I didn't lose any interest. If anything, my interest was more fevered than ever during those years.
A lot of great stuff happened in those years, for both Morrissey and his fans. His band was still British, Alain was his main writing partner and lead guitarist, and Boz was still fresh-faced and enthusiastic. There were tours, and from tours came some amazing bootlegs. There were new songs played live that we could speculate about how they'd sound on record...there were leaks of long-rumored old songs, like Striptease and Oh Phony and the longer version of Piccadilly Palare.
There were sessions, TV appearances, a BBC documentary, magazine interview exclusives with some of his best press quotes ever...Solo was coming into its own, and there were other great websites like Passions Just Like Mine keeping us satiated and informed. There was internet speculation, some true and some false but in those days that whole web thing in general was still fairly new and just hitting its stride so that even the fanboy hearsay was fresh and exciting to be a part of because it was a new age.
He lived in America, so for us that was nice...people could drive by his house, leave gifts there, hope to catch a glimpse of him out and about...
Bands were name dropping him like never before, citing him as a major influence. He seemed to be some kind of mythical lost legend during those years.
All in all, good times. Exciting times filled with hope and anticipation. In a way, and I'm sure this sounds stupid, the wilderness years were the best period of Morrissey's career.
Everyone loved him, everyone missed him, everyone celebrated anything he did.