Saturday, March 18, 2006

Keats and Yeats by his side

Interesting piece in the current Mojo magazine; an interview with Morrissey around his new album "Ringleader of the Tormentors." A photo of him next to Keats' grave, and a side panel comparing his lyrics with poets that have influenced him - Auden, Betjeman, Stevie Smith, Eliot and Larkin. Slightly trite idea, really, (and no Plath? Surely "I know it's Over", or Yeats, "English Blood, Irish Heart"?) I always wonder whether our more literary musicians are that way inclined at all. This, like other interviews has gone on at length about Morrissey being gender specific in a love song for the first time - in a track called "Dear God, Please Help Me." It's alway seemed a little reductionist to me, this. After all, their first single couple "the sun shines out of your behind," with "oh, you, handsome devil," yet his fanatical followers were almost football-crowdishly heterosexual; like Bowie before him, the Smiths were a music for anyone who felt like an outsider, for whatever reason. Perhaps we've lost something of that ambiguity these days.

1 comment:

c&v said...

Either we've lost that ambiguity, or it's seen as less of a threat to 'career trajectories' by artists (especially ones experienced in record company bollocks like Morrissey). Perhaps he no longer feels the need to hide behind literary facades any longer?

Dougals Copland makes the same-ish sort of comments in his Observer piece today re. pronouns - and also makes it obvious what an arse Morrissey is to interview...