Michael A Young
class system, of the North-South divide which Morrissey describes well, have
remained in place. As TV current affairs programmes frequently tell us, we
still have a society in which 1% of the population owns 25% of the wealth, and
some of that 1% have had a career in popular music. Revolutionary change
takes longer than a three-minute single and individual escape from narrow
circumstances is not mass liberation. In their powerful revision of the national
anthem, the Sex Pistols’ refrain of “No future, no future, no future for you” is,
unfortunately, still relevant to the social and economic landscape of the North.
In his comments on music, Morrissey lists performers that he found
liberating: T Rex, Bowie, Roxy Music, his beloved New York Dolls, Mott the
Hoople, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Patti Smith (65ff, 114). When Morrissey
claims of the last three that “Their contribution to thought marks them out as
our very own Goethe, Gide and Gertrude Stein” (114), an eclectic trio, we
recognise the hyperbole of both the lover of popular music and the autodidact.
Morrissey’s overestimate of admired performers shows in his claim that “The
the monotonous in life must be protected at all costs. / But protected from what?
/ From you and I” (137). As this quotation shows, Morrissey seems to have a
The pronoun takes the object case, Steven: “From you and me.” But it is not
only the grammar that is wrong here. The larger and more important point is
that the arts as critical comment on and subversion of the establis Y