Morrissey-solo
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posted by
davidt
on Thursday March 10 2005, @10:00AM
Derick Greene writes:
Thomas Dolby mentions Morrissey in an interview for The Onion's A.V. Club. Last paragraph below addresses Morrissey. O: Being a pop star in the UK for the time that you were, did you have to deal much with the notorious snobbery of the British press? TDR: Yeah. It was very discouraging, really. The press is very snooty. It's hard, when you know that a magazine has come out with a review of your work, not to read it. But I taught myself to ignore it, because chances were it would be a bad review, not because I'm me, but because journalists aren't cool unless they slag off 99 percent of what they review. And there's no way I would've been popular in Britain at the time, because I was never viewed as indigenous. The British are incredible at poaching cultures from elsewhere in the world, and just twisting them a bit and making them their own, whether it's blues music with people like Eric Clapton and the Stones, or reggae music with The Police, or African music with Malcolm McLaren, or Chicago house music, or whatever. We've always been incredibly good at this sort of imperialistic thing of bringing back the spoils of our plunders overseas and putting a unique twist on them, and a little bit of dry British humor. And I think that deep down, we have a deep guilt complex about that. So I think that what we do is we try to imbue our own homegrown musicians with a sort of indigenous nature. People would like to believe that Morrissey lived in a housing project on the outskirts of Manchester, and that he got up every day, dressed in rags, and wrote a couple of heartbreaking songs before his tea brewed. But by the time most people had heard of Morrissey, he was already a millionaire. I've got nothing against him. I think that's great. But it's an unfair requirement to make of musicians to expect them to have no shoes on their feet, or it's not "authentic." That's not reasonable. That was one of the many things that made me uncomfortable in Britain at the time, when I was there.
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She blinded me! (Score:1)
(User #80 Info)
well on. (Score:0)
Nonsense (Score:0)
I doubt very much whether Morrissey and Marr would have attained millionaire status until very late on in the career of the Smiths. They were hardly a million selling band were they?
I Love... (Score:0)
www.theonion.com
My Comment- please read (Score:1)
I refuse to believe this.
I love Thomas Dolby- his greatest album was "Astronauts and Heretics." Give it a listen.
Ken
(User #3940 Info)
ROSE BOWL, Pasadena, California 1988 (Score:1)
(User #1326 Info)
Everything has to be spelled out. (Score:0)
I think the problem is, is that many people are thinking of only how popular Morrissey was in the UK at the time. In the U.S., and the rest of the world, many people knew the name, but didn't know much about him. I think it's safe to say now that a lot more people can identify his image; and yes, he is now a multi-millionaire.
On a sidenote, Dolby goes on to mention why he moved away from the UK. His answer mirrors much of what many ex-patriots have to say about it. Basically it was due to the notorious UK backbiting, and the idea that you should not be successful. You know, trying to keep people feeling as miserable as you are.
From the comments of many UK fans on this site, and the generally pessimistic nature of them, I understand completely.
Wank-stain (Score:0)
(User #13079 Info)
Who is Thomas Dolby? (Score:1)
(User #13191 Info)