Former Smiths frontman Morrissey opens up about his personal life in his new autobiography, revealing that he had a serious relationship with a man in his mid-30s, and at one point considered having a baby with a woman.
The notoriously private artist says in the book that he struck up a relationship with a man named Jake Walters in 1994 after meeting in a restaurant. “For the first time in my life the eternal ‘I’ becomes ‘we’, as, finally, I can get on with someone,” he writes.
“Jake and I neither sought nor needed company other than our own for the whirlwind stretch to come,” he writes. “Indulgently Jake and I test how far each of us can go before ‘being dwelt in’ causes cries of intolerable struggle, but our closeness transcends such visitations.”
According to the BBC’s Colin Paterson, who read the book, released only in the UK and Europe, the relationship was put to an end two years later by Morrissey’s next-door neighbor, the writer Alan Bennett. “What’s wrong with you two, you don’t talk anymore,” he apparently told them.
Two years later, Morrissey reveals, he fell in love with a woman named Tina Dehgani and they “discussed the unthinkable act of producing a mewling miniature monster.”
There is also the disturbing revelation that he was touched inappropriately by a school teacher as a youth. “At 14, I understand the meaning of the unnecessarily slow and sensual strokes, with eyes fixed to mine,” Morrissey writes.
Morrissey’s autobiography is 457 pages long, contains no chapters or index and starts with a paragraph that lasts four-and-a-half pages. It was published by Penguin Classic after being delayed in September due to a “last-minute content disagreement.” Plans to release the tome outside of Europe have not been disclosed.
Other highlights from the book include passages on his childhood, his working relationship with Johnny Marr, his distaste of the U.K. legal system, anecdotes on fellow notables like Michael Stipe (he doesn’t brush his teeth before a gig) and John Peel (he never saw the Smiths live) and how it took a long time to realize “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” is great song.
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