"It's a good job you have me around to provide continual cultivation."

December 3, 2001 10:43 AM

"It's a good job you have me around to provide continual cultivation." In the early '80s, Stephen Patrick Morrissey wrote a number of letters to a pen-pal, which have been archived on the web, and they provide a look into his life before he formed the Smiths. In his letters Morrissey produces such gems as "Spider and I? Piffle me boy. There Gops Concorde? Sputter-butter. Vienna? Hogwash." and "It's so old-fashioned to work. I'd much rather lounge about the house all day looking fascinating. I'd rather look fascinating than have a permanent income. Am I insane?" (the underline is, apparently, morrissey's.)
posted by moz (14 comments total)

i would, however, very much prefer lounging around the house looking fascinating.
posted by moz at 10:45 AM on December 3, 2001

Interesting letters. Its nice to know he was strange before he got famous. I loved the Smiths but Morrissey without Johnny Marr is boring.
posted by keithl at 10:56 AM on December 3, 2001

I'm a rabid Morrissey fan - I even talked to him a few times in the Dry Bar at the old Haçienda club in Manchester - but I had no idea he was so generous. I can't think of any other songwriters who answered fan letters so originally and extensively.
He's only mean to the media, which is morally right. He's a saint acting as a bored aesthete, is what he his. Parts of these letters I was already hearing in a song...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:59 AM on December 3, 2001

keithl: I disagree but here is a personally witnessed fact for you. Morrissey used to pronounce Johnny Marr's name as the French expression "J'en ai marre!", meaning "I'm sick and tired of this!".
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:01 AM on December 3, 2001

The sun was obviously shining out of his behind.
posted by crasspastor at 11:02 AM on December 3, 2001

i can't say if morrissey did answer fan letters (to any extent), but these letters are from before morrissey was famous. the person morrissey was writing to was a pen-pal in glasgow.
posted by moz at 11:04 AM on December 3, 2001

All I know is, I hate that stupid video where he's hanging out in James Dean's hometown. Online dictionaries should have a link to it next to the word "pretentious."
posted by bingo at 11:10 AM on December 3, 2001

please please please let me get what i want...
my life as a 14-year-old boy is so tied up in Smiths and Cure that it is hard to imagine anything else. Hmmm. Love the smiths. Still listen all the time. I wouldn't have been his pen pal though...not with letters like that.
posted by th3ph17 at 11:15 AM on December 3, 2001

I was a complete Smiths fanatic until my second year of college when I learned that it's not cool to act queer if you're not. I still love a lot of the Smiths' music, but I no longer try to emulate Morrissey, thank god.

Funny letters, though. Whoever did that site should include scans of the entire letters along with his transcriptions of them.
posted by elvissinatra at 11:22 AM on December 3, 2001

"It's so old-fashioned to work. I'd much rather lounge about the house all day looking fascinating. I'd rather look fascinating than have a permanent income. Am I insane?"

LOL!

It's so old-fashioned to not work. I'd much rather have a permanent income than lounge about the house all day looking fascinating. I'd rather someone return my calls. Am I Morrissey?
posted by ZachsMind at 11:35 AM on December 3, 2001

That Vienna crack better not be dissing Ultravox. Don't nobody mess with the New Romantics!
posted by Kafkaesque at 4:12 PM on December 3, 2001

Very nice link. Enjoyed it a lot.

"Will you send me some pornography? Do you HAVE a girlfriend? Do you LIKE girls? I have a girlfriend called Annalisa. We're both bisexual. Real hip, huh? I hate sex."

LOL!
posted by Dirjy at 7:25 PM on December 3, 2001

"spending warm summer days indoors. Writing frightening verse to a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg".

I'm desperate to be Mozzer's pen pal. Wonder if he reads Metafilter. Maybe he'll email me.
posted by Summer at 11:22 AM on December 4, 2001

Well, he was quite an opinionated little bastard, wasn't he? No Duran Duran, no Adam Ant, no OMD?

I went to a Morrissey concert and he sang me to sleep.
posted by witchstone at 12:13 PM on December 5, 2001