Cuttings

The Correspondent Questionnaire MORRISSEY was born Steven Morrissey in Manchester on 22 May 1959, the son of a hospital porter and a librarian. An introverted child, he submerged himself in books and pop culture and spent years on the dole before joining The Smiths in 1982. They toured extensively and their third album, Meat is Murder , reached number one in 1985. The group disbanded in 1987 and Morrissey has since pursued a solo career. Kill Uncle , his next album, is due out in February. He lives near Manchester. What is your idea of perfect happiness? Being Terence Stamp. What is your greatest fear? Being invited to sing at the Prince’s Trust Rock Gala. With which historical figure do you most identify? Pinocchio or Richard III. Which living person do you most admire? Sir John Mills or Ronnie Kray. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Thrift. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Unpunctuality. What is your greatest extravaganc...

PERFECT KISS NEW ORDER Wembley Arena MOMENTS to love when love is not a three-ring circus but a fork-tongued serpent, when bliss rhymes with lice and diandry is a girl's best friend. This was astonishingly, gratifyingly, abominably perfect. This was New Order at their best, worst, and nowhere in between. They were slovenly and majestic, apathetic and intense, and it took the shackles off as many heads as it jaywalked over. Albrecht, lovable obstreperous sarcastic bastard cutey-pie Albrecht, mutters something about "Bon voyage" and serenades sophistry with something else about “the perfect kiss is the kiss of death*. I start formulating theories about how this is New Order’s farewell gig, but you would have to verify this fantasy with someone who wasn’t so shaken by the shoulders and stimulated. I was glued to it, and well away. New Order don’t emote , they defy you to be touched despite their laconic ennui. They also—even at the Wembley stage—jessie about w...

POWER, STRUCTURE AND BEAUTY With their biggest ever hit single and a definitively brill compilation to their name, 1987 was a good year in NEW ORDER's long-running campaign for world domination of the grooviest kind. Their new single hints at divine patronage as the reason for their ever-growing success. Truly faithful JAMES BROWN sees no reason to doubt their word. Order forms by KEVIN CUMMINS. A study of the properties and kinetic energy of faith, beauty and power in the Western World as experienced through the songs of New Order. Dusseldorf, December, 1987. Peter Hook, bearded bass player with New Order, leans back into DM240 worth of comfortable German armchair and says: "We’re the only respected band in music, mate. You must know that. We're the only truly independent band, we're the only ones that do things because we want to do them. There isn't anyone who's comparable to us. You must know that." He is correct. His case is concrete, ...

THESE THINGS TAKE TIME Bedroom poster gods for a generation of dispossessed youth, or just Mancunian fashion victims with a nice line in twangly guitars? Either way, their generous use of gladioli did wonders for florists throughout the UK. Danny Kelly chronicles the first year of the band who pronounced The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths FIRST TWELVE MONTHS - THE SMITHS Along with the Jesus And Mary Chain, The Smiths saved rock from the limp grasp of the New Romantic fops; on their own, they were the most important British group of the '80s. And their first year in the public spotlight was, like that of so many great bands, a heady cocktail of fine music and rare old controversy... SUMMER ’83 The Smiths spent their embryonic period realising how special they were and playing as many gigs as possible. The latter were extraordinary affairs (Morrissey, with his back pockets full of blooms, his torso swathed in women's blouses from Evans Outsizes, was a new kind of frontman...

ACR: 'Mickey Way (The Candy Bar)' ( Factory ) Not so gritty these boys, but no couch potatoes either. Having as good as slouched through a laidback Latin phase, only to return with the crushingly swell 'Wild Party' single of last year, ACR (F.A.B.) seem to have come good again with this frilly, uptempo dance number. When I was a little younger A Certain Radio (we used proper names in those days) were one of the most influential bands around; everyone except the school caretaker wanted to be obscure funksters with short trousers and (even) shorter hair. They’re certainly not so fashionable these days, but the remaining Ratios seem pretty content just to chisel out their own groove in their own sweet way. 'Mickey Way (The Candy Bar)' is from the forthcoming 'Force' LP. It's maybe reminiscent of Colourbox's roaringly uplifting 'Unofficial World Cup Theme', but here they're all hand-made sounds. There's no singing of any s...

OUT OF THE GRAVEYARD, INTO THE BALLROOM A CERTAIN RATIO The Old & The New ( Factory ) IT'S A MIRACLE that they're still with us, surviving the flak and the sorry neglect; eternally, it seems, walking in the shadows of Factory front-runners; never quite deathly enough to match Joy Division or as perfectly synthesised as New Order. Feel free to see this as a purely mercenary offering from Factory, but, as 'The Old & The New' bears witness, ACR have mined their own spiritual seam since '79; untainted ( I tell you ) by label-mates or contemporaries. Okay, so it's not a barrel of laughs, but nobody said it was going to be easy. I concede that 'Do The Du', 'And Then Again' and 'Thin Boys' may present bleak, bass-fired, mortal pictures of collapsing bedsits ( never Curtis copyists, they co-existed with the great man), but somehow ACR's structures - weird conurbations of funk, jazz, soul, avant garde - consistently hook yo...

A CERTAIN RATIO: Wild Party ( Factory ) Whoopee! A Certain Ratio are wearing their party hats again: this means lots of reverb on the drum machine, plenty of chorus on the slap bass and deadpan voices intoning something very important.

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL! MORRISSEY’S ‘DRUG’ CRAZED VIDEO AS OSCAR Wilde himself once said - Jesus bleedin’ Christ!!!  The video for Morrissey’s new ‘Interesting Drug’ smasheroo - which, depending on the outcome of the confusion currently surrounding it in the EMI offices (see News story, page three) may or may not be dominating a screen near you soon - is extraordinary . Not extraordinary brilliant, or extraordinary crap, just extraordinary... The epic, made (like previous Mozterpieces) by Tim Broad, starts with a standard concert shot of the great man and ends with scenes of fluffy bunnies; so far, so ordinary. Except that the intervening three minutes are filled with (take a deep breath and a sedative for your Disbelief Glands!); a school named after a member of the Carry On team; the ‘ Coronation Street ’ rooftops; Diana Dors on the cover of NME ; all the books ever written about whales; toilet graffiti (highly literate, natch); a raven-haired temptress who, but for a few ...

THE MAD CHATTER BIG MOUTH strikes again... and again and again and again... For years now the loudest squawk in pop’s deafening parrot-house has belonged to Steven Patrick MORRISSEY. By turns poetically thoughtful, corrosively razor-lipped, brazenly provocative and scathingly hilarious, he’s reigned unchallenged as music’s most quotable, and quoted, chatterbox. DANNY KELLY presents a selection of nuggets panned from our back pages; the wit, wisdom, whimsy and waffle of Mozzer on the subject of... GROWING UP “I’M REALLY chained to those iron bridges. I’m really chained to the pier, persistently on some disused clearing in Wigan. . .’’( Feb ’84 ) “I’VE NEVER had a flat cap and I’ve never smoked Senior Service.” ( Feb ’88 ) “I READ persistently. I swam in books as a child and at some point it becomes quite ruinous. It gets to the point where you can’t answer the door without being heavily analytical about it. But ultimately I think they’ve proved to be positive weapons for me...

ELECTRONIC KICK HAC! ELECTRONIC MANCHESTER HACIENDA “WE FOUGHT the law and we won” smirks Barney and the Hacienda heaves a sigh of relief which erupts into an almighty cheer. Tonight is a time for uneasy celebration, the free tickets are stamped with the word ‘Thanksgiving’, there’s glasses of champagne on the door and once more the floor is ram-jammed with party people. After months of biting their nails, the Hacienda can smile again and relax. On certain occasions Manchester feels like it has to be Madchester, and there is a mass gathering of the clan. Gone are the days when pop stars should be heard but not seen and tonight you can’t move more than three people without tripping over an Inspiral. The music mafia are out in force, from old partisans to fresh young blood, celebrating the Hacienda's resurrection. The Hacienda, once an empty abattoir that no one knew what to do with and more recently host to a scary phenomenon called ‘dance music', has been snatche...

THE MOD COUPLE ELECTRONIC Electronic ( Factory/All formats ) IT'S PROBABLY not actually meant to be ironic that 'Electronic' opens with Barney Sumner declaring, "My name is not important" but it is ironic, a bit. After all, we have turned full circle to the days when rock thought it was maths and that if you put one bloke from a good group in with another bloke from another good group, you got a group that was twice as good. As a rule, natch, what you got was a bloody awful group and Supergroups were outlawed by the World Government and anyone who had worked with Eric Clapton was hanged. But now we have Electronic and wow! they are good. Even though the mere facts that Johnny Marr can play the guitar better than Morrissey and Sumner used to be in a group with someone from Revenge do not immediately cause anyone sane to shout "Hurray! Popular music is safe forever!", 'Electronic' turns out to be very good. Perhaps playing the jangly gui...

THE BUILDING OF A PEACE MOUNTAIN TIM JARVIS gets a lesson in farm economics from MICHAEL EAVIS—the man who built Glastonbury and is helping to make CND grow. "I SUPPOSE you want to talk about the convoy" says Michael Eavis wearily, at the end of hard day on the Glastonbury site. News bulletins are broadcasting rumours of hippies heading for Glastonbury. "What do you mean, rumours?" he asks incredulously. "They're already here." Sitting cosy on the phone in London I had images of Somerset farmland knee deep in Aduki burgers and joss-sticks with indigenous cows fighting to the death overthe last blade of grass. Eavis is a busy man. His festival has become a big musical fixture and has outgrown the trivialities of former days. It's now billed as "Europe's most effective anti-nuclear fundraiser" and earns more for CND in three days than anything else they do in a year. Throughout the '70s Eavis, a small-stock dairy far...

GOODBYE TO GLASTONBURY? HELLO, READING... LAST WEEKEND'S Glastonbury Festival may have been the last, but the Reading rockfest is poised for a comeback. The Glastonbury promoter, Michael Eavis, said after the three-day event: "There are too many people, and too many problems". Eavis had a licence for 55,000 festival-goers, but gatecrashers and other unexpected arrivals put the attendance last weekend to closer to 100,000, which may have cost the festival its future. CND will be anxious, if this is the case, for the event raises more for the anti-nuclear organisation in three days than it can get in the rest of the year. News reports that the Reading Festival will be back in action this August after a two-year absence have been described by the festival's organisers as "premature". As NME closed for press, there was only a 50-50 chance that the event will return this year. The absence of Britain's longest-running rock festival was caused b...

From US television Sesame Street meets REM Last week, Sesame Street in the US (brought to you by the letter B and the number 19) featured a guest appearance from REM. Here is the full shooting script and transcript, revealing the stadium rock stars’ contribution to cognitive emotions and early learning Title : REM Song: Furry, Happy Monsters Goals : Emotions, happy/sad Music/Lyrics : B Berry, P Buck, M Mills, M Stipe Scenic : Limbo Talent : REM, Monsters, Two-headed monster Music : Track to song Shiny Happy People [As REM starts the tune, we see a group of happy, laughing monsters and the two-headed monster. Their joy is over the top. They skip, jump, run, whoop and high-five each other. Music: track to song Shiny Happy People ] REM sings : Furry happy monsters, laughing... Monsters having fun, happy, happy, See them jump and run, happy, happy Laughing all the while, cheerful, cheerful, Flashing a big smile, that’s a perfect sign That they’re feelin’ fine! ...

His master's voice MORRISSEY will have his debut solo single ‘Suedehead’ released on the reactivated HMV label, through Parlophone, on Monday. And he makes his acting debut next month in the second Brookside spin-off South . The single is backed by ‘I Know Very Well How I Got My Name’, and the 12 inch includes an extra track, ‘Hairdresser On Fire’. All songs have been co-written by Morrissey and producer Stephen Street. The HMV label’s last contemporary release was almost 20 years ago, ‘I Wouldn’t Go Back To The World I Knew’ by Joyce Grenfell, and Morrissey will now be the only contemporary artist on the label. Morrissey will appear on the sleeve of the single himself, the first time he has ever graced one of his own record covers. The photograph was taken by Smiths fan Geri Caulfield at the band’s London Palladium show in 1986. The acting role should be screened at the end of March, but it is only a brief appearance in which Morrissey appears as himself. He descri...

Desecrating Wildly "How could they do this to Oscar Wilde's grave?" Len Brown asks of Morrissey, but finds his genitals reduced to paperweights. (Oscar's that is...) “So we go inside and we gravely read the stones/ All those people all those lives/ Where are they now?” . Oh, what a grey day in Paris’ Pere-Lachaise cemetery, last resting place for top dead French people like Piaf, Proust, Moliere, Modigliani and the headless Danton. But the real attractions are eternal tourists in this beautiful boneyard-international megastars such as Chopin, Gertrude Stein, Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde. Doors’ addicts will already be familiar with the grim condition of the Lizard King’s grave. The presence of Morrison's leathery bones has long been a source of irritation and embarrassment to cemetery officials; they've even erased his name from graveyard maps to reduce the number of hippy pilgrims. But still they come, to sit moist-eyed on surrounding slabs, to lay ...

Smiths to reform? Persistent rumours that THE SMITHS will re-form gained weight this week with reports from Europe that the band are to tour there in the New Year. One French promoter who had been booking dates for a solo tour by MORRISSEY in the autumn has been told to scrap the plans because The Smiths will travel there early in 1990. Two independent sources contacted NME this week to confirm the rumours, but there’s been no official announcements of a reunion by the band, who split up two years ago after more than a dozen hits. And if The Smiths do play Europe, will they play dates in the UK? A spokesman at Bandstand, who were brought in to promote Morrissey’s Wolverhampton show last December, told NME : “There were stories that Morrissey was going to play Europe, but not the UK. I haven’t heard anything about The Smiths touring, that’s an interesting one. “But there’s been so much confusion in the past, following their break-up that it’s hard to tell who actuall...

GOODBYE, SMITHS GROUP SPLITS, MORRISSEY TO GO SOLO THE SMITHS are dead. After weeks of speculation about a replacement for Johnny Marr, NME discovered at the weekend that Morrissey intends to record under his own name in the future. His new songwriting partner is Stephen Street, the producer and engineer who has worked with The Smiths since the Sandie Shaw collaboration in March, 1984. And it’s now more than likely that the two remaining Smiths - drummer Mike Joyce and bass player Andy Rourke - will team up with Johnny Marr in his new band. The news started to break on Friday when the NME received a statement from Joyce announcing his departure, saying he had “fulfilled his role” with The Smiths. Rough Trade and The Smiths’ office were unaware that Joyce intended to quit, as he had been approached by Morrissey to play on his solo material. The full truth was revealed on Saturday by Pat Bellis, spokesperson for Morrissey: “It’s taken some time to think things o...