Being as still ill as wot í am, í can truthfully remember, like
yesterday, walking into my local fragrant Newsagent, Confectioner & Stationer in that Autumn of 1990, to set my first sight on that Gino Sprio image, seen for the first time on the cover of "
Time Out" ~
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{* í had forgotten that "
Time Out" reversed the image? Or did they? Which is the 'proper' soccer Moz?}
In those 'funny little singles' daze it was a rare
event {for some of us} to see M. on the cover of a magazine.
"
Vox" had appeared a few weeks previously, but with a dull cover and a year old Cummins shot.
The quantum solace of the questionnaire in the "
Sunday Correspondent" had appeared to a tiny delirious few the previous weekend, with, again, another old Cummins promo shot.
And Morrissey 'going up for a header', in 1990, was a pretty queer thing to see on my middle shelf. This was in the wake of the seismic Italia '90 and "
The Guardian" classes suddenly wanking lyrical about 'footy', the beautiful game, 'Nessun dorma' and all that shite. Had Moz gone hard? Or soft in the head?
My atria hadn't been this fibrillated since stepping into the same Newsagent eight months prior and catching sight of
that face on "
The Face",
and shot by my shutter idol Anton Corbijn ~
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And, incidentally, that "
Time Out" article, by Nick Coleman, remains one of my most favourite pieces of writing on Morrissey. It's barely an interview, and yet seems to express M. better, at that particular moment, than his own words. Coleman doesn't seem to even be a particular fan, but writes beautifully for all that.
4 weeks later, Moz popped onto Jonathan Ross's teatime TV show, and my fate was sealed.
.