The Comedy of Errors: Morrissey - We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful (1 May 1992)

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Judging by his splendid autobiography, Morrissey’s post-Smiths career has essentially gone in five phases:
1) The early fumbling years of trying to adjust to solo life after hoping that the Smiths would make “thirty albums”; continuing to work with Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce.

2) The developing confidence of the early 90s as records like Kill Uncle and Your Arsenal hit big; surrounding himself with new musical playmates like Boz Boorer, Alain Whyte and Spencer Cobrin; US tours produce scenes of utter carnage as he sells out venues faster than anyone ever has.  Fans invade stages, Morrissey sings from behind police lines and is whisked through airport kitchens for his own safety, “I am Fabian in 1960”

3) The gloomy years as he finds himself accused by the NME supporting racism/fascism for draping himself in a Union Jack during a gig at Finsbury Park and Mike Joyce successfully manages to sue him and Johnny Marr for hundreds of thousands of pounds in royalties through a judgement which sees Morrissey described by the judge, John Weeks as “devious, truculent and unreliable” -
“‘...devious, truculent and unreliable’ in legal parlance means ‘evil, aggressive and a liar’. What was the reason for this attack on me, so aggressively fuelled and so overdone, that it seems to want to bring a life to an end? Surely judges have no need to unleash thoughts more violent than anything done or said by either defendant or plaintiff.  What then was John Weeks thinking of?  In the quiet room of his final years, he will be delighted that his potential was realised by a famously recurring quote.  It is a quote fit enough to poison everything. Weeks could have merely said that someone was right and someone was wrong - or that both parties were wrong. Instead, he leaves a quote that might be rancid and powerful enough to cause one subject to be unable ever again to conduct business, to never again be trusted or - even better - to kill oneself with the brandishing shock of it all.  It doesn’t take much to force one over the edge, but Weeks’s statement in and of itself could have constituted manslaughter” (Morrissey p.287 Autobiography ibook, Penguin Modern Classics, 2013)
Meanwhile the self-same Union Jack now adorns the guitar of Noel Gallagher and the dress of Geri Halliwell, but no one’s throwing sharpened pound coins at Maine Road or at the Brit Awards.

4) The American exile years where Morrissey moves to Los Angeles - labelless but still pulling in the crowds as a live act and when not onstage, he’s in a relationship with an Iranian born woman
discussing the possibility of having a child with her - like any white racist would...

5) The triumphant return with a slew of chart-topping albums and wall to wall hero worship wherever
he plays.  The adulation feeding him towards happiness and contentment - or at least as much as these feelings can be enjoyed by him.  Who needs a Smiths reunion, certainly not Morrissey on the evidence of the extended travelogue from the mid Noughties that makes up the final 100 pages of the book, as he climbs the mountain again. It’s as if Alan Partridge’s Bouncing Back were ghost written by a hybrid of Phillip Larkin and Alan Bennett.  It was impossible not to feel pleasure for Morrissey by the end of the book.

Autobiography is wonderful for its evocation of Morrissey’s childhood and life in Manchester, the minutiae of life in the music business, his appreciations of his cultural loves (The New York Dolls appear to be the band he always wanted to be in - and probably still does), the duplicity of the music press - brought home most forcefully when Morrissey receives a horrified letter from Julian Casablancas in which he explains that an interview with a music journalist has seen a quote attached to him in which he calls Morrissey “a faggot”, which according to Casablancas did not happen - the Joyce court case etc.  He’s generous to others - even Mike Joyce is praised for his drumming on Smiths records - though his teachers, the judiciary, Geoff Travis of Rough Trade and...erm... former Game for a Laugh/Going for Gold host, Henry Kelly all come in for heavy criticism.  John Peel is also viewed with jaundice with Morrissey feeling that it was John Walters interest that got The Smiths on Peel’s radar more than the man himself.  The book also, for me, refutes the charge that Morrissey may be racially prejudiced.  His relationship with Tina Deghani brings him nine years of domestic happiness and she is among the four people he dedicates the book to.  He takes genuine delight from having his songs sung back to him by predominantly black audiences in places like Fresno while he detests the way Americans behave towards Mexican immigrants, comparing US
customs checks unfavourably to European ones on the grounds that:
“The infantile panic with which American Immigration officials shout loudly and humiliate gleefully
is designed to exert strength yet it trumpets cowardice and fouls notions of patriotism... Throughout Europe, borders of strength lead you on your way with admirable calmness; there is no need to destroy the soul at security checkpoints and there is no need to make travellers feel defiled simply because they have turned up with their passports.  This trigger-happy vacuum, so terrified of human touch, feeds every high school shooting - an unfortunate link that no American politician can
understand....The US government boasted Zero Tolerance and implemented the scheme with zero intelligence.” (Morrissey, p.408 Autobiography iBook, Penguin Modern Classics, 2013). Oh, just 5 years ago and yet it seems another century in so many ways.

Where the book is a dead loss is in providing any context to his songs or creative process.  There’s no mention of inspirations, meanings, targets, motivations for any of his lyrics beyond the odd pop at a judge.  For example, all we learn of We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful is that the video was shot in Wapping and is one of Morrissey’s favourites, “capturing one of those lost British
afternoons of timelessness” and that Tony Blackburn, in his marvellously blank way of thinking, once said, “I’m not a Morrissey fan, but he was right when he said we hate it when our friends become successful”.
For a while, I had assumed that We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful was just a standard, if entertaining piece of Morrissey griping - a lifetime disposition formed out of things like his comparison of school facilities when running for his detested secondary school, St Mary’s, Stretford - at another school, Wellacre, Flixton: “Wellacre are roughish posh boys with Garden-of-Eden facilities and none of the shut-up-and-put-up regimented mildew and mold of St. Mary’s.  I am jealous and I stay jealous.” (Morrissey, p.98, Autobiography).  But considering that the song was recorded during phase 2 of his post-Smiths life I see it now as a mockery of those who he feels are jealous of him, starting to gain traction in his solo work and pushing ahead with his career, while they - and his book suggests that during those chaotic US tours of the early 90s, his former band mates were nowhere in sight both personally and professionally in comparison to where he was - lament about how much better looking they are and how much better their songs are.  Like Eddy Ainsworth in Stags and Hens comparing himself to Peter the musician, “Y’ think he’s good because he plays guitar, well he’s not. He can’t play, y’ know. I know about guitars. I play the guitar.  Chords, I play. G and F and D minor...” (Copyright Willy Russell) and if only the world would notice their brilliance. It’s a joyous song, shot through with melancholy only because of what we know happened next.  Forces, hatched that very year, tried to destroy him, just as he predicted.  And the la-la-la refrain in the coda sounds like a star waltzing up Denmark Street unaware of the the sinkhole ahead of him.

Video courtesy of MorrisseyVEVO.