Morrissey on... his musical heroes

Daily Telegraph: At the Hop Farm Festival in Kent on July 2, you’re headlining above Iggy and The Stooges, Lou Reed and Patti Smith – all of whom were among your favourite artists when you were a teenager in the 1970s. Does this line-up feel like the realisation of some mad adolescent dream, or do you get less carried away by such things, now that you’re older?

Morrissey: I feel less carried away because most of the people I ever wanted to meet I have met, and also generally it’s thought I pieced Hop Farm together but I didn’t, I simply joined in. So it isn’t a Morrissey Meltdown. It isn’t me gathering together all the people I love. It’s just a coincidence that most of the people I greatly admire.

Daily Telegraph: In 1976, when you were 17, you wrote a letter to Melody Maker in which you said, “British punk rock is second to the New York equivalent, in that it does not possess the musical innovation… Even the most prominent [British punk bands] are hardly worthy of serious musical acceptance.” Do you still feel that British punk bands were far inferior to the New York bands?

Morrissey: No, I don’t. I think the New York punk bands, as you term them, led the way and I would be very angered by the fact that a lot of British punk bands wouldn’t give credit where it was due. I didn’t really see the British punk movement, if that’s what it was, as wildly original, because I had been listening so intently to all the New York music since 1973, really. So I thought everyone should give due nod and courtesy to New York. A lot of people didn’t do that and it angered me. But so many of the British punk bands I really enjoyed. I was always very impressed by the Sex Pistols. I saw their very first three gigs in Manchester, which was 1976, and I thought they were fantastic. I always loved them.

Daily Telegraph: So what do you think now, when you turn on the TV and see John Lydon starring in an advert for butter? That’s not terribly punk, is it?

Morrissey: I think we have to assume that he can more or less do whatever he likes, really. I don’t see the point in the butter ad, and I would imagine if I did a butter ad I wouldn’t expect to survive. No, I don’t think so.

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“When Morrissey got us back together in 2004 for the Meltdown Festival he was curating, we never really thought past that,” admits Sylvain, now in his late 50s. “But the Dolls is a very magical thing — it’s really organic in the way that we work, and not really rocket science. Like, hey, it works? Cool! If it doesn’t? Trash the son of a bitch! We come from a long history of live performing, and that was the way we did it on our first album with Todd Rundgren, and that’s the way we’re doing it now. So we never really thought about what would happen when we regrouped — that the audience just would not let this baby go!” Reader Comments

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