Morrissey: Autobiography

I picked this up in Chicago at Myopic Books. Great store.

I was interested in this because it was an autobiography. I wanted to hear Moz's story from Moz's mouth. Until I started reading it and then I wasn't so sure. You see, Morrissey has an unusual writing style. It's almost like reading 500 pages of song lyrics. There are no chapters in this book and no real transitions. He just writes in a somewhat linear fashion from childhood through mid-life, recalling people and events along the way. But it's the way in which he writes that made me second-guess whether I was going to continue. It's fucking dense. It's off-puttingly metaphorical and indirect at times. Quite a lot of run-on sentences and lyrical descriptions that are best suited for...lyrics, not stories.

When I started the book and I thought, "how am I going to get through this whole thing without giving myself a headache?" But I got stuck in and the more I read the more I got acclimated to his literary style.

The first third of the book really focuses on his childhood, and the way he recounted the school system in Manchester really struck a chord within me. He paints an awfully dreary account of the teachers and the city of Manchester at the time. It reminded me a lot of growing up in Glasgow and being 'different'. Where Morrissey may have been referencing the New York Dolls or the Ramones, I was referencing the Misfits and Bad Religion. But the same ominous cloud hung over our heads, interspersed with rays of light from time to time. It was really like reading a trip down memory lane for me.

Then he gets into the Smiths era, a bloody boring section on the court case brought upon him by Andy Rourke, and then the Morrissey solo era. Reading about the Smiths and Morrissey was great. Moz paints a terrible picture of the labels that've backed him since the beginning. And Morrissey knows a lot of people who die, which sucks. That's kinda the book: school, the Smiths, court, Morrissey, death, vegetarianism, screaming fans, getting fucked over, and being a tortured artist.

It's all good. Even though it was a bit rough getting on board, the book ended up being really good. If you like Morrissey, read this.