When the idols of your teens and twenties get old, it certainly makes you think about your own mortality. And so it was this week when I discovered Morrissey had turned fifty! Morrissey, who's words seemed to define my younger years even if I wasn't a depressed bloke living in Manchester. There was something about the way he articulated feelings of inadequacy and not fitting in, the joy of not fitting in as well as the travails, that really meant something to me. What's more I loved the way he embraced the intellectual, ordinary and comi with equal fervour - from Shakespeare, John Donne, Oscar Wilde, French film to kitchen sink drama, Carry On and Ealing comedy - and made them part of an unexpected but somehow sensible whole that seemed quintessentially British. I still feel a wave of happy nostalgia listening to The Smiths.
And then there is the man himself. For someone who claimed to eschew sex, he was a very sexy proposition indeed. And he knew it! As he moved sinuously around the mic stand, showing off his lean and hairless chest, he was the hottest geek in town. He's grown into a rather solid, muscular middle aged man but is still sexy despite himself. I would!!!
Musically I felt, in common with many, that he suffered for the lack of Johnny Marr and I haven't bought one of his records in years as he seems to have become stuck in a groove. But I can't help loving him, so here's raising a vegeburger to Morrissey.
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