Dump her on the doorstep, girl

An excerpt from Saint Morrissey by Mark Simpson

“The Northern Woman, she’s like the Galapagos Turtle. She’s an entirely different species.” - Alan Bennett

“Morrissey is a woman trapped inside a man’s body.” - Tony Wilson

“Tony Wilson is a man trapped inside a pig’s body.” - Morrissey

“There isn’t another man like me anywhere. I’m one on his own.”

- Shelagh Delaney, A Taste of Honey

THE MOST ARRESTING thing about Morrissey’s work, the thing that grabs you like a particularly overzealous store detective, is that voice. It’s a voice which drives some to distraction and others to infatuation. Love it or loathe it, it is a voice on its own. In an industry full of stars who started out by imitating their predecessors so badly that they were mistaken for original talent, Morrissey’s voice seems utterly, shockingly unique. Aurally and authorally.

That oddly affective/effective self-possessed wobbliness, which disgruntled parents, rightly worried that their daughter or son is listening to something deeply unhealthy and unhygienic, have described in irate letters to the star as the sound of a man ‘having his legs sawn off’, is the signature of someone who is determined to sing, but at the same time half-reluctant, driven but self-doubting, inspired but repressed. A soft boy who has made some very tough choices — a choirboy who has chosen his own damnation.

All underscored, comically, mockingly, by his understated-but-unmistakable hard, sharp northern vowels and softly cynical-lyrical, almost Chaucerian consonants and vowels (and in a darkened unnderpasss I thought oh Godd my channce has cum at lasst [phoenetically typing, that is]), delivering that native black humour (‘and if a ten ton truck kills the both of us/to die by your side/the pleasure, the privilege is mine’), that self-promoting self-deprecation (‘Well me without clothes/a nation turns its back and gags’), and that oddly naturalistic poetic pop vernacular (‘So stay on my arm, you little charmer’).

In fact, the reason so many people hate Morrissey’s voice is precisely because it is so dramatically personal, confiding in their ear that he is not just another jobbing popster or busking entertainer, thank you very much. The forthrightness and candour of his voice is an instantly recognisable challenge that its melodiousness merely makes more pronounced; it demands that you listen to it, really listen to it instead of merely hearing it, at the same time conveying the impression that if you don’t like it, well, you can bloody well lump it. If you happen to be too stupid or too Southern to get the joke it is always telling against itself, there is nothing more abrasive and offensive than Morrissey’s voice.

In a (regional) sense, of course, Morrissey’s ‘voice’ is not really so unique. In fact, it’s rather common — as common as you can get, according to some Southern snobs. Morrissey’s ‘voice’, you see, is that of the Northern Woman.

However common the Northern Woman might be, she is still a very special creature, thriving only in damp, cool, slightly backward climes where people actually talk to one another at bus stops and check-out queues, and where you’re never more than a ten-minute walk from a good fish and chip shop. She has a certain intensity mixed with a certain breeziness, a certain desperation mixed with a lot of self-irony — perhaps the product of her awareness of her contradictions. She doesn’t suffer fools gladly, but she doesn’t always make sense herself. She is direct, but frequently overdone. She is a survivor, but strangely tragic. She is strong, but touchingly vulnerable. She is all woman, but sometimes there seems to be more than a little man in her. She’s a bit of a queer fish is the Northern Woman, and she is Morrissey.

I have a talent for eavesdropping and it’s amazing what you learn while waiting to pay for your fruit juice.

Melody Maker, 1987

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