Who's The Daddy?
Mojo, May 2004

Morrissey is sick. By his own estimation, he is sick of the sound of his own voice. In a suite at the Dorchester Hotel on London's Park Lane, he apologises to MOJO for what we are about to receive, as it were.
"I warn you, I'm at the gab gab gab stage - I just sit here and my lips are moving and I can hear the sound of words coming from somewhere and I realise that I'm actually forming them. I'd love to be able to stand back or from the side and shout back at myself! The unfortunate thing is that simply because you happen to hobble together an album that you're terribly proud of, people assume you have the answers to everything, and you can explain everything with fantastic flow."

The lazy sunbathers: Morrissey and friends, the Beverly Hills Hotel, April 15, 2004.

He give a little bronchial chuckle, avuncular, self-deprecating and, to MOJO's ears, strangely reminiscent of the crumbly tones of John Arlott, the legendary cricket commentator and poet; a protégé of Betjeman, a connoisseur of wine and words, and notably, given the conservative milieu he inhabited, an early anti-apartheid campaigner. A man regarded as quintessentially English, who also betrayed a profound anti-Establishment streak. Arlott grew up of humble stock in a Basingstoke cemetery superintendent's lodge. Perhaps the resemblance isn't so strange after all.
Two months shy of his 45th birthday, age and the concomitant slight thickening of the girth become Steven Patrick Morrissey. He looks in terrific nick, if a little wearied by the rigours of his promotional campaign. It's been seven long years since his last "hobbled together" album, the underwhelming Maladjusted, slipped out and past the gaze of most, around which time he left England and relocated permanently, via Dublin, to Los Angeles, where he still resides, a status that from a British perspective increasingly seemed like exile. Without a record contract after his relationship with Mercury disintegrated in 1998, he worked his way through various managers (including Elliot Roberts, who has ministered to Neil Young for most of the last 35 years), and communed with his public via world tours during 1999-2000 and 2002. The extent of these demonstrated that Morrissey still enjoyed a considerable fan-base - particularly in the US and Latin America, where his personality cult borders on religious idolatry - spanning a whole range of demographics, be it gender, age or nationality. Yet still the music industry shunned him. In September 2002, with no pre-publicity, he sold out two nights at the Royal Albert Hall. How was it possible that the man who had sung the songs of The Smiths, the band which more than any other after the Beatles and the Sex Pistols had infected the vocabulary of British pop culture, couldn't make records? This simply didn't make sense, This was Morrissey, the voice that proclaimed The Charming Man, William, It Was Really Nothing, How Soon Is Now, That Joke Isn't Funny Any More, Meat Is Murder, The Queen Is Dead, Bigmouth Strikes Again, Panic, Shoplifters Of The World Unite, Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me, Everyday Is Like Sunday, November Spawned A Monster, The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get, The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils, Satan Rejected My Soul…
It must have been something he's said.

Used to be sweet boys: The Smiths, University of Leicester, February 16, 1984.

Following the half-hearted release of Maladjusted, aside from a very occasional press or radio interview, to the casual UK observer Morrissey's was a merely spectral presence in the entertainment ether, sustained by the ongoing repackaging of The Smiths' back catalogue and the attendant retrospective celebration of that most definitive of groups. In April 2001, MOJO ran a Smiths cover story, bolstered by a couple of articles examining three of the defining aspects of Morrissey's solo career: his vilification by elements of the press over allegedly racist undertones to some of his work, the 1996 High Court case in which a judge found against Morrissey and his fellow songwriting Smith, Johnny Marr, in a dispute over performing royalties brought by Smiths drummer Mike Joyce; and his incredible popularity in the US, where in 1992 he sold out two nights at the Hollywood Bowl in less time than it takes to make a pot of tea. In the same issue there was a new interview with Morrissey, where he pondered his ostracism by the music industry ("What is it about Morrissey that nobody wants to touch?") and explained his decision to walk away from the media accusations of racism ("absolute crap") as a means of retaining his dignity. When asked by writer Jaan Uhelszki, "Can we talk about what you're doing now in terms of your career?", Morrissey replied: "That will be a very brief conversation. I'm looking for a deal. I don't have a deal…I have an album which I'm aching to record if anybody on the planet will let me."

More than two years later, somebody finally did. On May 20, 2003, Morrissey signed to the Sanctuary Records Group, the west London-based management and label agglomerate, under whose aegis Morrissey's original patron, Geoff Travis, currently runs the revamped Rough Trade Records. In return for signing, Morrissey requested and was given the Attack imprint as his own personal domain - a ripely knowing gesture on his part, given that Attack was formerly the home of Gregory Isaacs and The Upsetters and that those "racist" accusation rested heavily on Morrissey's one-time protest to NME that "reggae is vile". Two weeks after the Sanctuary deal was signed, Channel 4 broadcast The Importance Of Being Morrissey, a 60-minute documentary that followed the main attraction around LA and London, watched him meeting his Hollywood neighbour Nancy Sinatra ("He's a great hugger"), and rolled out a quaint assortment of celebrity talking heads (Alan Bennett, Bono, Kathy Burke, Noel Gallagher, Will Self) to make good on the premise of the title. The subtext was clear: Morrissey is a national treasure and we renounced him, ignored him - and ultimately drove him away. In the last words in the programme, he proclaimed: "I'm my own person, and that's good enough. And I stand my ground - that's good enough."

His first solo concert, Wolverhampton Civic Hall, December 22, 1988, Mike Joyce on drums.

And now he's back, with a new album, combatively titled You Are The Quarry - the sleeve depicts Morrissey with a tommy gun, contemplating the weapon rather too fondly for the comfort of some - and holding court at The Dorchester with regal poise, having his photograph taken in the tea room and on the outside balcony of the suite where President Eisenhower used to stay. The procession of interviews confirms his willingness to engage fully with the soul-sucking processes of the music business, a reflection of his opinion that his new record is "absolutely the definitive Morrissey album". But it's also the result of the fact that people are interested in him once again: a collective realization that he's been sorely missed, and that he should never have been allowed to go in the first place. Typically for Morrissey, it's all something of a mixed blessing.
"I've been asked to do an excessive amount of talking, shall we say, and unfortunately interviews, for me, are always pretty intense cross-examinations and they become intensely personal, and they really drain me. I'm actually an intensely private person, so juggling that with revealing interviews is very, very difficult for me. Because to be honest, I'd rather say nothing. I'd rather absolutely let the music speak for itself and do what it can do. But I've tried that so many times and nothing happened. It actually simply disappears. But the label at the moment do want me to do a hell of a lot more, and I just don't think I can. I mean, Britney I'm not."
So why is he here? Why is he doing this?
"It's 100 per cent a calling, it really is. Because, unfortunately, I don't really exist anywhere else in life."

Morrissey kicks off his world tour, Hard Rock Joint, Las Vegas, April 17, 2004.

Three weeks later, Morrissey really is sick. On April 8, MOJO arrives in Los Angeles for part two of our interview, only to learn that Morrissey has been diagnosed with meningitis, and won't be seeing anyone, far less speaking to anyone, until he's recovered. Uncharitable as it may be, but one's instinct is to feel skeptical. Pinning Morrissey down to a schedule hasn't been easy thus far, and he does have a history of dealing with inconvenient engagements by simply making himself unavailable. Just as his interviews are sparring matches, with this some-time boxing aficionado a master of the feint and the parry and the surprise counter - not to mention the sly dig below the belt - so Morrissey delights in leading the world outside his window a merry dance. For him, the importance of being Morrissey is ensuring no one knows who Morrissey really is or what he does (and with whom). Which is, of course, one of the reasons for his enduring fascination. On The Smiths' debut album, he averred, "I'm not the man you think I am" - and 20 years on, the obfuscatory intent behind those words still holds true.
On April 15, MOJO speaks to him on the telephone. A little croaky but otherwise seeming fine, he explains how he caught a virus on the flight back from London to LA and subsequently developed a five-day migraine, throwing his plans into disarray, most notably the rehearsals for his US tour.
"It's annoying, because in 48 hours I'll be standing on a stage in Las Vegas, hopefully singing," he says. "So I'm a bit nervous. [Meningitis] was only part of it. I had two brain scans in two days. And then, in the final analysis, last Tuesday, when they were about to take some spinal fluid, I just stood up and said, No more, this is silly. Absolutely silly. Because American medicine, they absolutely don't know anything. They'll saw your leg off just to prevent you getting gangrene in the future. I'm not kidding. I ended up in hospital on a drip, which was hugely humiliating and embarrassing. And at one point I went for a brain scan and they left me in the room for 15 minutes with this really loud hip hop music playing. But I was strapped to the bed and I was on a drip so I couldn't do anything about it. So here I am, with this intense migraine, listening to hip hop. It could only be America."
And I'd come all that way to see you, too.
"Well I thought you'd be cursing me and generally putting my windows in."
Oh I'd never do anything like that. Although the more cynical side of me did wonder whether you were indeed really ill.
"Ooh, tut-tut-tut. So what did you do while you were here?"
Not much. Walked around, felt like an alien, then decided to come home.
"Well, you probably made the right choice. Otherwise you'd still be here, just wandering around."
What the game-plan for your return to the live arena?
"(Laughs) You mean the 'stage presentation', shall we say? There's never been anything like that. I could never be part of anything that remotely resembles a performance. And when people say to me that I'm a 'good performer' I'm absolutely horrified, because it's such a dreadful expression. For better or worse, I just stumble on and stumble off. I also find it's 50 per cent reliant on the audience and how they respond. If they're enflamed, the night takes very interesting twists and turns, but if they're not the…it doesn't."
Brain scans, eh? Serious stuff.
"A day in the life, believe me. (Surprised) You've never had one yourself?"

It was Morrissey's muse Oscar Wilde who reputedly opined: "Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." It's worth bearing those words in mind when you hear - as you assuredly shall - that You Are The Quarry is a "triumphant return to form", or such-like. For sure, it's auspicious. Morrissey hasn't made a album anywhere near as good since 1994's Vauxhall And I. The instrumental texture and arrangements are rich and varied, the production - by Jerry Finn, noted for his work with Blink 182 and other young(ish) brats of repute - tough yet sympathetic, while Morrissey's voice is simply magnificent, its tawny baritone never so perfectly pitched and phrased. But stylistically and in many of the specific lyrical concerns and thematic obsession, it resembles no massive departure from Maladjusted or that album's predecessor, 1995's Southpaw Grammar, which was similarly disdained by critics and received with reservation by all but the most diehard fan. Far from the artistic catastrophes received wisdom would maintain, these two albums are fascinating, inasmuch as they document a mid-'90s mid-life crisis for their author: flitting from one new label to another (RCA then Mercury/Island), dejected at his treatment by the press, his defeat in the Smiths court case and heaven knows what deeper personal traumas. In places, both Morrissey and the music sound muzzled, uncertain. For someone who wears his heart on his record sleeves, there were clues in the artwork: discounting the World Of Morrissey compilation, Southpaw Grammar was the only Morrissey solo album not to feature his own face on the cover - in a retreat to the iconic nostalgia of The Smiths, the honour went to a fuzzy snap of '60s boxer Kenny Lane - while Maladjusted was perfunctory beyond belief, an unflattering black-and-white cut-out Moz slapped on a silver background. Significantly or not, Morrissey gave relatively few interviews around the time of either record.
"I was presented [by RCA] with lots of media hoops," he says. "And I couldn't do it, I couldn't jump through them. I didn't want to be exposed and I didn't want people to know too much about me. And they took the view that if that's your attitude then we too will back off. So overnight it sort of deflated itself. I'm very, very proud of Southpaw Grammar. The sleeve was terrible and that's my fault. All the artwork was atrocious, and unfortunately there's no one else I can blame."
Why was the artwork bad?

That Maladjusted sleeve, Tony Blair hairline and all.

"Well I liked the artwork for about three days. Unfortunately they were the three days when everything was going to press. But then a few weeks later I looked at it and went, What the hell have you done? And I still don't know, but it certainly was not Tate quality. I made such a holy mess of Southpaw Grammar that I left Maladjusted to be pieced together by the record company - and it was even worse than Southpaw Grammar. I've got Tony Blair's hairline and I look as if I'm sat on the lavatory crying my eyes out. Nothing new there, then…"
So a mere glance at the opulent sleeve to You Are The Quarry is enough to suggest that the force is with him once more. It could be argued - and quite reasonably, too - that if Morrissey didn't return with something approaching his very best after a seven-year hiatus then he really wasn't the man he's said we thought he was after all. But he's really outdone himself. While veteran Morrisseyan scholars will enjoy a clutch of vivid case studies to dissect in their endless futile quest to ascertain what s/he's really like (viz, I'm Not Sorry, where Moz admits, "The woman of my dreams, well, there never was one"; or All The Lazy Dykes, a genuinely affecting plea to an unhappily married woman to "free yourself"… "and join the girls"), what makes his seventh solo album such a treat is it has the musical flair to match his lyrical blunderbuss. With regard to the latter, not a bullet is wasted. It it's gung-ho, that's because he clearly feels wronged. There's wit and passion and pathos in every meticulously measured line. The single Irish Blood, English Heart is an impressively cogent declaration of his patriotic self ("I've been dreaming of a time when/To be English is not to be baneful/To be standing by the flag not feeling shameful/Racist or partial). How Can Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel states, "I've had my face dragged in 15 miles of shit/And I do not/And I do not/And I do not like it". And the staunch closer, You Know I Couldn't Last, is the sound of a seriously conflicted man entering the last chance saloon and leaving with all guns blazing. He takes out his fans, the critics, the business suits, former bandmates ("the Northern leeches go on removing") and is ultimately left staring at what's left of his own reflection, beseeching: "Your royalties bring you luxuries/But oh - the squalor of the mind". In its florid grandiosity - that, and the use of the word "gelignite" in a pop lyric - it recalls no one else but Queen. In addition to "definitive", to the pre-meningitis Morrissey sipping tea at the Dorchester, "it's so perfect and resolute that my work on this planet is over".

"It was time to change the furniture, change the landscape." Morrissey in LA (left) and London (right).

Do you see lots of unsettled scores out there?
"I do, because I have been quarry for so many years. And people have taken so many repeated pot shots at me. So yes, I feel heavily bruised. But this time around I feel that the album represents something which is actually deeper than mere revenge and manages to rise above settling all those old scores. I do feel as if I have been somewhat victimized. Which really isn't amusing."

Do you have any conception as to why that happened?
"The base of it is nothing more sinister than jealousy, really. And I do have a lot of enemies. And I seem to stir within people a reaction. There's nobody on the planet who thinks I'm OK. They're either extremely for or extremely against. I'm not the kind of person who tends to pass through unnoticed."

Surely that's no necessarily a bad thing?
"It is when you're passing through a crowd of people who don't care that much for you - you would rather slip by unnoticed."

Why do you have so many enemies?
"I think it's because I'm a strong person, and I don't rely on other people. And I don't ask for help. So therefore I'm not pitied."

But you'd like to be, in a way?
"No, not at all. And it's an industry of massive egos. If you turn away from people they seek revenge for the rest of their lives against you. And I've been through so many managers and so many record companies and so many musicians - and they never let go, even though they may walk away of their own accord, they never let go. And they will do all in their power to stop you from fulfilling your dreams. I have a lot of enemies. But let it be. So be it."

You hate the music industry, would that be fair to say?
"Yes."

And yet you still conjoin with it.
"I'm trapped."

Buy are you? Why continue to do it if you dislike the apparatus so much?
"It's throbbing through the veins, and there's nothing I can do about it. I am one of those born-in-a-trunk people, one of those old-fashioned…I mean, I simply do love to sing. All the entrapments, some of them are necessary. And if you do make a good album you do want as many people to hear it as possible, because you do want people to…like it, really. So it is very, very difficult, because a lot of things that I'm called upon to do, a lot of the things on the sidelines, I approach with abject horror - but what can you do?"

You don't have to release records in the conventional sense at all.
"Mmm. Bu then you end up like Robert Wyatt, don't you?"

What's wrong with that?!
"Well I don't know. I mean, his hair isn't too fantastic, is it?! (laughs)"

But he does release records in the conventional sense!
"Well he does, yes, but he sort of potters about in his potting shed, recording. Maybe that will happen to me eventually, I don't know, but there's a streak of intolerable glamour within me as well."

You like the bright lights…
"Well, I can't see the bright lights, but…I like the scream of the greasepaint."

A few years ago, Paul Weller, expressing similar distaste for the machinations of the music industry, said he was seriously thinking of giving up dealing with it, and just playing once a week in his local pub…
"It's interesting. Because he's probably gone as far as he can go - I would say. And the trouble with all the machinations of the music industry is that if you don't have a bubbly personality, as I don't as the world knows Weller doesn't (laughs), then you can't really get on with the machinery, and therefore if you're not prepared to try to get on with it the record company are not really gonna bother trying to shove your CD around. It's all a hideously delicate balance."

Who are the "Northern leeches" you refer to?
"You know exactly who they are."

Mike Joyce must be one of them.
"Mmm. He would certainly fit the bill, wouldn't he?"

Once the subject of the Joyce and the court case is raised, Morrissey's demeanor changes quite palpably. Gone are the playful jousts and waspish asides, replaced by long, lucid soliloquies on the perceived injustice of what occurred in the High Court under the jurisdiction of Judge John Weeks at the end of 1996. "Devious, truculent and unreliable," was Weeks' assessment of Morrissey in his summation to the court. As one of Morrissey's old Smiths lyrics would have it, this story is old, but it goes on - because, he claims, Weeks made a flawed judgment, awarding Joyce £1.25 million, having decided that Joyce was a 25 per cent partner, but making no provision for how Joyce should receive the money. "And because Joyce was never on any Smiths contract of any kind then none of the sources will pay him money because he's not entitled to any under the contract." Thus, says Morrissey, every time he plays in England, Joyce issues legal orders to try and extract money. "He will go on for the rest of his life, a pest to everybody that's in my life. That defines him now, that's what his life is. And it allows him to continue and be a part of my story. It has become a complete farce and there is only one victim and the victim is me."

How can you account for this? Just because the judge didn't like you? He said as much.
"He did say that much, which is fair enough. I mean, a judge has a right not to like me, but a judge doesn't have a right to dismiss the facts and dismiss what is obvious. The judge should not pass personal judgment. Because I may very well be a dislikeable person, but that doesn't mean that I'm not reliable in court Obviously the judge was repaying me for all the things I'd ever said about Thatcher or the Queen or fox-hunting, because this judge is obviously a lord of the hunt and there is obviously a private file on people that gets passed around."

The destruction of Morrissey? Morrissey at court, December 1996.

I love a good conspiracy theory, and I'd like to believe you in that regard, but…
"You must, you must, it really is that simple and devious. If you examine the court papers it's glaringly evident that this Morrissey character must be pulled down. Why did the entire case become about Morrissey? Not about Morrissey and Marr, who were partners, but it just became about Morrissey and the destruction of Morrissey. So, it's really obvious to anybody of any basic intelligence that it was victimization."

How did you cope with this at the time?
"I coped by believing I would have enough resolve to pull myself out of the situation. And get away from it. Kick it away. And I always believed that this wasn't it, and even though I was with dreary useless record labels I always believed there would be a better time ahead. And there was and there is."

Do you think the work you did for those labels was your strongest?
"Erm…Nnooo, I don't. But I don't hang my head with shame. These are happier days. And I don't have any of those old forgotten people, those old left-over people to thank. It's a situation which I think Frank Sinatra went through twice in his life, when he was in a lofty position musically and then he plummeted, and he seemed not to have a friend in the world. And all the people that he had worked with and had associated with him turned against him, and joined in the trend of debasing him. So I think that's what ultimately made him quite a hard character. Because he had been down. And he knew what it had been like to have been kicked aside and people that he had helped criticised him. And to a lesser degree I felt there were direct parallels. (Long pause) And that's my tatty explanation. I just heard you snoring. Either that or you have kidney failure."

My stomach may be rumbling, it's true.
"Last night's tandoori special. But on a brighter note…"

Do you think The Smiths had to die? Was it inevitable that it would stop?
"Erm, it wasn't to me."

So it was the choice of other people that the band stopped?
"Yes it was. I though that we'd be at least as big as Queen. (Pause) You're laughing."

I'm not! That's a noble aspiration…
"I mean, people often say to me, 'Well, R.E.M….' And I think, No, not at all, I think we were heading in Queen directions - capital 'q' of course."

So you were genuinely disappointed when it finished?
"I was horrified. I was absolutely horrified. But I'm over it now! (laughs) I've had the time to get over it, and I've had excessive counseling and I've picked up the pieces of my life and I'm marching on into… the abyss. But lots of people won't let The Smiths die. I hear Q magazine are doing a Smiths magazine, rounding up all those little left-over people who met me on the stairs in 1986 for an hour, for those in-depth valuable observation. So boring. With all these retrospectives, whether it's television or magazines, they always interview the same ring of people, the same faint claims, and there's a whole glut of people who were involved who are never approached. Absolutely the same cast, all the time, of the same, shall we say… people."

So who should be approached?
"Oh, well that's another story. I don't want to give them any guidance."

Was there anything you could have done to persuade Johnny Marr to stay?
"Well, we did never have a conversation about it. He did just tear away, and I think he immediately went into session with Talking Heads and Bryan Ferry. Which is fine. But, I think he had it in his mind that he would elevate himself immediately out of the situation, which did not happen. And that's when the bitchiness set in."

Do you still speak to Johnny?
"We spoke last summer for a while. In very friendly terms. But it's very, very difficult with the court case, because it's such a monster and it just goes on and it's very detailed. But The Smiths' legacy is dreadful. I mean, I think it's the worst legacy of any group in the history of music. The whole story is so black and twisted, I'm convinced the story will only end with …a murder. And you're talking to the potential corpse (laughs)! I am quite serious. It's reaching that stage. I men, who was it that said 'Viva Hate'?"

But I presume you're proud of the musical legacy?
"Yeah, I'm extremely proud of the music, but people don't really talk about that. And when Marr, [bassist Andy] Rourke and Joyce go on television they never talk about the music, they just talk about the overall dreadful experience of being in The Smiths. And I find that very sad. (Breezily) Nothing we can do about it now!"

Perhaps, in a perverse sense, Morrissey rather relishes his experience of rough justice in the courts. Here is justification for all the vitriol and spleen he's vented at the British establishment, and of a rather more intense measure than merely having a rotten time at school. The eternal outsider, victimized by the country he's eulogized and castigated from the very outset, as in The Smiths' Still Ill, "England is mine - and it owes me a living". In this context, Irish Blood, English Heart is a most personal cri de coeur, clarifying the ambivalent attitude towards nationality far more succinctly, and less contentiously, than past efforts such as Bengali In Platforms ("Life is hard enough when you belong here"). Raised in working-class Manchester in the '60s, the son of two Irish immigrants, Morrissey was made very aware of Britain's mongrel pedigree.
"Obviously the Irish feel resentment towards England because England has historically been so appalling to Ireland," he says. "So it was somewhat confusing for me growing up."
Did you experience prejudice because of your background?
"Not particularly. At school I would be called 'Paddy', and it was considered not to be friendly to say that. I can't think why, 'cos it's a nice word and a nice thing to be. But of course, the English laugh at everybody and ridicule everybody. Which is often quite funny. But do you, being Scottish, come across any racism here?"
Only in the trivial sense.
"So not really? Nothing hurtful…"
I've not been physically attacked. Maybe if I were a black Scot I might not have been so lucky.
"Yes. Hmm."
A lot of Scottish nationalism is the politics of resentment.
"Against England?"
Yes. In the '70s it was perceived that certain resources were being siphoned off, in the case of the oil, quite literally. You could just as logically despise the American-based multinational companies for that.
"Which we do…but also England has been a bully, and is a bully."
So why do people still cling to nationality, if it's so problematic? Why do people want to feel proud of being whatever nationality they are?
"Because here is the spot where you are born and where you live and where you continue to live. Where you build your life. And it's inconvenient to feel shame toward that. I mean, we all like to feel as if we're living in a fairly decent place. And we all like to feel pride, if we can. But then, unfortunately, there is the monarchy. But perhaps not for much longer."
Ever the optimist.
"Ever the dreamer (laughs)."

Which way now? Morrissey outside the Beverly Hills Hotel. By Kevin Westenberg.

The place where Morrissey lives, of course, is not England, or Ireland, but Los Angeles, the city Michael Stipe once describe as a lemming colony at the precipice of a continent, just waiting for an earthquake to sever it from the rest of the world altogether. Where better to embalm idealized notions of dear old Blighty? Morrissey says, "I honestly being every single day only with the intention of avoiding people," and to that end LA is certainly the place to be. He likes the architecture, the landscape, the weather ("The sun makes you expand and makes you walk taller - which is a relief"). And this accomplished voyeur finds Americans endlessly fascinating - though he does miss the "simplicity" of British TV.
"I could quite easily have stayed," he says, staring at what's left of his Dorchester tea. "But it was simply time to change the furniture and change the landscape. It had to be somewhere, and I had stayed in Dublin for a long time, and enjoyable as it was it wasn't an extreme enough change. I had to go somewhere reasonably far flung. To meet my undiscovered nature. Which I did. (Smiles broadly) And what a shock that was! That's truly the best explanation I can give."
Though he loves returning to England and being able to walk down the street and bump into people, he doesn't envisage a time when might come back for good.
"I'll leave that decision to fate, really. I'll simply follow fate wherever it drags me. There is a saying - I'm 92 per cent certain it was the writer Thomas Mass - that you can never go home again. Every second of life is about timing, and the atmosphere of the present. And you think the past is a place you can return to but it isn't. Even though, they do say, don't they, also that it's never too late to have a happy childhood. But I suppose you could have that without returning to anywhere. You can have your childhood in a different place. It's never too late to rectify those nightmares in your mind."
What's it all about, Morrissey? What keeps you going?
"Well, I'm possibly no different to anybody else!" he laughs. "(Sighs) Wish I hadn't laughed when I said that. But life, this strange life, is simply something we have to go through on our way to somewhere else. It's just something you have to sit through. And we just hope that somewhere along the line something exciting will happen to us. Most people hope for romance, and that really all that keeps most people going."
And you're not looking for romance?
"Mmm. Err, well it's not the thing that keeps me going, the hope of it. No. I'm no that silly. And I find romance in inanimate objects (laughs)! Like carpets, standard lamps…"
He gets up. "Do you mind?" There's a phone call for him next door. It's Chrissie Hynde. As the curator of this year's Meltdown Festival on London's South Bank, Morrissey is reassembling the surviving members of his original pop epiphany, the New York Dolls, and is looking to recruit people to take the place of those Dolls who have passed away. He wants Hynde to be 'Chrissie Thunders'. "She just needs to be tickled, but I think she'll do it. 'Cos she is yet another person who loves the Dolls. Did you ever care for them yourself? Hmm… So, you're actually going to fly to Los Angeles and ask me questions about England? There must be an easier way to do this!"
MOJO and Moz shake hands, and we take our leave, fully expecting to meet again on his home turf in a few weeks. But it isn't to be. Instead, his last words are cackled down the phone line at the news that he's on of the famous Mancunians in the frame for the proposed re-branding of Manchester Airport.
"Wow. That's just absurd, isn't it? Fantastically absurd. Life is out of control, really. I mean, what's going to happen next, do you think? So, is Irish Blood, English Heart being played in England? It is, really? The single is receiving blanket American airplay, which has never happened to me before. And it's astonishing, absolutely astonishing. It's quite a time for me."
Do you ultimately just want to be loved?
"Well, I'd like to be liked as well. But I'll settle for loved, it that's all that's on offer. Do you have any advice for me?"
Be yourself. Free yourself…
He chuckles. "I'll give it a go."

A penny for them: "This strange life... it's just something we have to sit through."