rescuing cats and pelicans; Morrissey's obvious love of the Smiths as a performing outfit when they started out and of his adoring fans in Scandinavia and Mexico in particular - but there is also a lot of Morrissey reflecting on how many of the people around him seem to die young.

The encounter with a ghost on Saddleworth Moor is an amusing tale (heightened for me by a cat outside giving a deathly late night shriek as I read the passage), and the attempted kidnap of our hero on the way back from a gig in Mexico is well told, but often this lightness of touch is missing.

There is a good book in here, and if Mozzer had not eschewed chapter headings and attempted to be James Joyce but instead had submitted to a decent sub editor and allowed 150 pages to be cut from this tome, we might have got it.  In truth, there is nothing in Autobiography that isn't said more eloquently and elegantly on Vauxhall and I.

(PS.  If a revised version of this book is ever issued, can the commissioning editor get Moz to explain why he walked off the stage two songs into his gig at the Liverpool Echo Arena when a bottle of water bounced off his head and he clearly wasn't injured?  It's time the tale was told....)