Morrissey

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 November 2009

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway is Morrissey. As the lead singer of The Smiths he captivated a generation of angst-ridden teenagers and, a quarter of a century later, he remains the outsider's outsider. As a child, he was enthralled by the emotion and beauty in pop music. He discovered the joy of public performance when, as a six-year-old boy, he stood on a table and started singing. But from an early age he felt he had to avoid everything conventional life had to offer. 'I just didn't want the norm in any way, he says, 'and I didn't get it. And I'm very glad.' [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Record: (There's Gonna Be A) Showdown, New York Dolls Book: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde Luxury: A comfy bed with lots of pillows.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young.
0:02.0	Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4.
0:06.5	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:11.0	For more information about the program, please visit bbc.co.uk-radio4.
0:31.0	My cast away this week is Morrissey, rock star and cultural icon.
0:38.0	He is the outsider's outsider.
0:41.0	As the Smiths frontman, his harsh romanticism spoke to a generation,
0:45.0	hungry for a tortured truth they could recognize,
0:48.0	his lyrics and style cutting through the slick glamour of 80s pop.
0:53.0	And in spite of being in his own words an intensely private person,
0:56.0	more than 25 years later he's still at it,
0:59.0	filling concert halls and column inches with his awkward grace and spiky reflections.
1:05.0	It's 100% a calling, it really is, he says,
1:08.0	because unfortunately I don't really exist anywhere else in life.
1:13.0	Do you mean you don't exist anywhere else in life apart from the moment that you're on the stage performing?
1:17.0	No, I mean geographically, I don't exist anywhere else.
1:20.0	I can be found in yellow pages but nowhere else.
1:23.0	The quotes come back to haunt you because you do give good quote.
1:27.0	Lots of them were never mine, astonishingly.
1:31.0	Was that one?
1:32.0	That was, yes.
1:33.0	The ones that were mine I stand by.
	...

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