marksimpson.com

“All Saints should be pre­sumed guilty until proved inno­cent.“
- George Orwell

“I was born in Manchester’s Cen­tral Library. In the Crime sec­tion.“
- Mor­ris­sey

Mark Simpson’s acclaimed ‘psycho-bio’ of England’s most charm­ing — and alarm­ing — pop star

Trans­lated into Ital­ian, Finnish, Bul­gar­ian, Greek and even American!

Like a vil­lain who wants to be caught, or a hero that wants to be feted, Mor­ris­sey has pro­vided count­less clues to his per­son­al­ity in his peer­less, star­tlingly can­did song lyrics and in innu­mer­able hilar­i­ous and provoca­tive inter­views.

At once Devil’s Advo­cate and Coun­sel for Can­on­iza­tion, Simp­son offers the finest psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­file of England’s most intel­li­gent, most mis­un­der­stood, most loved, most under­val­ued, most charm­ing and most alarm­ing pop star.

NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE

AMAZON US

AMAZON UK

Peter Watts, Time Out London:

“Before fame embraced him, Mor­ris­sey wrote a pair of fan­boy pam­phlets for his lost heroes New York Dolls and James Dean. One imag­ines they would have read rather like this: duti­ful biog­ra­phy giv­ing way to wide-eyed ado­ra­tion, heart­felt pleas and catty, with­er­ing asides, all couched in arch, witty prose. How­ever, by call­ing this glo­ri­ously shame­less biog ‘Saint Mor­ris­sey’, author Simp­son pre-empts crit­i­cism of hagiog­ra­phy while simul­ta­ne­ously giv­ing the last Eng­lish pop star the ven­er­a­tion he’s demanded dur­ing 20 years of self-inflicted martyrdom.

Indeed, it’s an odd­ity that, despite the many fas­ci­nat­ing faces he presents to press and pub­lic, the for­mer Smiths front­man has so far only been prop­erly biogra­phied by Johnny Rogan. Simpson’s ‘psycho-bio’ offers a hand­some coun­ter­point to that sober doorstep, choos­ing not to exam­ine the life to explain the art, but instead study­ing the lyrics to cel­e­brate the man. The result is a deli­ciously deviant deification.

Simpson’s love-letter takes in love, lit­er­acy, class, vio­lence, sex and all the other sta­ples with which Mor­ris­sey, and Eng­land, is obsessed, and in the process casts a caus­tic eye over the coun­try and pop vac­uum Morrissey’s defec­tion to Los Ange­les has cre­ated. It’s a provoca­tive and pre­co­cious read, and, as he really starts to let rip, one senses that Simp­son thor­oughly enjoyed him­self in the writ­ing of it. Smiths fans will love it, and even Mor­ris­sey him­self might arch an eye­brow in appreciation.”

Praise for Saint Mor­ris­sey

‘Simp­son is funny, clever, hon­est, irrev­er­ent and ego­tis­ti­cal: quite the match for Mor­ris­sey. More biogra­phies should be writ­ten this way.‘
– Lau­rence Phe­lan, Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day Books of the Year

“The eru­dite Simp­son gives a com­pelling account his youth­ful — and adult — fas­ci­na­tion with the bard of Whal­ley Range/Beverly Hills… A nim­ble essay which gives fan­dom a good name.“
– Ian Git­tings, Guardian Books of the Year

“Absorb­ing… illu­mi­nat­ing… touch­ingly fer­vent… With the arrival of this book Morrissey’s beat­i­fi­ca­tion is surely com­plete.“
- Fiona Sturges, Inde­pen­dent

“Saint Mor­ris­sey is a crack­ing read, almost an instruc­tional hand­book on how to develop, deal with, and finally escape an obses­sion.“
– Peter Parker, The Boston Phoenix

‘Enter­tain­ing and per­cep­tive… writ­ten with real flair.‘
– Steve Jel­bert, The Times

‘Simp­son writes with enough panache to make most of his peers toss their lap­tops into the waste dis­posal and weep.‘
- Simon Price, Inde­pen­dent on Sunday

‘No one has writ­ten this sen­si­tively or intel­li­gently about Mor­ris­sey, the hold he has main­tained on a noto­ri­ously slip­pery seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion has some­times seemed to the unini­ti­ated, overblown. No less than the ruf­fi­ans he and Genet ele­gized, Mor­ris­sey has often been mis­un­der­stood, if not exco­ri­ated — as has Simp­son.‘
– Brian Pera, ‘Saint else­where’, San Fran­cisco Bay Area Guardian

‘A fit­ting, daz­zling, hand­some trib­ute.… I have never read a book before like this: every page or two, I wanted to stop and talk about what Simp­son had writ­ten with some­one else – I wanted to dis­cuss, argue, com­plain, gasp, share the expe­ri­ence. Mostly, I wanted to laugh. Con­sid­er­ing that this is a book about a man whose iso­la­tion, mor­bid­ity and alien­ation is leg­endary, this book made me want to be socia­ble… Read this book.‘
- Der­mod Moore, Hot Press

‘An amus­ingly par­ti­san work, glis­ten­ing with hyper­bole and extrav­a­gant phrases, but always acute.’ — Sukhdev Sandhu, Daily Tele­graph

‘A superb rock­u­men­tary of Mor­ris­sey. Witty, ador­ing, styl­ish, intel­lec­tu­ally water­tight.’ — Paul Flynn, Atti­tude

‘A provoca­tive and pre­co­cious read.… Smiths fans will love it, and even Mor­ris­sey him­self might arch an eye­brow in appre­ci­a­tion.’ — Peter Watts, Time Out

‘There is a cor­ner of Blighty that is for­ever Mor­ris­sey, and for its lugubri­ous inhab­i­tants, this book is a dream come true — a lov­ingly crafted and thor­oughly insight­ful tour de Moz. An absolute must for those whose lives were ruined my His Mis­er­able­ness, yet who laugh in the face of bliss­ful unful­fill­ment.’ - Michael Williams, X Ray

‘Like his sub­ject, incur­able super-fan Simp­son is con­stantly amus­ing and provoca­tive; he also excels at inter­pret­ing. Even the most com­mit­ted Morrissey-bore will find some­thing new in the analy­sis of lyrics, and the sur­round­ing ephemera, from early sleeve art to the dodgem greasers he has in his band nowa­days, is illu­mi­nated with learned intu­ition.… A book Mor­ris­sey will claim to hate, but secretly love.’ - Ian Har­ris­son, Mojo

‘Saint Mor­ris­sey is the first book-length, seri­ous, insight­ful and intel­lec­tu­ally valid analy­sis of this pop curios­ity who has proved to be dif­fi­cult to place within any cat­e­gory in the pop insti­tu­tion.‘
– Antti Nylen , Eurozine.com

‘Saint Mor­ris­sey says more… than a thou­sand inter­views with cousins and pri­mary teach­ers ever could.’ - Lon­don Review of Books

‘The book’s best achieve­ment is it mir­rors its sub­ject in being pre­ten­tious with­out being pompous, and tak­ing things very very seri­ously while at the same time rel­ish­ing its own absur­dity with a con­stant self-lacerating wit. It is under no illu­sions its sub­ject is a spite­ful, dis­hon­est, dif­fi­cult sod but loves him more, not less for it. As the man finally returns with a new album after seven long years, all those ner­vous fanat­ics pray­ing for a new Vaux­hall and I (rather than a Kill Uncle) would be well advised to have a copy of this book by your bed­side to remind you of the child­ish stu­pid­ity and effort­less bril­liance of your obses­sion. It will prove you’re not mad after all; or if you are at least you’re in enter­tain­ing com­pany.‘
– Ben Granger, Spike.com mag­a­zine

‘Dump her on the doorstep, girl’ - excerpt from Saint Mor­ris­sey.

Simpson’s bus-pass c. ‘Strange­ways Here We Come’