Cuttings

Oh, such drama! Morrissey? Ah yes... that listless mode of deportment so shambolically bereft of chic. Those incorrigibly provocative tunes so intoxicatingly drenched in melancholy. Those tortuously-interwoven pronouncements so shamelessly strewn with florid mots justes. The Smiths' singer is driven by a distaste for normality. Any day now, he tells Paul du Noyer, he fully expects to be locked up. Steven Patrick Morrissey, 28, momentarily reflects upon a subject which has commanded his unswerving interest for a number of years. Himself. “I suppose I’m just an arcane old…  wardrobe , really,” he sighs, in a Northern voice, softly cobblestoned. Quite so. But such a remarkable item of furniture he has proved, so amply stocked within – with shirts of doubt, entire overcoats of irony, sock drawers of secrecy and not a few trousers’ worth of anguish. An unusually capacious cupboard, also, with room in its gloomiest corners for a huddled mass of waifs and strays. To the more inte

THE BAND WITH THE THORN IN ITS SIDE The past two years have seen panic in The Smiths camp, with take-over bids and narcotic problems competing with international success. NICK KENT assesses the progress of "the only significant British rock band of the Eighties". Splendid isolationists or drama queens? Photographs by Lawrence Watson NOVEMBER 13, 1986: a year and a half after my excommunication from the precincts of Smithdom, the phone rings. Pat Bellis, the Smiths' press officer, informs me that the anti-apartheid benefit scheduled for the Royal Albert Hall three days hence headlining The Smiths has had to be postponed. Johnny Marr has been involved in a car crash, and although no injuries have been sustained, he's been suffering "on-off" bouts of extreme physical weakness. He refuses to see a doctor and at first is all for 'playing the trouper'. But Marr's shake-up meant that the gig - The Smiths fourth London show within three weeks - was off.

GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD 'Strangeways, Here We Come' is the last album we will hear from The Smiths, following Morrissey's dramatic decision to end the group's career after the departure of Johnny Marr. Gary Leboff spoke to Morrissey shortly after the album was completed and found him already counting the days to the band's inevitable demise. Photography: Tom Sheehan Why "Strangeways, Here We Come"? Because the way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if I was in prison 12 months from now. Really it's me throwing both arms up to the skies and yelling "whatever next?". Strangeways, of course, is that hideous Victorian monstrosity of a prison operating 88 to a cell.  I don't have any particular crimes in mind but it's so easy to be a criminal nowadays that I wouldn't have to look very far. Life is so odd that I'm sure I could manage it without too much difficulty. How does the new album differ from its predecessors? '

HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD While THE SMITHS tour America, controversy still rages over their single, 'Panic'. Does the refrain 'hang the deejay' really harbour racist tendencies? FRANK OWEN tracks down MORRISSEY to Cleveland and confronts him with his pride, his prejudice and all his yesterdays. It's a long way from Whalley Range, is Cleveland. A long way indeed from the Collyhurst cut-throats, city hobgoblins, and the Stretford beer monsters so central to Morrissey's waking nightmares. What of Central Library, Whitworth Street gent's toilets, the Arndale Centre, Piccadilly all night bus station? What of the fluttering hearts and flashing Stanley Knives? We'll come to that later. But first, ladies and gentlemen, I present Cleveland. The Smiths are encamped in the middle of a civic pride that burns about them like a beacon aspiring to light up the rest of America. No longer is this city content to be known as "the armpit of the USA," to be the