“Endlessly fascinating”: The performer Morrissey called his best friend
Morrissey, in his own strange way, is the Michael Jordan of indie rock. That’s not to say that he is the most accomplished singer-songwriter within the genre, nor the undisputed GOAT of his particular art form. No, the unlikely connection between a pop crooner from Old Trafford and a hoopster from North Carolina is more of a psychological one – an uncontainable ambition mixed with a bizarrely obsessive vindictiveness and sense of persecution.
“I took that personally,” is Jordan’s oft-quoted and memed response to just about any slightly off-putting interaction he had during his NBA career. His remarkable success, as repeatedly revealed in the 2020 Netflix documentary The Last Dance, was driven almost exclusively by spite and vengeance, whether it was toward a high school coach, a mouthy opponent, the media, Chicago Bulls executives, or his own teammates. Even Bugs Bunny probably pissed him off at some point. There was no denying Jordan’s talent, but it was some deeper maniacal narcissism that spurred him to greatness and, unfortunately, also made him quite unpleasant to be around.
I should probably explain at this point that Morrissey did not, sadly, describe Michael Jordan as his best friend. We’ll get to that gent in a minute. There are some other fun parallels, though, even beyond the bitter “me against the world” attitude and relative comfort with hero worship. The first Smiths record was released in 1984, the same year Jordan debuted in the NBA. Jordan won five ‘Most Valuable Player’ awards, Moz notched five gold albums as a solo artist (if you count Bona Drag). Many nerdier observers pointed out that ‘Air’ Jordan wouldn’t have succeeded without the great Scottie Pippen playing alongside him, and plenty of rock journalists now say the Smiths were really Johnny Marr’s band. Rumours of a serious gambling addiction plagued Jordan for years; Morrissey was forced to acknowledge that “of all the rumours / keeping me grounded / I never said, I never said / That they were completely unfounded.”
During Michael Jordan’s acceptance speech at his Basketball Hall of Fame induction in 2009, he spent the whole night recounting the enemies he’d gathered and how he’d slayed each one of them, with far fewer mentions of friends and allies. At his triumphant gig in a sold-out Co-Op Arena in Manchester earlier this month, Morrissey took the moment to remind the audience that, “many people in the media in this country work very hard, and very long, with the hope that nights like this would never again happen for me, that they would never be possible. My very cultured, my very intellectual response to such people is… [makes Bugs Bunny raspberry sound into the microphone].”
Importantly, despite their softer and friendlier 1980s personas as slam-dunk heroes and indie pop intellectuals, Jordan and Morrissey were probably always this way. Massive fame only exacerbated the problem.
In a 2002 interview with The Observer, Morrissey—after completing a 30-minute tirade about his ongoing legal battle with ex-Smiths members Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke—explained that his lifelong love of singing came “at the expense of everything else you could possibly name.”
The reporter then asked Morrissey about what that had meant to his social life. Would he ever want a partner? A best friend?
“No. My best friend is myself,” Morrissey responded, tongue not evidently in cheek. “I look after myself very, very well. I can rely on myself never to let myself down. I’m the last person I want to see at night and the first in the morning. I am endlessly fascinating—at eight o’clock at night, at midnight, I’m fascinated. It’s a lifelong relationship, and divorce will never come into it. That’s why I say I feel privileged. And that’s my honest reply.”
