After sputtering a little over the Rough trade years, Morrissey continues his trip through the past with slights real and imagined accumulating and finally exploding in the States where visits the Morrissey 1991-1991 Kill Uncle/Your Arsenal tour and Morrissey is torn apart by the media as a gay drugs and sex pervert until the lie can’t be sustained because, well , he isn’t. Meanwhile, Morrissey is selling out every auditorium in the country, snubbing or being snubbed by celebrities (he doesn’t recognize Tom Hanks!) and settling comfortably into celebrity and panic.
The writing is a tour de force of the horrors of pop stardom. Never before has the man in the middle of the madness written so well about being in the middle of the madness; Morrissey puts you front and center as wild hordes of American teens go insane, tearing off his shirt, and another shirt and another shirt and while anyone else would revel or despair in it, Morrissey feels slighted because they are ignoring this insanity in the UK and because Sire are so indifferent they can’t even break “Everyday’s Like Sunday” (he reaches # 81 in the lukewarm 100.
Meanwhile: “I am forever trapped in a car on which young people lie across the hood, roads persistently blocked by a thousand Morrissey lookalikes; hotel security guards positioned outside my hotel room night and day, as entire floors are cordoned off to prevent fanatical do-or die enthuisiasts stopping at nothing to get at me.”
This is terrific writing and, as Moz does throughout the bio, he manages to find himself completely and irrevocably alone. Talk about one must be the loneliest number; comparing notes with David Bowie he discovers he is reverse Bowie, Bowie has had too much sex and drugs, Morrissey has had no sex and drugs at all. He is an innocent abroad.
Meanwhile, back in England, the New Musical Express are starting a backlash calling Moz a fascist (plainly ridiculous) and Mr. Spiders from mars, the man who produced Your Arsenel and brought Morrissey back from the musical deadweight is dying of cancer