The piece from 'The Guardian' website is printed as a full-page-3 stunner in todays paper ~ "The slight that never goes out?"
It's all subjective of course, but having just read yesterdays insufferably smug and cosy 'Guardian Interview' with Jarvis Cocker ("the heir to Alan Bennet"...apparently), this report of Morrissey possibly letting loose his legal eagles on the NME was strangely thrilling. For all Cocker's talk of being this awkward outsider artist, he's actually snugly adored by the mainstream and indie media alike.
Morrissey is the same awkward bugger now as he was in '83. Some may not like the myriad forms in which that 'awkwardness' manifests itself, but if he wasn't like that we wouldn't be getting the art he produces. I may not want to go for a pint with him. I don't need to. I have friends for that purpose. What I need from artists is not 'great bloke' but 'great art'. Shunned by Mail and Guardian alike, NME, BBC, EDL and LMHR, he still cannot truly find a place. He's never going to slip in to the revered elder statesman figure of yer Weller, Cave, Costello et al. And it's not just a question of the work. There's something more.
Amidst the 2004 euphoria of the 'Quarry' comeback I always had a queasy sensation that this will turn again, and the queasiness came, I think, from an impatience just to get on with it and turn. I first came to Morrissey in '88/'89 as the media halo was dulling. I became obsessed with art that allcomers were saying was worthless - 'Listen to the new Kingmaker single instead'!, etc. So I feel perfectly at home with the general loathing that currently abounds.
I wonder when Justice Tug-on-that (to be played by Peter Butterworth at full pelt in the motion picture) is due to dispense his wisdom...