There are a dozen reason why this summer will witness Morrissey's second golden age. Holed up in LA, he stretches out and waits…

I say goodbye to Morrissey beside the pool in LA. The mercury up in the 90s, Morrissey has drunk beer in the shade, teased me in his patterned shirt and flat-front slacks, and - crucially - signed my copy of 'Hand In Glove', his first-ever record. They told me he wouldn't do that.

I said goodbye to Morrissey at Brighton Pavilion's Dome Theatre on The Smiths' 'Meat Is Murder' tour. Got up from my seat on the back of that august velveteen chair, never stopping to signal my departure, while wave upon new wave of be-cardiganed boys crashed in on His Highness' stage. But a perfect trajectory that had peaked with a top ten chart placing for 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now' was in the past and this was surely the dawn of a new era. Malady, parody, poor chart sales come Saturday… while the 'William, It Was Really Nothing' single had engagingly hard scrapped for the title of Best British Twelve Inch Record Yet (my apologies to 'Blue Monday', but it's b-sides like 'How Soon Is Now?' and 'Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want' that really did invent trainspotters), momentum was lost via six months of reissues, poor recordings ('Shakespeare's Sister') and one 'Coronation Street' sleeve design too many. Sure, the 'NME' still lapped it all up, but whatever next? Legions of spotty student fans, songs about tea and vicars, and none of the original lads or stunning girls down the front at the gigs? Pretty much, I'd say. Six months is a lifetime when you're 14 and life spins at 45rpm. I grew up to resent all those clueless virginal fanboys peddling the lie that 'Frankly, Mr Shankly' made for a better record than 'What Difference Does It Make'.

So cards on the table, Morrissey shaped me. Once an impassioned, impressionable fan. Strictly the handsome days. A time of dark, perfect Smiths singles that hit the pop charts like some beautiful angry bullet. Bang! Bye.

But I've found out you don't ever really get to say goodbye to Morrissey. Truly, this is no easy ride. To be specific, you set off for LA airport for your flight home and your mobile rings and you find out Morrissey is unsure about some of your conversation. His love life is still no comfortable place of reflection, it seems. Worse, Morrissey feels 'ambushed'. Another meeting, another time, over tea at the Dorchester, is probably for the best. A gentleman's agreement must be reached. Curious and curiouser, and heaven knows that's before you factor in this beautifully-formed, madly-contradictive, unique album he's delivered that very week for his new record company. A very special Morrissey record, at least.
But the long goodbye, or non-goodbye, is already part and parcel of the Morrissey mythology. Has been for years. For a start, when he eventually leaves The Smiths, this contrary creature goes and makes two truly classic pop singles (both 'Suedehead' and 'Everyday Is Like Sunday' clearly outstrip all that late-Smiths 'Girlfriend In A Coma', 'Ask Me, Ask Me, Ask Me' fluff, and both - significantly - clearly chart top ten, something that latterly The Smiths would always fail to achieve). No, Morrissey would not be following the simple fate of the rest of the '80s 'Smash Hits' brigade. He'll be hanging around still, keeping a keen eye on things from a home close to London's Regents Park and helping an incredible iconography wagon along with some great sleeve shots of him plus killer quiff. He'll sell a million or two solo records to America while he's about it and attract some colourful Mexican types as new fans.
But then, despite interminable years of attempting to recreate that original 1983 angry/desperate gang spirit - salivating predictably over East End boxers and Kray twins - Morrissey ups sticks, leaves London behind, and from the Hollywood Hills compiles this lovely compilation CD that joins dots between Salford, Louisiana, Trench Town and the notorious East Village. Nico and Bolan rub up and have strange, beautiful offspring. I listen to it in the car for months and marvel at Morrissey's ability to apparently morph once again without ever changing at all. He suddenly seems resonant and relevant again and, interestingly, once more the glossier magazine world begins to plunder his iconographic back pages. And so I resolve to interview Morrissey, to go lounge louchely in his la la land, to tell him that with Wolfgang and Alasdair and the Terry Richardson barbarian all now queuing up with their flash cameras at his door, his time is surely now. It seemed a tidy plan.

PART ONE. LA.
Morrissey, are you aware of what a major fashion icon you've emerged as in the current climate?
Well, it's occasionally whispered to me. I do find it hard to believe since I entered the realm of music as nothing but a snivelling fan. It seems amazing that I could have ever influenced this glamorous world. But I'm getting used to it.
A particular generation that grew up with The Smiths now literally directs some of the world's biggest fashion houses. The kind of photographers who are beating a path to your door now shoot some of the biggest fashion advertising campaigns. Does that feel strange?
Very. And what you say is sincerely very flattering to me. But I simply stumbled into clothes. When the Smiths started, I literally had no money at all and I looked extremely emaciated. And I thought the original physical presentation I gave was one of being completely unattractive. That people decided there was something physically attractive there was a complete accident.
Yet you always wore great jeans and classic black shoes together with women's shirts and fantastic plastic jewellery…
I swear it was an accident. I was just fumbling around and keenly trying to avoid anything that would look to conspicuous.
You looked very conspicuous.
A trick of the light. Maybe you have cataracts.
That whole James Dean thing interests me. The way you were drawn to that strong, classic '50s aesthetic. Your taste was impeccable. Didn't you seek out certain clothes as part of all that?
To a certain degree I was interested in old clothes. It might be a very lazy thing to say, but I could never fault Gucci. The interest in James Dean was purely a physical obsession, and certainly nothing to do with his films or the art he may have striven for. But I was fascinated by the fact that he always looked so good, regardless of what kind of clothes he stumbled into. That was absolutely the extent of the draw.
You loving Gucci almost runs contrary to that '80s student bedsit cliché. I was told you really loved fashion and photography.
I was always fascinated by glamour but I wasn't surrounded by it. I used to avidly seek out American 'GQ' magazines, which was very difficult to find in Central Manchester in the '70s. It was quite expensive too. But I would seek out this magazine almost religiously and I would write to the editor and send them photos of myself… I don't know if the name Michael Schoeffling means anything to you, but he was this astonishingly good-looking model who was on the cover of many of those old 'GQ' issues. He tried to become an actor, made about three films in Hollywood, then went off and had loads of children. He was an absolute hero to me and I used to write to this magazine claiming I would be the next Michael Schoeffling. That kind of glamour completely fascinated me.
The Smiths arrived with this full-formed, very complete aesthetic, I felt. The sleeves alone suggested this very complete universe spanning European art cinema, Hollywood silver screen iconography, dark East Coast Factory superstars - as well as that arty Warholian homoeroticism - and then there was all that very important British socialist-realist influence you took from films like 'A Taste Of Honey'. Your art direction achieved an amazing blend.
Well, it did become the identity. Lyrically it was obviously all about me and nobody else, but the absolute identity of The Smiths also belonged to me because no-one else had any ideas. It really emerged from all the photographs I'd collected and all the books I'd found and kept and taken back to my bedroom for many years. All of those Smiths sleeves had literally been stuck on my bedroom walls during the '70s. The sleeve of 'William, It Was Really Nothing', for example, was of a male figure sitting on a bed next to a huge amplifier and that was a picture I'd ripped from American 'GQ' years earlier. It was actually an advertisement for a sound system and I got caught out for that later on. But that's an example of how much of an impact fashion photography and fashion magazines had on me. I always understood that to make music that was useful or different it would have to be a very strong and loud sound, an assault. The supporting imagery that came with that would add something else. It had very delicate leanings, shall we say.
What would Johnny Marr or the record company say when you'd produce these strong, strange, homoerotic images?
The people at Rough Trade were all Oxbridge drop-outs and all quite unusual people. So they didn't really object these provocative images. But the other three member of The Smiths certainly had objections. They objected to the first album sleeve, for example.
But that cropped image from Andy Warhol's 'Flesh'… it's genius.
Well, you and I know that. But it was a struggle for me. It was often down to a certain degree of bluff on my part and sometimes I would have to bend the truth about certain bits of artwork and what they meant. It was very, very difficult. There really was only one other member of the band and that was Johnny, but the fact is there were no other ideas but mine. And the truth is that the other three members of The Smiths combined couldn't design a brown paper bag.
Would you literally be choosing all the crops and colours and type, or would you have an art director at the record company doing variations for you?
No, a couple of times there was a few options on layout, but I would always have the exact pantones down to the line on all of the artwork. No-one would have any input. Later, when we started releasing a lot of records, I'd be giving Rough Trade written instructios and they'd be delivering what I asked for pretty much.
I believe the quality declined. And that whnole Northern realist thing became a cliché.
You say the British thing's clichéd, but at the time to reference British social problems in film was very rare. People never really looked to that time and that culture to find anything. I felt that I was pointing to all those things for the first time. It didn't exist in pop music. And there wasn't really much depth in pop music at that point.
You never say much about early '80s music, the independent scene immediately prior to The Smiths. You always talk about the '70s and how 1974 and Marc Bolan and The New York Dolls meant everything to you.
People never ask me about that period. And people do normally always ask me the same questions again and again… and I sit politely cross-legged and answer them. But that period just before The Smiths arrived was awkward. You know I'm going to say this, but I found that era meaningless, absolutely meaningless. Which was quite useful because it made me so determined. But it was a barren period.
But it was the era of style magazines, of Athena poster shops opening on every street with so many James Dean movie stills posters. The Smiths were perfect in that context. And there was a very strange post-punk independent scene. I always felt you took the spirit of things like Postcard Records and honed them and twisted them and took them to a whole other level.
That's interesting because you're wrong. That whole scene meant nothing to me. I really didn't notice all that: Orange Juice or Josef K or whoever. How interesting that you're wrong about that! The band Magazine, who grew out of Manchester and moved south, I thought were very interesting. They were fascinating; in fact more so than Howard Devoto's first band Buzzcocks, who seemed to just become too easy once he left. Certainly their music has not stayed with me.
That early-80s scene and sound is very referenced right now. Franz Ferdinand are the prime example. I know you've just chosen them as your support band for your return to Manchester, your 45th birthday concert at G Mex [sic].
Yes, do like Franz Ferdinand a lot. And I'm aware of a new feeling, a new atmosphere in British pop music. There's certainly a tidal change occurring. There's a wave of new enthusiasm that hasn't existed for the last five years and I think Franz Ferdinand are right at the centre of that. You can ramble on about what people do and don't do, what they sound like, but ultimately they either have a certain 'it' or they just don't. And Franz Ferdinand have that 'it'. Physically they're all the same height so their eyes are always meeting each other, they seem to be the same weight so they look fantastic stood together. I think all groups should be like that. The 'it' factor is everything in life, isn't it?

The announcement of the Morrissey/Franz Ferdinand Manchester concert saw all the tickets for the cavernous G Mex sell out within an hour and a half. If that doesn't seem a great cause for celebration, then the fact Morrissey demanded the venue sold no meat during his residency surely was. ("We had it in our contractual demands," he says. "The stench of burgers wafting across the arena would have been very wrong." And not in the homecoming, birthday spirit either.)
But there are other important signs that this summer stands to be a major Morrissey moment, and not just the rekindled cult appeal in advance of a new album. Morrissey's curatorship of the high-profile Meltdown event on London's South Bank will see his taste in music both new and old given a public airing, with much discussion in the broadsheet newspapers guaranteed. In tandem comes the launch of Morrissey's own record label, Attack, an old Trojan imprint that will now issue a new Morrissey-penned song recorded as a single by Nancy Sinatra. It will be followed by any other quirky releases that the notoriously music-mad Steven Patrick sees fit. This busy summer then climaxes as Morrissey returns to the Glastonbury festival for the first time since 1984, when The Smiths played the second stage and served direct notice that there was far more than the appalling weather on the horizon to spoil Echo And The Bunnymen's headline spot.
Alongside the usual big tour plans, it's shaping up to be an impressive return assault, probably testament to the new management now in place and the new record company, Sanctuary, that Morrissey has buddied up with. He likes the fact that he can now release music under the 'Attack' label name and logo, he says. And in that spirit he's changed the title of his carefully-constructed album from 'Irish Blood, English Heart' to 'You Are My Quarry' [sic]. There's a somewhat dodgy, though surely provocative, picture of holding a gun already circulating to promote it.

There are whispers of this Meltdown festival line-up you've been assembling, Morrissey.
Well, yes, I have the last three living members of The New York Dolls together for the first time, doing a set of songs from 1973-74. Which is, of course, a phenomenal piece of history for people like me. And I have the group Sparks doing a set from 1974 too, which is the year I first found them. Then there's Nancy Sinatra, Jane Birkin, Sacha Distel, hopefully Brigitte Bardot and hopefully Françoise Hardy too… I have Alan Bennett doing what he does. Hopefully Maya Angelou, who has almost said yes. Then there's The Libertines, The Ordinary Boys and my close friend Linder, playing solo and not with Ludus for the first time ever. It will all be very interesting. If only for me.
How many hours of music do you listen to now on a normal day?
Probably four or five. I listen obsessively to music - when I wake, lying in the bath and then literally every night. I have this ritual of insanely loud music. For me, it's a very physical thing. I do believe we're an important end of an important era. Unfortunately nothing else ever in your life will affect you like music did in your early teens, and it puts you on a certain course. It's like a love affair. It widens your taste and it broadens your view on everything. It saves you.
You famously talked about 'the ashes of pop already being all around us' on 'The South Bank Show' just after the end of The Smiths. Now you're Mr Meltdown. Any thoughts?
Well, when I made that comment about the 'ashes of pop' I think I was absolutely right, because nothing that's happened since has been terribly original. Anything you like in recent years, you only do so because it sort of reminds you of something or someone you liked previously. When was the last time you heard anything truly startlingly original in pop music?
I'm not sure I look primarily for originality in pop music. With the greatest respect, maybe that's your generation's folly…
But pop music did give us something original in the '60s and the '70s and possibly in the '80s too. Now we just look for groups that are remotely pleasing and then we say that they're 'phenomenal' and their CDs get labelled 'classic'. So yes, standards have plummeted.
You brand all contemporary pop figures 'ignorant' on your new album.
And do you disagree?
Well, to come back to your 'ashes of pop' contention, didn't you feel just a little bit strange when mere months after saying that both acid house and The Stone Roses literally exploded in your hometown?
No. I thought this is exactly what happened in the late '60s and I aligned all of that with the hippy movement. And they all seemed to me exactly like hippies. And they seemed unable to say anything memorable.
So who are you hoping to sign on your Attack label?
Well, Nancy Sinatra will be releasing a fantastic version of 'Let Me Kiss You', which is a song on my new album. Nancy came to London in the mid-90s and asked to see me, for reasons I've never been able to fathom, and we've been friends ever since. Then there's a single called 'I'm Unbearable' by a British singer called James Maker, who was quite vocal in the '80s with a group called Raymonde. It's peculiar because I'm not remotely business-minded. But if I could just hurl out a few pleasing sounds… well, that would be quite delightful.
We're talking CD singles here, or obscure limited seven inches for very trendy people?
Well both, but very trendy people are very important. To me they are. They initiate change. And they're critical and they force people who aren't trendy to try and become trendy which is very, very useful. But top ten hits? Well, that's the dream. Nancy Sinatra hasn't been in the British charts for 27 years, I believe. So it depends on quite how taken the public are, doesn't it?
Beyond your affection for female singers from the '60s, can you name a couple of young female icons you are genuinely attracted to? I mean women under 30, perhaps from film. Women you find attractive…
[There is silence… followed by a loud laughing from across the swimming pool] Well, you heard the answer there. Yes, I'll answer that question next, shall I?

The new Morrissey album, 'You Are The Quarry', is a masterpiece of sorts, and certainly his most accomplished solo record yet. I say this with the assured knowledge that all the critical praise still heaped on his 1994 number one album 'Vauxhall And I' (not to mention the revisionist raving over The Smiths' 'Strangeways, Here We Come' LP) is largely misguided rubbish. Morrissey's first solo album certainly contained a couple of stunning singles, and a few other interesting tunes cropped up this time, but by and large his solo years have been characterised by a drawn-out search for the kind of strong, vital energy he lost with The Smiths. Once Morrissey penned perfect, slightly oblique verses about the Moors Murders and a generation took note. It was no surprise then when Myra made the walls of the Saatchi gallery many years later since, as I commented earlier, both Morrissey's early records and their inspired iconography were perfect, complete and hugely important. By the mid-90s though, the London moribund Morrissey was all 'Boyfriend On The Payroll' [sic] and, worse, predictable choruses about Jack the bloody Ripper.
But this new 'You Are The Quarry' record is a surprise, a revelation. It's an affecting reflection of a unique life, if not a completely unique journey. Rod, Ozzy, Rotten and Robbie have all also shifted sticks to LA, after all, but none of them has ever got close to producing an album of this kind of switchback emotional complexity. The truth about Morrissey and his art is that there is no absolute truth or answer [note how much he loves to use the word 'absolute' himself in interview though]. This man is arguably a tad devious and truculent - as the High Court judge pronounced - when he's thrust into the public eye and yet he's also intensely polite, considered, caring and undeniably charming. The power of Morrissey's best art is all in the contradictions, the tension of opposites. There is no clear answer.
To read through Morrissey's cuttings is to feel like Hannibal Lecter eyeing up a mixed-up, crazy egocentric sociopath. Morrissey writes to the 'NME' in the mid-70s claiming The Ramones are 'average' and years later he claims they were his favourites, that they saved his life. He tells all those '80s cardigan fanboys that 'all reggae is vile' and then reactivates a Trojan imprint and gets all truly suedehead on our arse.

Morrissey, you're a Gemini. Tell me about that.
I am two people. One gregarious and one impossibly shy. And of course there is no third twin, which is the huge pain. That's the problem.
Contradictions - and the deep-felt tension that derives from them - have always been at the core of your best work, I feel. This new album switches between apparent opposites, seems to make links between them, suggests lessons to be learnt and celebrates the complicated beauty of a confused, messy existence. Does it annoy you when critics and writers seem to think there's some simple answer to the whole Morrissey thing?
Well, it's always confusing to me that people who write books about me think they understand the absolute reasons 'why?' People do always think they're solving some great Egyptian puzzle with me, which just isn't the case. They're always delving and digging deeper than necessary, which baffles me. And it's unsettling to read supposedly factual accounts of you and your life from people who have never come within 20 feet of you.
Describe to me the big picture you're trying to convey with this new record.
I was trying to explain how I felt about both Los Angeles and London. Although, interestingly, I still don't know how I feel and I certainly don't have all the answers. I do feel very torn between Los Angeles and Britain, though, in terms of belonging to two places.
The record opens with this very contradictory - yet beautifully so - summation of your feelings about the US, 'America Is Not The World'. You conclude, apparently touchingly, 'America, I love you'.
I do love America, despite all its faults. I can't live with the notion that America is George W. But simply because I can't live with that doesn't mean I despise the place, because I don't, I really do love it. But it isn't the whole world and can't possibly think it's the world. But you know if you watch television here in Los Angeles they really do think America is the whole world, that there's no other feelings or cultures anywhere. It is frightening. But I love America and I can't help that. Also, if I didn't conclude with an affectionate line I think I would be considered a serious threat to American security. In fact, I'm sure I would.
What's the main reason you ended up in LA? To be hobbling about the malls at 90 in a velour tracksuit?
Ah, all those people hobbling around in velour are actually in their 30s. They just look old. But LA and me was absolutely accidental. I didn't think I was going to move here, I was just visiting… then six years later I'm still here. You do have to see LA as a non-tourist. You have to get past all those nasty clichés that every place has. I think the landscape and architecture of LA is breathtaking. I find driving here very liberating.
And which of your cars would you cling hardest to, the Jag or the Aston Martin?
The Jag, because it moves more smoothly. The Jaguar's engine is silent, whereas the Aston Martin sounds a bit like a helicopter.
Do you plan to stay up in the Hollywood Hills in that Clark Gable-esque place? [Morrissey's home was not actually Clark Gable's, but was bought by Gable for Carole Lombard]
I'd actually like to move not too far away from where we are standing now in Santa Monica. I like the lushness and the softness here.
Tell me about the gun imagery, you holding that big gun on the album cover.
I found the idea of a gun shot, as it were, very attractive. And once we'd done the picture I found it very alluring and very strong.
Was it your decision to go with that image?
Totally alone. I don't even talk with friends about that kind of decision. But then every man is an island. And I only have to please myself.
When you work with images, sometimes the wrong or inappropriate image is bizarrely exactly the one that needs to be pushed forward. Was this a case of that, in your eyes?
Yes, exactly. That is the reason for the shot. Provocation can be a very beautiful thing. That's how I see my position. And there is definitely a prey at hand too. 'You Are The Quarry' is actually a little aimed at one person who - no - I won't name. It's not the obvious person. Although it is also a title aimed at my audience in general, saying they are a target for me to win their affection now.
You say on the album that the pressure's on. Do you really feel that?
Yes, very much so. The pressure is on particularly now because the pleasure hasn't gone. I still feel intensely about saying what I want to say through my songs.
The imagery in the song 'Come Back To Camden' intrigued me. It seems to describe the intense love affair you had there.
That song is about a particular person. I have a history, yes. And that whole time in my life is a very emotive period for me. I love Camden and I think it has a particular appeal - peculiar, messy and dusty, yes. But I see something very special there in that small patch in London.
You talk of English pride on the first single from the album. That national pride seems to be something you actually admire in Americans just as much as you detest the jingoism.
That national pride just doesn't exist in England. I know England has a very nasty history of persecuting people and so forth, but I don't understand why people can't be proud of modern Britain. The Germans aren't ashamed of their flag and, given their history, they maybe should be rather more ashamed than the British. I feel very strongly about that song being the first single, even though there are certainly other contenders. Modern Britain has a problem and I do want to make my views known.

PART TWO. THE DORCHESTER HOTEL, LONDON
Almost exactly a week after I bid Morrissey adieu in LA, we are again sat face to face with a tape recorder between us. His hotel suite at The Dorchester is huge, and Morrissey's manner seems at first a little like that of the scolding school master. Not quite the headmaster ritual, although Morrissey manages to remain direct and business-like for at least two minutes. Then he's off and gossiping about the price of a mutual friend's paintings. A couple of issues discussed a week earlier had caused him concern, though. Well, more than a couple in fact, although two issues end up being scrubbed from the record with my agreement, while Morrissey expands on other issues and backs down on a couple of his objections. The contentious stuff? Kind of boyfriend and sex stuff. Nothing special.
But Morrissey's management had also confronted me on my Smiths questioning. Not the fact that I'd asked him to sign a 'Hand In Glove' seven inch or that I'd inquired after his favourite-ever Smiths song, you understand ('Panic', for the record). "Did you ask Morrissey if he was in love with Johnny Marr?" quizzed his concerned LA manager of three months' standing. "Morrissey is not happy. I gotta tell you." Over tea at The Dorchester I ask Morrissey what on earth could he object to in such questioning. At the time he'd replied very effectively and efficiently, and to the negative anyway.
"Well, why doesn't anyone ever assume that Johnny Marr was in love with me?" begins Morrissey. "That perhaps Johnny Marr was in fact madly in love with me but didn't feel he could act on that. Or that he didn't have the courage to ever take it any further."
Do you think that was the case? Or is that not actually the issue at all?
"It's the assumption that's the issue. As it happens, I don't believe any love affair broke up that band. But why assume that I must have loved him and not the other way around?"
So the Johnny Marr affair (that was really nothing) is no longer an issue between us. Morrissey and I, that is. And it's not such a big deal anyway. Not when you consider that a bomb has just killed 201 Spaniards in Madrid and America's dirty war suddenly looks like escalating in a terrifying manner. 'America Is Not The World', indeed.
"Yesterday I walked past the American Embassy in London here," reflects Morrissey, "and it was just completely surrounded by security guards and concrete barriers. And that has become he world of George W. That's what he's given us all and that's a world that is a less safe place, unfortunately."
Morrissey's new record seems more potent to me by the day. I ask him how he feels about a new Spanish government that will pull its troops straight out of Iraq. "I think it's a good thing," he replies. "The Spanish didn't start this thing, they weren't involved in the problem so why should their people suffer because of it? This was George W's invention so he should just get on with it. There's no point in him bringing back American troops now and insisting troops from other countries take their place. That's not fair at all, I am sure there will be a bloodshed in Britain now, it's bound to happen. There will be explosions at a shopping centre very soon, very likely."
And as I listen to Morrissey talk very plainly and very passionately about war, as I listen to him sing about both his love and his hatred for America, I realise that this Morrissey is in many ways a different man from the one who filled all those pages of the 'NME' with never-ending opinion back then. It's a simple change that's occurred. A change that doesn't necessarily equate tidily with the times or with national pride or with anything much whatsoever.

I sense you're actually the happiest now you've ever been, Morrissey, right?
Absolutely, without any shadow of a doubt. It's age that leads to that, I think. You learn to look after yourself and you learn to put everything into perspective. And you learn to care a hell of a lot less about other people and what they think or say.
Do you ever look back and regret any of the anger and the vitriol?
No. I always look back and think I was spot on.
Tell me about depression, Morrissey. I was very moved by the way that this new album, for all its beautifully-honed switchback nature and its poise and balance, ends with the naked statement: 'the squalor of the mind'. And you also warn 'there's a wild man in my head' on my favourite track.
I don't think depression is a very pleasant subject, is it? But I don't believe you can be an intelligent, artistic person and avoid depression. Yes, I have been clinically depressed. I've had prescribed drugs, although I haven't had psychiatric treatment. I took prescribed anti-depressants as a teenager. And Prozac or whatever is now so much a part of modern life that I don't think it's a revelation for me to say any of this. And I do think they're worth a go if you are depressed. I think they can be useful. Occasionally they've helped me.

I don't want to ask Morrissey if he still takes prescribed medication. I don't feel that I want to invade his now happier, private world whatsoever. But I do want to indicate just how much he's helped others for the good. Time to say goodbye. One last question.

How many people have come up to you and told you that you were the reason they became vegetarian?
Oh, 15 million.
So there literally has been thousands upon thousands over the years?
No, 15 million.

There is no saying goodbye to Morrissey. This is a legacy to be reckoned with.

Irish Blood, English Heart is out on May 10 followed by the album You Are The Quarry on May 17 both on Attack! Morrissey will be curating Meltdown at the South Bank Centre from June 11-27.