news-record.com

Blimey! How did I miss that Morrissey turned 50 years old last week? From the Guardian piece on the former Smiths frontman and aging alternative icon's half-century of rock miserablism, this little tidbit on aging and death at one's elbow: "I'm nearly 29," Morrissey said when his first solo album, Viva Hate, came out in 1988. "I'll be dead in a couple of years ... I have a dramatic, unswayable, unavoidable obsession with death. I can remember being obsessed with it from the age of eight or nine. I often wondered if it was quite a natural inbuilt emotion for people who are destined to ... take their own lives. I think if there was a magical, beautiful pill that one could take that would retire you from the world ... I would take it." Luckily, he either missed the fact that a handful of any number of pills would have done the job or consciously decided he'd bulk up, grow older, buy some suits and continue rocking. Damn good thing, too. His latest albums are his best in decades.

Here's an interesting BBC interview about his status as a British icon. Really annoying kid interviewing him, but fascinating none-the-less.

Stunning revelation: Morrissey's favorite Beatle is...Paul? Also, even though David Bowie's still alive and kicking Moz says of his heroes: "No one living..." Ouch. Guess that's the downside of meeting your heroes...