Cuttings

THE PLAYBOY INTERVIEW (pt 2) The champ of English camp, Steven Patrick MORRISSEY, puts the boot into DJ Maggie T, Ronald McDonald, foreigners, travel and reckons 'the independent sector is being strangled by its own scarf' ... JAMES BROWN quaffs several litres of carpet cleaner and plunges into the underwear drawer. Playboy bun by LAWRENCE WATSON. There are five Ramones live bootlegs, two Fall LPs, even more Bowie, Raymonde, and Patti Smith tapes, and a multitude of Smiths albums. From James to the Buzzcocks, the cassettes in Morrissey's kitchen cabinet are stockpiled like an illegal collection of classic contemporary guitar rock recordings. Stretching from the colourful androgynous pose of early '70's glam to the sexless but sensitive pop poetry of the Rough Trade and Young Mancunian sounds of the mid '80's, it is an enviable but private collection kept behind a glass door. I only happen upon it whilst using the Moz-phone. The collection is what Morri

MORRISSEY: "I'm a total sex object. A lot of men and women find me unmistakably attractive." Behind the hand-selected security curtains, something stirs... After his triumphant Wolverhampton second coming, the Last of the Famous International Playboys is ignoring the front doorbell, preparing for a No 1 single and fighting a losing rearguard actions against the onset of manhood! JAMES ' I am not naturally evil ' BROWN asks MORRISSEY about ' all the new crimes you are perfecting ' - and plenty of the old ones as well! ' Dear hero imprisoned ' by LAWRENCE WATSON. The door bell rings once. Morrissey looks uncomfortable. “I can’t imagine who that is. We’ll just have to ignore it. But they may not go away. It happens.” There is not a second ring but Morrissey is clearly alarmed. “Some people sit and ring and ring and ring. And circle the house and peer through the windows. It’s very tedious and very embarrassing because I don’t know why they d

IT’S THAT MAN AGAIN! MORRISSEY, part three Following the domestic successes of pet sounds such as ‘Alsatian Cousin’, ‘I Won’t Share Ewe’, ‘How Soon Is Miaow?’ and ‘Pussycat William, It Was Really Nothing’,  sex kitten MORRISSEY concludes his NME interview with a tirade against television, 25 Years Of Top Of The Pops , and America. Words by JAMES BROWN, pic by LAWRENCE WATSON. "Obviously the situation is there for me to become a big pop face in Europe and be on prime time TV everyday, but I do nothing about it because I can’t travel. I arrive at destinations and look 61! The Smiths did about 10 European dates in 1984 which is paltry really. As far as America goes we did two very lengthy and successful tours. ‘I think it’s partly because I don’t travel that I have such a unique relationship with my fans. I think they sense that I do belong here; I'm not going to stray off and do sexy interviews with SKY TV. I’m not going to pop up in some greasy Greece festival, or at some wate

DESIGN The Manchester tradition Malcolm Garrett and Peter Saville were studying graphic design at Manchester Poly when punk hit the city, and both quickly became involved with the local music scene. Garrett worked with the Buzzcocks, later starting the design company Assorted Images, and Saville became art director at Factory before setting up his own company, PSA, in London. Together, they established a tradition of local designers working with local bands, shops and clubs continued now by Manchester-based teams Trevor Johnson / Tony Panas and Central Station Design. The Poly now has a reputation for turning out innovative designers — Arena's Ian Swift and our own Pat Glover are graduates, as was Dave Crow, who initiated the Poly magazine Fresh seen above

MANCHESTER Tony Wilson argues that small is beautiful It's a village. It's a village. It's a village. It usually is. When it goes off, when cultures collide and explode and get to figure in the export figures, it's usually a village that came up with the goods. Even the last one, the one that threw up Guns'N Roses, was that part of Los Angeles where the pavements are filled with blond hair and black leather. It was Hollywood, it was a village. As was the first one. I've never been to Memphis, but it must have been a village because how else would Sam and Elvis have met? And what's special about my village — Manchester — other than the fact it is a village? Well, it's a friendly village. In some villages, outsiders feel like outsiders. In my village outsiders are welcomed, made to feel at home. Sure, in 1915 they threw bricks at my grandfather's watchmaker's shop, but they were tough days and anyway my grandfather, Herman Maximilian Knupfer, love

 

SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE WITH 'SUEDEHEAD' AN EVEN BIGGER HIT THAN THE SMITHS' FINEST AND A SOLO ALBUM, 'VIVA HATE', DUE FOR IMMINENT RELEASE, THINGS COULDN'T LOOK ROSIER FOR MORRISSEY . SO WHY IS HE OBSESSED WITH DISSATISFACTION? WHY ARE HIS SONGS STILL ABOUT ADOLESCENCE AND LOSS? SIMON REYNOLDS MEETS THE GREAT MAN, TAKES A SCALPEL TO HIS LYRICS AND HIS ENGLISHNESS AND COMES AWAY WITH A UNIQUE INSIGHT INTO THE MOST INSPIRATIONAL SONGWRITER OF HIS GENERATION I THINK I'vs met them all now. For me, there are no more heroes left. And no new ones corning along, by the look of it. It could be that this is a time marked by a dearth of characters, or that the smart people in rock aren't interested in self-projection but in obliterating noise. But really, I think, it's the case that, in this job, you don't have the time to develop obsessions, what with the insane turnover, and all the incentives to pluralism. The heroes you have kind of linger on from a pr