Autobiography (16 page)

My social status leaps after decades of disqualification on grounds of radiation.

The doorbell rings and there stands Vanessa Redgrave.

‘Marcie,’
she begins, and then goes on about social injustice in Namibia, and how we must all build a raft by late afternoon – preferably out of coconut matting.

The doorbell rings and there stands musician Dave Wakeling, whom I’ve never met, but who asks me if I’d like to go swimming.

The doorbell rings and there stands singer Billy MacKenzie, whom I’ve never met, asking if he can come inside to sit by the window.

The doorbell rings and in swoops Elton John’s manager, who would like to talk about Morrissey having personal management.

When the doorbell rings and I decide not to answer, Sandie Shaw edges out inch by inch onto a perilously small ledge, from which the drop to Kensington High Street would instantly turn her into packing material, but there she is – shuffling into view with hands and body flat against the kitchen window, as I sit watching her, cradling tea at the kitchen table. It is one of those moments. I open the window:

‘WHAT are you doing?’
I gasp.

‘Well, you wouldn’t answer the door, so I’m coming through the window,’
she says, legs and arms sprawling through the gap like a giant millipede.

Ann West also calls at Hornton Court, and we sit and talk of her tireless campaign to keep Myra Hindley and Ian Brady incarcerated (both had sexually tortured and then murdered Ann’s daughter Lesley Ann in 1964). Ann is Chorlton working class, now living at Grindley Avenue, just across the road from Southern Cemetery, where Lesley Ann is buried. Ann is frequently interviewed on current affairs programmes, where the depths of her feelings are often constricted by her cross-examiners (who of course have never been in her position), and this is curious treatment for a woman who has endured so much but who has never once shrunk back from her duty to her daughter. Ann riles with fury at Lord Longford, who repeatedly speaks up in defense of parole for Myra Hindley, and Ann tells me of the writer Emlyn Williams, once a famous stage actor but now more associated with his fleshy and painful account of the Brady–Hindley murders in his book
Beyond Belief.
At the time of his research Williams had pestered Ann and her family unremittingly, even appearing at the family home requesting a pair of Lesley Ann’s knickers – the moral intent of which was lost on Ann, who would go to her grave shouting out that Hindley should also go to hers without ever knowing a free day. I am contacted by Winifred Johnson, whose son Keith was buried on Saddleworth Moor by Brady and Hindley. Keith’s body was never found, and Mrs Johnson asks me for support with her struggle to persuade the police to resume the search for Keith’s body. Of course, had Keith been a child of privileged or moneyed background the search would never have been called off. But he was a poor, gawky boy from Manchester’s forgotten side streets, and minus the blonde fantasy-fetish of a cutesy Madeleine McCann.

Amanda Malone is an American bubble-child with a Lady Penelope voice and a Herman’s Hermits obsession. Probably mad, she is yet another visitor to Hornton Court. She has recorded her version of
This c
harming man
over the original Smiths backing track, which is remixed sufficiently to take the sound a step away from the original. I am convinced that the version is mischievous enough to be a hit single in its modishly kinky-boots mode. I am gagged on this issue by Geoff, and the master-tapes are buried under heavy stone in the Rough Trade graveyard. It is up to me, though, to tell Amanda that Rough Trade aren’t interested.
‘Oh, just give it to me straight,’
she says, all pinks and yellows and last train to Clarksville.

At Rough Trade the galvanized gang of Smiths aides were Scott Piering (now deceased), Pat Bellis (now deceased), Gill Smith (now deceased), Jo Slee, Martha DeFoe and Richard Boon. The mobilized strength of all six attempted the very best for the Smiths, and often beyond their call of duty. All six dealt only with me, very rarely with Johnny, and never with Andy or Mike. The team were very witty and full of heart, presenting a very powerful center with a genuine thirst for success. It was their punch that turned the musty wheels of the
RT
moped. Live booking agent was Mike Hinc, operating All Trade Booking, and he dug in deeply on behalf of the Smiths to frame a careful rise.

‘You are one of the hottest tickets in London,’
he explains to all four of us, adding, in quieter tone,
‘for now
...
’,
a mumble I would never allow him to forget as the years passed with no sign of a popularity dip.

Gill Smith warns me that she is a
REAL
Smith, in a spill of East End idiomatic warnings and spiritual sensations. Gill is full of loud tension; Hermione Baddeley in
Brighton Rock
, forewarning
‘right’s right and wrong’s wrong’
– expensive heels and swirling 1950s smock-coats.

Gill never ceases with hysterical
‘and then she said this, and then I said that’
accounts, without a single gesture lost. Two years my senior, she has all the Chinese wisdom of the ages, yet she cannot tell left from right.
‘But since you write with your right hand can’t you just think in terms of writing each time you need to turn right, and
...
’
suddenly I’m beginning to sound disedged. Gill has a full and open heart, and a turn of phrase so quick-witted that it almost hurts to listen. A master of the Tarot and extrasensory slapdash perception, Gill arrives at Hornton Court and freezes on the threshold. A mute minute passes as she wanders down the hallway only to stop outside the bathroom.

‘Morrissey,’
she begins, in a voice softer than usual (which, for Gill, is still very loud),
‘there’s something in here.’
Stalking her prey, her heels dig in
...
‘and
...
it’s here.’
She stands squarely on the spot where whateveritwas has stopped me in my tracks every single day, a look of mariner’s discovery on her face. I say nothing to my mother and sister as they settle down for a night in the guest bedroom – both watching a small light travel through the center of the room. I am relieved, at last, to not be quite so alone, as the walls hum unpleasantly.

Balancing on the same deadly spot as Sandie Shaw once had – outside of the kitchen window, and just an inch away from a messy Kensington High Street splatter – I discover Scott Piering similarly risking death simply because of an unanswered doorbell. I swing open the huge window and Scott falls into the sink.

‘Scott, WHAT are you doing?’

‘I rang the doorbell but you didn’t answer.’

‘Yes, I know. I heard it.’

‘One slip and I’d be horsemeat.’

‘Yes, I know. Would you like some beans on toast?’

‘OK.’

No matter what we thought we knew, Johnny and I were Tipsy and Topsy from the village when it came to the cackling jaws of business. We signed virtually anything without looking. We didn’t ever make money from touring, and we had no idea where our worldwide royalties ended up. In time-honored tradition, we were just two more pop artists thrilled to death with the spinning discs that bore our names. The specifics of finance and the gluttonous snakes-and-ladders legalities were deliberately complicated snares that all pop artists are expected to understand immediately. The act of creating music and songs and live presentations are relied upon to sufficiently distract the artist so that labels and lawyers and accountants – so crucial to groups in matters of law – might thrive. It is nothing new. The basic rule, though, is to keep the musician in the dark at all costs, so that the musician might call upon the lawyer repeatedly. In fact, pop artists live in a world that is a dramatic distance from the world of commerce, and they are usually exclusively consumed by their gift or drive at the expense of everything else. A vast industry of music lawyers and managers and accountants therefore flourish unchecked due to the musician’s lack of business grasp. Thus, any standard recording contract deliberately reads like ancient Egyptian script – surely in order to trick the musician. Rather than hide your face under the bedcovers, you are thus forced to do business with those
whom you least mind
ripping you off – chiefly because you have no choice, and also because the law insists upon a documented trail of every penny that you earn – mainly so that someone might take it from you. The artist is the enemy. Solicitors are trained to squeeze as much money out of their own client as possible, and accountants might deliberately steer their client into tax troubles so that those very same accountants are further needed to unravel the mess that they created in the first place. Damaging managers merely manage
their own
position in relation to the artist, and a knowing code of conduct sweeps the cohesive circle of lawyer/accountant/manager into an all-crooks-together sect, and all are enjoined by whatever double-dealings they have on one another – all at the artist’s expense. Never do we hear of an artist who rips off a firm of accountants; never do we hear of the artist who embezzles the record company; never do we hear of the artist who defrauds the lawyer; never do we hear of the artist who fleeces the management – but the ferocity of such situations reversed is characteristic of how the music industry works, and why it works. Since pop stars come and go with lightning speed, while the fraternity of managers and lawyers remain in place forevermore, it is with unspoken admiration that the industry admires the impulses of their colleagues who get away with the pop heist. After all, the pop artist who complains about anything at all is universally damned as petty.

From the perspective of the tomb, all of this gives no heart to the musician, which is usually why most of them conspicuously drop out of the racket, or end up catacombed in a drugged death that is always assumed to be their own weakness. It is a paralyzing truth that once you enter the bullring of fame there is no one to help you. Most fall. Some don’t. If you manage to get hold of your own money then you are left with the equally difficult task of actually clinging on to it. Claims on artist income flood in like begging letters, and
‘Oh
, you might as well pay them just to get rid of them’
is the frequent chant of legal spiritual masters, who would never do the same were they in your shoes. Betrayal takes many forms, and the money that you make somehow never belongs to you. With great music to produce, Johnny and I signed and smiled – always politely – but we lacked the cleverness to interrupt at the right time. The net of limited companies lowered its noose around our necks. Geoff Travis looked on, writing everything down in what appeared to be unreadable shorthand so that only a goblin from hell could possibly turn the scrawl into sense.The international licensing deals made in the Smiths’ name reaped nothing monetary for the Smiths themselves. The cog on which Rough Trade spun was the principle that their concerns were not motivated by money. In fact, their air was more pure than that of major labels, but the Rough Trade trick was to juggle unseen. And they did.

‘Well, you’re the highest new entry, at 19,’
announces Gill Smith one cautious afternoon at Collier Street, in the days when such a high chart entry was very unusual.
Heaven knows I’m miserable now
eventually rose to number 10, and
William, it was really n
othing
came tumbling after at number 17, and suddenly the Smiths were pop pantheon regulars. These chart positions were historic only in view of the cottage-industry party pranks of Rough Trade and this made each chart victory remarkable given the blinding and pulverizing expenditure and outlay of our payrolled competition. Spandau Ballet called the Smiths ‘the scruffs’, and, I expect, we were. My own name is by now synonymous with the word ‘miserable’ in the press, so Johnny putters with ‘misery’ and playfully arrives at
‘misery mozzery’
, which truncates to Moz, and I am classified ever after. I had originally decided to use only my surname because I couldn’t think of anyone else in music that had done so – although, of course, many had been known by just one name, but it hadn’t been their surname. Only classical composers were known by just their surnames, and this suited my mudlark temperament quite nicely.

Although
The Smiths
had done well all around the world, I am stubbornly certain that if not for the unusual artwork and the hint of what could be it would not have dented the public forehead quite so much. I vomit profusely when I discover that the album has been pressed in Japan with Sandie Shaw’s version of
Hand in glove
included. I am so disgusted by this that I beg people to kill me. Many rush forward. Furthermore, the group’s name is barely readable on the finished artwork, but I am aware of my cranky precision pressing too firmly on the Rough Trade stable-hands.

I am so troubled by the flatness of the debut that I present to Geoff the idea of
Hatful of Hollow
as an interim collection that might hopefully detain those scared off by the blunted thud of
The Smiths.
Geoff fully agrees, and the project works well – charting at number 7, and holding on for forty-six weeks, tipping the platinum sales point that
The Smiths
had missed.

Our touring unit is constant and strong, blotted only by clangers from Mike who, in a busy dressing room after a Manchester show blurts out (loudly) how his family do not like me. ‘
They think you’re just trying to be Jim Morrison
...
’
he rasps, and as everyone in the room turns away in embarrassment I sit in resolute stillness.

Generally though, the Smiths as a working unit are assured and agreeable, their main misfortune so far being the way in which they had been sold like a cow at a market to Sire Records. Like Allen Ginsberg perched on the top of your mother’s wardrobe, Geoff Travis had looked down smiling his whooping-cough smile as the Smiths lumbered along, hopelessly unaware of their global financial worth. We had made our American debut at the Danceteria in New York, and had planned to continue to Boston and New Jersey. We were booked into New York’s famous Algonquin hotel – so beloved of James Dean in the 1950s and a place of rest for Oscar Wilde many Decembers ago. But there was no glamor to drink in now, and I sat alone in an enormous room lit only by a bedside light. I call downstairs.