Customer Reviews

Morrissey: Scandal & Passion

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This wasn't awful...you will learn a bit more about Morrissey, but there was a lot of annoying filler in between. The author is obsessed with letting people know that he's quite fluent in French and proceeds to tell you all the translations he's made for Barbara,that some play that Barbara was in had a character named afer HIM, that one time Morrissey went looking for him and wife (possibly while watching Barbara) etc etc. He tries to make it subtle...but it's obvious and just annoying. One of the chapter names is in French, which is ridiculous because the reference is to a French book...so even if you understand French a bit, you won't get what Bret is talking about. All of this adds up and becomes incredibly distracting.

As I said before, you do get a bit of a Morrissey overview, I'm not sure how accurate it all is but he does give some good Moz quotes here and there...although 99% all appear to come from the magazine Les Inrockuptibles. He also goes over a few of Morrissey's songs and albums, but I was a bit dissapointed with his analyses quite a few times. For example, Bret calls "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get" a love song. This is possible, but the more common view is that this song is about trying to freak out Mike Joyce...no mention whatsoever about this from Bret.

I give it 3 stars because it's not an awful biography, and the writing isn't too bad...but Bret comes off as a pretentious, annoying guy who likes to blow his own trumpet way too overtly. I'd give it 2 1/2 if possible.

There is little I can add about this dreadfully written and obviously lacking in research cut and paste 'biography' that hasn't already been said by the previous two reviewers, except to say that are both absolutely correct in their observations.

Along with all of the already mentioned faults in this book there are a number of factual inaccuracies (Gary Numan as the frontman for Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark? - I don't think so), no involvement or interviews with anyone remotely close to the book's subject and the irritating and persistent looming presence of the author's ego, all of which combine to make this an unsatisfactory read for even the most casual of Morrissey fans.

As one review notes, the book tells us more about the author than it does about the subject. Unfortunately the things it does reveal about the author are things which any well-balanced person would probably prefer to keep quiet and which I, as a reader, would definitely prefer not to know.

Being a huge morrissey fan, i was excited to read this book. Unfortunately, it was not a good pick. There is some information that was new, but mostly it was uninteresting and boring to follow. I do not reccomend this book. Try another Moz book!

Any author who prints his own review in response to perceived "attacks" from his audience has completely lost objectivity. I haven't read the book, I will not buy the book, and I do hope the author will consider another career. To insult an artist's fan base makes me wonder why the author felt so strongly about his subject to dedicate the time to complete a book. Reader meet author, indeed. "Pasty-faced geeks who look like a good feed would kill them, bespectacled freaks who try to look like him and who are only truly happy when they are ill. Young men who swear they are straight, but go home and masturbate to the sound of The Smiths." I, by the way, am none of the above. Screwball.