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tations that implies. Speculation it may be, but it does
convince. He’s insightful too on Morrissey’s famously
enigmatic sexuality, rightly stating the unique mixture
of the masculine and feminine, the fleshy exhibitionism
(“A Morrissey gig is an extraordinary, epic, religious
prick-tease”) entwined with the lovelorn celibacy is
central to his unique appeal, particularly in bringing
out the homosexual side to otherwise heterosexual
men. Simpson is gay himself but happily does not try to
claim him for ‘the cause’ and is rightly contemptuous of
those desperate to pigeonhole: “What these very helpful,
very kind people forgot 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 to journalists.”
The title of Simpson’s book is a play on Sartre’s
essay ‘Saint Genet’, and he rightly makes the observation
that Mozza has a lot in common with Jean G.
Granted, Genet was a tremendously promiscuous homosexual
and Morrissey a celibate introvert, but both
were initially feted then rejected by liberals who found
them a little too complex for their liking, both found
a transcendent Rousseau-like glory in the seedier side
of lumpen-proletarian life, and both glorify thugs and
‘rough lads’.
Many people find this both the strangest and the most
distasteful side to Morrissey, (“but he seemed like such
a nice boy!!”) appealing to sensitive little flowers yet
BUY Mark Simpson books online from and
celebrating criminality in a far more unnerving way
than half-wits like Guy Ritchie. Yet this too is central to
his allure, glorying like his hero Wilde in paradox and
contradiction, squaring a circle, dancing outrageously
on a tightrope of sensitivities in idiosyncratic celebration
of the outsider.
And to the minds of the faithful, not falling off that
tightrope. Simpson rightly dissects the fatuous music
press chorus that damned Morrissey as a racist in the
early 90s for singing his mockingly wry song ‘The
National Front Disco’ at the same time as genuinely
flaunting the Union Jack and celebrating proper skinhead
culture; “some might argue that this subtlety is
dangerous because it is too artistic and not didactic
(i.e. patronising) enough”. Simpson argues brilliantly,
though he could perhaps have snidely remarked in an
aside the never mentioned fact that if the NME’s witchhunt
charges were true this must have been the first
Nazi sympathiser in history to be a supporter of Red
Wedge, Anti-Apartheid, Amnesty International, CND,
feminism, gay rights…
The final self-centred joy of Morrissey Simpson
celebrates is his refusal to play the celebrity game; in
an age where even Johnny Rotten parades his wares on
reality TV shows, Mozza remains gloriously aloof, last
year’s curious Channel 4 TV doc not withstanding. As
Simpson puts with typical restraint “A churlish refusal
to suck Satan’s cock.”
477
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