posted by davidt on Thursday August 04 2005, @11:00AM
Belligerent Ghoul sends the link:

Morrissey's drab look by Seb Ramsey, Manchester Online

BACK IN TOWN: MozzaHEAVEN knows I'm middle-aged now...

There was a time when music legend Morrissey would rather have cut off his quiff than join shoppers in Manchester's poshest stores.

But it seems the boy from Stretford is coming of age.

The cap is more golf club than Salford lads club. And the former Smiths frontman, with albums such as The Queen Is Dead to his credit, has apparently ditched Oldham Street in favour of upmarket spots to splash the cash.

With a massive bag of perfumes and colognes from "Acqua Di Parma" at Selfridges, it certainly looks like the 46-year-old is soothing his tortured soul with a hefty dose of retail therapy.
---
Update: 08/05 15:45 GMT: scan of photo/article that appeared in the Manchester Evening News, Aug. 3, 2005 posted on the general board by Damian.
---
eatmoretoast also writes:
I hear that Morrissey's picture (wearing flat cap and glasses) (scan of pic from Naomi) is in the Aug. 3rd Sun describes him as looking like "Jim Bowen".

Non UK fans will not be familiar with Jim Bowen - he presented a game show on UK tv years back ("Bullsye")..

I'm sure that there is no resemblence - "The Sun" is an awful newspaper too..
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  • He looks so different with that hat on, infact I don't think I've ever seen him with a hat on, he actually looks freakishly like my Uncle in that photo, and very old.
    Anonymous -- Thursday August 04 2005, @11:08AM (#173869)
    • Re:wow by deaf witness (Score:1) Thursday August 04 2005, @11:23AM
      • Re:wow by Anonymous (Score:0) Thursday August 04 2005, @12:13PM
        • Re:wow by Anonymous (Score:0) Thursday August 04 2005, @01:24PM
          • Re:wow by Anonymous (Score:0) Thursday August 04 2005, @01:51PM
            • Re:wow by WAYNEV (Score:1) Friday August 05 2005, @12:41AM
              • Re:wow by Anonymous (Score:0) Saturday August 06 2005, @01:45PM
              • Re:wow by Fan Anomaly (Score:1) Sunday August 07 2005, @02:03AM
  • God , i was like ...
    where is morrissey
    after a 3rd scan
    i figured out it was him
    on the left side, right ?

    markmustb1
    Anonymous -- Thursday August 04 2005, @11:20AM (#173872)
  • I think Morrissey looks swell in that photo. I think he has the charm of Tobey Maguire and the elegance of The Style Council.

    I always imagined having tea with Morrissey, and that photo comes close to my dream.

    Anyway, I am tired of seeing Morrissey in a suit (even if it is from a GQ photo shoot)- I can't distinguish Brandon Flowers from Morrissey when they both suit up.

    That Maladjusted cover wasn't terrible, either.

    He will always be handsome, and always cool. And the glasses are *so* James Dean (from his basketball days)-

    With love,

    Ken Stavitzke
    sycophantic_slag -- Thursday August 04 2005, @11:30AM (#173878)
    (User #3940 Info)
    "And I just can't explain/ So I won't even try to."
  • This is not news. Alot of folks spotted Morrissey in a flatcap when he toured the UK last year. Even Morrissey needs a day-off from grooming his hair. I thought he looked spiffy.

    So he supports businesses in Manchester by shopping there. Why would anyone fault him for that? Even he admitted in an interview that the city has changed.

    Retail therapy, indeed.

    mozmic_dancer -- Thursday August 04 2005, @11:43AM (#173882)
    (User #11277 Info)
    "I am the fun and the fair, on a Mozsite for the criminally insane..."
  • Oh dear, whatever happened to the svelte, handsome and charming young man with the high head of full brown hair? Sorry to say but mozza looks dreadful - old, gaunt, tired and frumpy. Hang the stylist indeed!
    Anonymous -- Thursday August 04 2005, @12:02PM (#173885)
    • Re:Oh dear by Anonymous (Score:0) Thursday August 04 2005, @03:01PM
  • what is the word for someone OPPOSITE of a pedophile??

    i guess that's me then...
    Anonymous -- Thursday August 04 2005, @12:09PM (#173888)
    • Re:hmm... by Anonymous (Score:0) Thursday August 04 2005, @12:16PM
      • Re:hmm... by Anonymous (Score:0) Thursday August 04 2005, @03:14PM
    • Re:hmm... by Anonymous (Score:0) Friday August 05 2005, @12:58AM
    • Re:hmm... by EEP (Score:1) Friday August 05 2005, @02:45AM
  • "hang the stylist...", so stupid.

    somehow i dont think moz wanted to be noticed. good for him.
    Anonymous -- Thursday August 04 2005, @12:17PM (#173891)
  • stop being so harsh. Every person with a bad lighting can look dreadful. I'm sure it's just a bad photo angle and nothing more.
    Anonymous -- Thursday August 04 2005, @12:21PM (#173892)
    • Re:Oh please... by glamorous shoplifter (Score:1) Thursday August 04 2005, @01:19PM
  • He's 46.

    Do you want him to go and get plastic surgery like Simon Le Bon?
    Anonymous -- Thursday August 04 2005, @12:26PM (#173897)
    • Re:Get over it by Anonymous (Score:0) Thursday August 04 2005, @03:56PM
    • Re:Get over it by Anonymous (Score:0) Sunday August 07 2005, @01:47AM
  • Not Dark Yet (Score:1, Insightful)

    I think we have to face the fact that Morrissey is getting older - and will carry on doing so! Certainly, in the 'Sun' photo he is hardly recognisable when compared to the 'handsome devil' of the 'Vauxhall and I' cover. But then, so what? Morrissey will not get any younger. What counts is the music he makes in his twilight years - and I seriously hope he DOES continue to make music into old age, as I think his ruminations on the fading of the light could be spectacular. Not that he's anywhere near there yet - he's got a good few years of middle age yet, but I just hope he carries on making music for as long as he can. There's so much he can do! Forget the Moz of The Smiths - he is gone. Even the Moz of 'November Spawned A Monster' is gone. The 'current' and 'future' Moz could make some wonderful, reflective albums if he pulls his finger out and doesn't rest on his laurels (as he did on 'YATQ', sadly)

    If you look at a photo of Bob Dylan now, a gaunt, wrinkled old man has replaced the wiry beatnik of yore, and yet in 'Time Out Of Mind' and 'Love And Theft' especially, he is making glorious music.

    Likewise, the great J Cash - a white-haired, withered wheelchair-bound spectre for his final five years, but that didn't stop him from delivering music of such skyscraping calibre as 'Hurt', 'The Man Comes Around' and 'The Mercy Seat'.

    John Cale and Nick Cave are also excellent examples of older artists who are still thriving creatively. And Springsteen to - I believe he will go the stripped down acoustic bluesy route as he enters his late 50s/60s (the 'Devils And Dust' tour certainly indicates this - the acoustic versions of 'I'm On Fire' and 'Brilliant Disguise' are fab!) and I also think that stripped down Springsteen could be spectacular.

    As always, the music is everything. Moz can still look distinguised in the right light, but gone are the days when he can be seen as the epitome of youthful outsiderdom. And so what? I believe he will make some of his very best albums in his twilight years if he cares to do so. Eventually, the wounds of the court case will subside - I think his reflections on a life lived and growing older will be fascinating, I really do. So let's hope he carries on making records to the end and really does become the 'alternative Sinatra'. He does need new musicians and producers though - or, at the very least, he needs Boz and Alain to supply new ideas!

    Viva Morrissey!
    Anonymous -- Thursday August 04 2005, @12:34PM (#173899)
  • FAir enough, Morrissey wants to do a bit of shopping in The City Centre. The Sun always try and get the worst ever photos and angles of the people they spot - and then come up with a stupid storyline like this. I wouldn't expect Morrissey to go to the shops in a suit and with his quiff up. How many times has there been stories about somebodys (famous) bad skin, spots, greasy hair or sweaty armpits??!!
    shoplifter71 -- Thursday August 04 2005, @01:03PM (#173905)
    (User #14228 Info)
  • How many times are they going to continue to mis-quote Heaven Knows... and Panic in an effort to be witty? This seems to happen in every article about Moz.
    It's becoming quite boring.... as boring as being surprised that someone looks older than they used to.
    everybody's lost -- Thursday August 04 2005, @01:28PM (#173912)
    (User #12791 Info)
    ...a chat with you and somehow, death loses its sting.
  • the only one? (Score:2, Insightful)

    Is there anyone else who thinks compared to that "Tiger Army" picture and the "Pink Shirt" photo this is actually a very nice post-46th-birthday picture of our Moz? I thought he looked a bit unhealthy and bedraggled in those other two, but this one seems to reassure me that he's in somewhat good health (not that my opinion means much in the grand scheme).

    Tabloids are all the same, aren't they -- ready to jump on a person for aging as if it were a crime. Its no wonder plastic sergeons thrive. Anyway, even if he was just Steven Morrissey the librarian I'd say he was a terribly handsome man nonetheless.
    mrRoboto -- Thursday August 04 2005, @04:48PM (#173951)
    (User #14079 Info)
  • So many cynics. I think he looks quite dapper.
    Sharron Needles -- Thursday August 04 2005, @05:22PM (#173955)
    (User #762 Info)
    Inside every adult male is a denied little boy -Nancy Friday
    • Re:strange by Natissa (Score:1) Friday August 05 2005, @04:46PM
      • Re:strange by Sharron Needles (Score:1) Friday August 05 2005, @06:53PM
        • Re:strange by Natissa (Score:1) Friday August 05 2005, @08:08PM
          • Re:strange by Natissa (Score:1) Saturday August 06 2005, @03:47PM
  • pretty cool pic i'd say. northern dog-breeder meets florida golfer. it recalls several drab outfits he's worn on tv docs. but nothing quite hides the magic. i spotted him in around '91 in knightsbridge, 'hiding' under his wide-brimmed hat. it might have worked on people who wouldn't recognise him anyway, but his eyes were so piercing from under the brim that he was unmistakeable.

    poor moz though - every tabloid story starts with 'heaven knows he's miserable now', which sums them up: all they do is celebrate other people's misery (real or invented), and truly miserable people buy them. it's good that he still provokes the sun's mockery. they've been on his case since 'suffer little children'.
    methadone -- Thursday August 04 2005, @06:13PM (#173961)
    (User #12826 Info)
  • The Harsh Truth... (Score:2, Insightful)

    of the camera eye... yes, cameras, especially when you aren't 19 any longer, can build or destroy your face - especially with the extra help of excessive sunlight, lips that are pursed, eyes tightened to avoid the sun...with an aging hat as cherry on the top for the tabloid-style magisines, you know, those made for people who can't understand beauty, sensuality as something coming from within. This kind of beauty has always been Morrissey's less than usual case: even in the days when he was so skinny a breeze could knock him over, he brilliantly exhaled this kind of beauty. In ancient as well as in actual pictures, his beauty always faught against and won over esthetic constraints. It takes no more than a look at a shot taken a year ago to confirm this, when, during the opening of "Jack the Ripper", he opens his arms and lowers his face, and that is one of the most magnetic shots ever taken from him. His sensuality (beauty) is highly emotional, and that comes to prove that beauty has, even despite him being vain (or having been so), no direct link with age or physique, even if his did help. Otherwise, you couldn't explain why those fans still try their jump on the stage to come closer to this magnetism. In ancient Greece, Sappho, a woman poet, who apparently was short and who slightly limped, had countless adorers, men and women, young and old, at her feet. Her songs had the same aura of lashing sensuality and cutting humanism Morrissey's has. Nevertheless, at 50, even when a young harper pursued her, she was still disgusted with her aged body. Yes, it is sad bodily beauty fades and abandons ardent people, but these same people continue to have that strange power to seduce the masses.

    I'll bet you Morrissey can be a bag of wrinkles within a 10 years'time (although highly unlikely) but he will have that "love that is like a needle in the eye". Not even he can help it...it's under the skin, eg. in his body posture, his voice, his gaze,...

    ps: who said 46 is (that?) old by the way? I hate to think what 66 looks like in the tabloid eyes - mummys or decayed walking corpses...boo!

       
    Mrs. Woolf -- Thursday August 04 2005, @06:24PM (#173962)
    (User #14157 Info)
  • I hate to remind you all of this, but the man we lovingly refer to as Morrissey is a 46 year old Irish man (Yes I know he was born in Manchester, of Irish parents [my uncle was his dad's Best Man btw...happy to share photos over a Guiness Moz!] but to the majority of the Irish community that makes him Irish [no matter what he thinks about the nationality of his heart]).

    If you would like to "Benchmark" him, do not benchmark against his teenage years, but pop into any Irish Club on any given night any ask the 46 year old male customers to make themselves known to you. THEN COMPARE!

    Out of interest, has anyone observed U2 recently? There!

    Always true to you (and the offer of the Guiness still stands mate....I'll even pay!)
    Sheridan Whitehead -- Thursday August 04 2005, @08:15PM (#173976)
    (User #11265 Info)
    A charming man
  • I almost choked on my own saliva! He looks even more awful than I do. Hang the stylist indeed.
    and2rew -- Friday August 05 2005, @02:06AM (#174009)
    (User #8232 Info)
  • what is wrong with you people?!!! he looks smashing! this cap looks great on him, in fact, he should hide the quiff (it's not what it used to be) with a cap any time.

    fashion victim
    Anonymous -- Friday August 05 2005, @03:31AM (#174015)
  • He is not Morrissey, he is my neighbour Mr Laurent from France!
    Anonymous -- Friday August 05 2005, @03:58AM (#174018)
  • 20 years on (Score:2, Insightful)

    We really can't expect him to stay the same as he was in 84/85 - can we? I mean, wouldn't it be a little scary to see a 46 year old man running around with a bush hanging out of his jeans and an unnaturally high quiff flopping in the breeze?

    He looks his age, acts his age, and seem to be reasonably happy. What's the matter that? :) We should be happy for him!
    hand in glove -- Friday August 05 2005, @04:40AM (#174020)
    (User #827 Info)
    "Sometimes things fall apart so that better things can fall together" - Marilyn Monroe
  • Come on, we are assuming this is an insult, but Jim Bowen is a legend!

    Could this be the look Morrissey was actually after? I'd like to think he was a massive fan of Bullseye.

    "Come on, lets 'ave a look at what you could've won!" Classic!
    Richey <[email protected]> -- Friday August 05 2005, @05:56AM (#174027)
    (User #13337 Info)
  • Stop comparing the man to his younger self!!! He's brilliant, and that has nothing to do with his looks. He has a sexy voice, and that has nothing to do with his looks either!! Let's just hope he continues to write and sing.

    BTW, he still looks fabulous.

    Anonymous -- Friday August 05 2005, @06:06AM (#174029)

  • I can imagine him wearing white Adidas with blue stripes matching that cap.
    palare -- Friday August 05 2005, @08:14AM (#174052)
    (User #152 Info | http://worldofabrahan.com/)
    where the world's ugliest boy became what you see...
  • So our Dionysus is aging along with the rest of us.

    Personally, I find Moz to be more intriguing in these later years. It is hard enough to age gracefully, but how much harder when you personify youth and beauty? Now is the time in a career when you find out what an artist is made of. When I listen to Quarry, I hear a man whose blood still boils, who is still vital and whose voice is at its most compelling. Beauty fades, but genius is eternal.

    He is still the most glamorus man on the planet, in the truest sense of the word!

           
    Anaesthesine -- Friday August 05 2005, @11:20AM (#174088)
    (User #14203 Info)
    If Moz did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
  • Can I distract everyone for a moment with some random titbits? I was required to go to Bath, England last week for training etc, and at Bristol airport, while waiting for a taxi, the song-writer/guitarist from Jack L., a decent Irish cabaret/pop band, joined me to the same venue, recalling a brief encounter with Morrissey who was accompanied by his friendly solicitor, at the 1998 Hot Press Awards in Belfast. May you be involved in a court-case where you are in the right!, is a Yiddish curse according to an essay in a book by David Mamet that I brought with me, in which he also reveals the source of the word Lollapolooza, as per the cancelled Indie festival Morrissey was supposed to headline last year. It’s a gambling term for an Old Cat, someone who cannily plays all the odds using all available resources, rather than strictly by the rules of the game, in a 1955 book by M. MacDougall: “Gamblers don’t Gamble”.

    A few days later I met Aled, the sound engineer behind Aziz Ibrahim’s album “Longsight to Lahore”, produced a few years back in Manchester I think, which included collaborators Paul Wellar, and Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke.

    I did get to see the Roman baths, with its inscriptions in a font like Morrissey uses, and went on a hilarious guided walk ‘Bizarre Bath’ that I’d recommend. I also came across a bargain book called “The Power of the Pendulum” which mentions Dr Raudive, who released that record of dead people from which Morrissey borrowed. Since the cricket rumour, I liked the thought of sharing the same land-mass as Moz for a few days, and it’s some evidence for the 7 degrees of separation theory. I hope he enjoys the Northern grey skies and familiar folk, with his distinguished look, paying no heed to begrudging media pests. There may be ‘a place for everyone in The Sun who has the will to chase one’ but unfortunately there seems to be a place even for people who don’t as well!
    goinghome -- Friday August 05 2005, @12:44PM (#174100)
    (User #12673 Info)
  • "And when he took to the stage with a thistle hanging from his crotch instead of a thorn in his side the crowd knew they were about to witness something special.

    And watching this genius at work was a pleasure to behold and a stark reminder of just how bland and unimaginative the music industry has become..."
    Anonymous -- Friday August 05 2005, @03:20PM (#174117)
  • This british newspaper is just trash to wipe the ass...
    Anonymous -- Friday August 05 2005, @03:48PM (#174120)
  • Sonnet 83
    "I never saw that you did painting need,
    And therefore to your fair no painting set;
    I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
    The barren tender of a poet's debt:
    And therefore have I slept in your report,
    That you yourself, being extant, well might show
    How far a modern quill doth come too short,
    Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
    This silence for my sin you did impute,
    Which shall be most my glory being dumb;
    For I impair not beauty being mute,
    When others would give life, and bring a tomb.
    There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
    Than both your poets can in praise devise."

    Also I wonder if Morrissey was inspired for the opening lines of “Shoplifters..” by a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning that starts “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Dunno if she was a kleptomaniac or not though!

    goinghome -- Friday August 05 2005, @03:49PM (#174121)
    (User #12673 Info)
  • I know how he looks to me forever.

    You are beautiful Morrissey and you know how.

    That is not YOU believe me, I'm sure you know anyway; but you are just sublime, in case you needed reminding.

    Oh this wicked world. The Camera does lie more than you would ever know.

    LLLOVE FOREVER

    Worthless I know, but sincerely meant nonetheless.

    Honest X
    Anonymous -- Friday August 05 2005, @07:16PM (#174137)
  • I hope I look as good as Morrissey does when I'm forty-something.
    The vegetarian diet does him good. He looks healthy.
    lg -- Friday August 05 2005, @08:27PM (#174147)
    (User #12253 Info)
    Friendship is the Love that never dies.
  • I think Morrissey looks divine I want one for myself!
    Anonymous -- Saturday August 06 2005, @06:55AM (#174171)
  • This website is so like a newspaper!!!
    Anonymous -- Saturday August 06 2005, @07:09AM (#174172)
  • you're all, like, he looks great for his age, blah, blah... he's only 46!!! it's not like he's in his 70s for crying out loud!
    Anonymous -- Saturday August 06 2005, @08:17AM (#174175)
  • I think he looks adorable! I keep reading references to cologne though, and I'm quite allergic. Not that that'll be a deterrent when I meet him someday.
    anonomoz -- Saturday August 06 2005, @03:32PM (#174209)
    (User #14132 Info)
  • I think Morrissey looked lovely in that photo.It just goes to show how shallow some people are.I think Morrissey is beautiful and I always will.I am not just talking about his looks(though I think he`s incredibly handsome)I am also talking about his beautiful heart and soul.Only Morrissey could write such beautiful songs because he does have a lovely heart and soul.
    tibby -- Saturday August 06 2005, @06:44PM (#174218)
    (User #2713 Info)
    ~I am a poor freezingly cold soul so far from where I intended to go ~I love Morrissey
  • The eyes are the windows of the soul.
    I've seen his.
    I LOVE YOU MORRISSEY
    FOREVERMORE X
    Anonymous -- Saturday August 06 2005, @07:41PM (#174220)
  • Did you recognized that Moz is having a ring in HIS LEFT RING FINGER!

    Take a look at this picture again...
    Anonymous -- Sunday August 07 2005, @01:55AM (#174232)
  • Moz said, long ago, that if he got to 50, it would "imply a lack of resolve, or something".

    Ha!

    (LOVE YOU MOZZER) :p
    Anonymous -- Sunday August 07 2005, @02:26AM (#174238)
  • this don't look like him, or at least it don't look like the man I used to love. Which only saddens me.
    rara -- Sunday August 07 2005, @04:48AM (#174241)
    (User #14455 Info)
    rara
  • There has been many times in which I will throw on a hat and jeans and go out. If someone were to take a picture of me, it probably would be a bad representation. Then there is times when I I'm going out and I make myself look dashing.

    I don't understand the fascination with all the fans here that have a hard time with Morrissey growing old. Last time I checked we all are growing old. That’s life, deal with it. I wonder how well most of you are going to look when you reach Morrissey's age?
    RABMOZZER -- Sunday August 07 2005, @08:36AM (#174250)
    (User #10818 Info)
  • Just a question here but, having glanced at the full length profile of Moz larging it in the Manchester shopping centre, is that a ring like thing on this left hand, on, ...you know, the important finger, or it is just the quality of The Sun's printing these days? Then again, sure the keen-eyed journo who thought this was a ground-breaking scoop would have noticed that.

    Colette -- Sunday August 07 2005, @11:31AM (#174265)
    (User #13384 Info)
    Pleasure for beautiful bodies. Pain for beautiful souls.
  • Look at his left ring finger in this picture!
    Anonymous -- Monday August 08 2005, @01:31AM (#174335)
  • He'd have a vagina (Thats the medical term)
    Anonymous -- Friday August 05 2005, @08:37AM (#174058)
  • He's been there, done that. He was a girl, in a past life. (Remember his Sandie Shaw quotes?) anyway, I think he is the perfect blend of male and female; the perfect specimen of a many-times-incarnated-being, wielding talents and charms honed over many lifetimes.

    artful dodger -- Friday August 05 2005, @07:56PM (#174143)
    (User #13974 Info | http://www.myspace.com/wallieworld)
    and as for me, I stand with the tribe of Morrissey.
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