On RollingStone.com - Seymour Stein commenting on the Smiths and Sire Records History.
What was your first impression of the Smiths?
They were playing at a place called the ICA, very close to Buckingham Palace. Between the music and having all these gladiolas thrown at me, I wanted to sign them on the spot. A lot of people were saying "The Smiths, the Smiths, the Smiths . . . Morrissey, Morrissey, Morrissey," and I was quick to notice that this band has two superstars. Johnny Marr is a very integral part of the Smiths. Sometimes a band is built around one person, and sometimes not. But I did think Morrissey's lyrics were just amazing, great poetry. They're timeless. I said to him, "You know, you could have made it at any time in the past or in the future -- that's how strong your lyrics are. If you had been around at the beginning of the nineteenth century, you would have been a star, but your name would have been Lord Byron."
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Uau! (Score:2, Insightful)
(User #14157 Info)
exactly! (Score:1)
(User #9259 Info)
"...but your name would have been Lord Byron." (Score:1, Insightful)
(User #724 Info)
who is seymour stein, anyway? (Score:0)
My appreciation to some one who will help me...
(User #12540 Info)
Timeless soul for sure (Score:3, Informative)
As for Byron - He was considered the most attractive man of his time. He was obsessively pursued by men and women alike, and relentlessly hounded by the press. He was, as has been observed many times, the first international superstar - a man whose intense sensuality was matched only by his love of words and his passion for politics. Hmmm...
I would add to this list the fictional Duc des Esseintes, from the book A rebours (Against Nature) by J. K. Huysmans. Moz is the quintessential modern Decadent, without the cruelty. A relentless, sensitive soul for whom beauty and longing are both antidote to and refuge from a hopelessly mediocre, disappointing world.
Moz - you are one for the ages...
(User #14203 Info)
Hey-nonney-nonney he's none-Byronny (Score:2, Interesting)
Byron is too butch, non-ironic, "grand" to have much in common I think. Can you really imagine Byron celebrating awkward manners, reticent unfullfillment and working-class environments? I think not.
I think literary speaking you'd get a sense of Moz if you stuck the following into a blender:-
Oscar Wilde, Philip Larkin, (E) Bronte, Dorothy Parker, Alan Silitoe, Thomas Hardy, Richard Allen, Elizabeth Smart, Jean Genet, Radclyffe Hall, Hubert Selby
Anyone add anyone else??
Where credit is due. (Score:3, Interesting)
By any stretch of the imagination these would be major achievements for the average teenager - but as we now know, the adolescent Mr. Morrissey was not your ordinary common garden dirt bag. Firstly, his humble background was not propitious to a literary career, yet despite leaving school with a single O Level in 'Sea Shell Lamp' making he produced manuscripts worthy of an Oxford don.
I have read most the above works and there is absolutely nothing there to be ashamed of. He should feel pride not shame with regards to these fruits of his well spent youth and I still fail to see why he threatens legal action when these works have shown up intermittently over the years. If we accept implicitly that he wrote these works entirely on his own and did not copy them verbatim from other sources, we could say that he had the potential to be a great academic had he gone to University. His talent shun brightly in these tomes.
Tony Wilson (founder of Factory Records) once said that Morrissey could have been the 'male Jeanette Winterton'. By that logic JW could have been the 'female Morrissey'! Methinks not. In the same way that she is a gifted novelist and not an entertainer, Morrissey does not have the Big Novel inside him. He has the essay, the poem, the biography, autobiography, and tomorrow's grocery list at Marks&Spencers inside him - but not the Big Novel! If he did, he would have published at least one work of fiction by this stage in his life.
I see Morrissey as more the highly preserved/non suicidal Thomas Chatteron type; the pale, wan, and languid young boy from Bristol who poisoned himself when he couldn't find a publisher for his poetry after moving to ghastly Victorian London. Almost like Chatterton (but still alive obviously), he is stretched out on the chaise lounge at the Opium Den, in a benign state of eurphoria, wryly anticipating either his next act of carnal debauchery or his next puff on the pipe.
Morrissey is the classic dandy fop, who scribbles here and dabbles there and though he has great stamina and energy to perform live on stage around the world for months on end (I myself get a touch of the vapours on seeing his touring schedules), I don't think he's the type that would spend six months in a darkened room cobbling together a 'Wuthering Heights' or a 'War and Peace'. Quite frankly I don't think he has the intellectual discipline to be a novelist.
Yes we could have lost him to Academia, or possibly minor literary success, but I think we are blessed that for all his literary ambitions, he found expression for his gifts in the superficial pop world where he found himself as a prophet and sage incongrously positioned in a fluffy insincere world, where his poetic words influenced and inspired millions of people - the kind of people like me who never read poetry books.
In comparison the readers of Jeanette Winterson's books are a tiny village nowhere on the map.
The question is are the Shakespeares' and Oscar Wildes' of our times in the Pop/Rock/Rap world or the elitist Literary World. That is the question.
(User #843 Info)
Belle & Sebastian (Score:1)
Have you heard the song "Seymour Stein" by B&S?
Of course, you all know the reference to the Smiths- about Johnny Marr before he went electronic???
Can someone help me out here?
With love,
Ken Stavitzke
(User #3940 Info)
Re:One problem though (Score:0)
His Mom?
Parent