Meetings With Morrissey
by Len Brown

Now my head is full

Now my head is full As a man whose meeting with Morrissey, both formal and informal, stretch back to being the first to interview the solo Moz in 1988, and on into 2003 and his pre-You Are The Quarry resurgence, Brown has more credentials than most to hurl a book about Steven Patrick out into the market. A self-confessed Smiths diehard, he also avoids turning this into some fawning Mozfather love-in.

It’s not quite bursting with unprinted interviews. Most of the text re-tells the story, with Brown’s own personal experiences (of Morrissey and other events in his life) adding colour, turning these memoirs-cum- biography into a hugely enjoyable read. What we get is a portrait of a man who, to reference Oscar Wilde as Brown does, has turned his life into a work of art.

Brown takes Moz’s declaration that “everything’s linked, everybody takes from the artists they love” as a manifesto, tracing Morrissey’s story through his literature, British film/TV and female pop influences. Ultimately (and sometimes wearily overbearingly so), it leads right back to Wilde, Morrissey’s biggest love. The final chapter, tying up all the influences and parallels between the artists’ lives, might get a bit much, mind. Without being brainsizzlingly new, Brown’s turned out a very fair, even-handed account that happily gets you running back to those records to play detective yourself.

ISBN 1847723764

Reviewed by Jason Draper
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