Morrissey Memoir More Revealing Than Anyone Hoped
Love affairs, old resentments and possible progeny are all in play in the Smiths’ singer’s long-awaited autobiography.
FIRST FLICK THROUGH the Morrissey memoir and the revelations are coming thick and fast. The book, released for purchase at midnight last night/this morning is looking to be engagingly frank, brilliantly indiscreet and authentically idiosyncratic. • Morrissey ’fesses up to the worst kept secret in showbusiness: his mid-’90s relationship with sometime photographer/factotum Jake Walters. “For the first time in my life the eternal ‘I’ becomes ‘we’, as, finally, I can get on with someone,” he writes.
“The relationship ended after Alan Bennett came round for tea.”
• The relationship ended after Alan Bennett came round for tea and noted that the couple didn’t talk any more.
• Morrissey later had a significant liaison was with an Iranian woman, Tina Dehgani with whom he actually discussed having a child, or in Morrissey-speak, a “mewling miniature monster”. No, you couldn’t make this up.
• In the first flush of fame, Morrissey was visited by Vanessa Redgrave, who tried to recruit him to various worthy causes.
• He’s still a bit miffed that John Peel never came to a Smiths gig nor to any of their sessions.
• It is scathing about John Weeks, the presiding judge in the Mike Joyce case. Since the legal profession are unsurprisingly quite litigious, one can only assume publishers Penguin are sure of their ground here. Could this have been the source of the “last minute content disagreement” that delayed publication?
We’re just started tucking into the Morrissey memoir, and will post reactions all day on Twitter @MOJOmagazine. Also, stay tuned for Andrew Male’s full review in the coming hours.