Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66259 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
"Saint Morrissey says more... than a thousand interviews with cousins and primary teachers ever could."

Steve Jelbert, The Times, 24 Nov 03.
"Entertaining and perceptive... written with real flair."

Independent on Sunday, 16 Nov 03
"Simpson writes with enough panache to make most of his peers toss their laptops into the waste disposal and weep."

Customer Reviews

Morrissey finally has a biographer worthy of him
This is a remarkable book and, like it's subject, is startlingly unique. It’s funny, clever, insightful and often quite moving. Above all it’s brilliantly, dazzlingly written. Morrissey finally has a biographer worthy of him.

I have to admit though that I was, relatively speaking, a part-time Morrissey fan when I came to this book, but after finishing 'Saint Morrissey' I realised what I'd been missing out on, went out and bought all the albums I didn't have (except 'Southpaw Grammar' of course) and fell in love with Morrissey all over again, and more completely this time. But then this isn't just the best Morrissey book out there, this is one of the best books on pop culture and fandom ever penned.

Or at least, one of the best I've read - and I've read it twice now, in quick succession. I may even start memorising lines from it - talking about the effect hearing the first Smiths album had on him Simpson writes: 'It filled me with the urge to shoplift expensive perfume and spray bus shelters with it'. Is fandom catching? And can you become a fan of a writer simply because of the intensity and intelligence of their own fandom? 'Saint Morrissey' certainly makes it seem that way.

A Smiths Fan Writes
If a die-hard Smiths/Morrissey fan were to buy one book - a book that really *gets* what this particular corner of fandom is all about - then Saint Moz is the one to choose. Fans have had to make do, until now, with the rather trainspottery Severed Alliance.

Rogan's oeuvre, in a sense, it the flip-side of Saint Morrissey; it exemplifies the desperate need of a really obsessed fan to know everything there is to know about their hero. Its the literary equivalent of those Morrissey fans who rip their idol's shirt to pieces when he throws it into the crowd at the end of a gig.

But Simpson's is a more tender vivisection altogether. It caresses its subject, shares its secrets: butterfly kisses. Its Simpson's playfulness with language and ideas as much as his insight into the Morrissey phenomenon that makes this one of the great pop biographies of recent years. You could turn the final page of the Severed Alliance, still confused as to the worldwide appeal of this most English Lancastrian lyricist; Simpson's intelligent exposition of the universal themes of masculinity, loss and desire which permeate Morrissey's work leaves you in so such doubt.

This is, put simply, a book to buy in hardback.

V Good, though Mozza remains a mystery
An excellently written book.
Only problem is that there are no interviews with Morrissey himself or with any one who knows him, so at the end of it all I felt I'm no closer to an understanding of Mozza at all.
There are however lots of quotes from interviews he has given to the press - some of which are quite enlightening.
The author also writes very well and made me laugh a few times too.
I'd have to say that I'm also in the camp that feels that the stuff Morrissey did with Johnny Marr shows how important the sublime Marr was - as integral as Morrissey to the Smiths - just listen to the guitar on "Boy with the Thorn in His Side".. and I dont think Mr Simpson gives anywhere near enough credit to Marr.
That said, this is a very good book, well written and fun.
I'd recommend it.