While it’s become increasingly impossible for people to separate Morrissey’s politics from his work, maybe it will soon also be impossible to separate his covers from that of others as a result of his twelfth record, California Son. Considering Morrissey’s longstanding affinity for Los Angeles (non)culture–hence the city’s undercover nickname, Moz Angeles–it should be no surprise that the record pays homage to the so-called Golden State. Though, to be sure, most of his musical influences do not hail from California, but rather, the East Coast. Like Jobriath, whose “Morning Starship” commences the tinged-with-irony-in-its-moodiness atmosphere of the album.
Eliminating the heavy Renaissance fair sound of the original, Morrissey lends more masculine vocals to the sound of this David Bowie wannabe, singing of a nymph-like girl whose “golden hair eclipsed the moon.” Ah yes, Morrissey only enjoys lyrics with a bit of poetry in them.
Having started the record with someone slightly less difficult to take on in the covers realm, Morrissey then delves into Joni Mitchell, that great folk titan of the sixties that can be a challenge to do justice to. But he holds his own as he croons (for Morrissey is big on crooning), “Truth goes up in vapors/The steeples lean/Winds of change patriarchs/Snug in your bible belt dreams/God goes up the chimney/Like childhood Santa Claus.” Not exactly the words of a racist misogynist conservative, as so many believe Morrissey to be. Nor are those of Bob Dylan, whose “Only A Pawn In Their Game” follows.
Arguably the most challenging for Morrissey to carry off as his own (particularly when one can only hear the nasally stylings of Dylan), Morrissey conveys yet another political stance through the mouth of someone else in declaring, “A South politician preaches to the poor white man, ‘You got more than the blacks, don’t complain/You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,’ they explain/And the Negro’s name/Is used, it is plain/For the politician’s gain.” In point of fact, Morrissey’s deliberateness in choosing primarily political songs seems to be at odds with the public impression of him as a far right extremist–an impression further solidified during his appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Wearing a pin in support of For Britain, an anti-Islam party that Morrissey has declared his support for, the performance was maligned and subsequently removed from the internet. It was a prime instance of Bret Easton Ellis’ recent manifesto, White, on the leftist moral majority policing all other opposing opinions to that which is “correct.”
Fittingly, Morrissey stated of For Britain, “[It] has received no media support and have even been dismissed with the usual childish ‘racist’ accusation. I don’t think the word ‘racist’ has any meaning any more, other than to say ‘you don’t agree with me, so you’re a racist.’ People can be utterly, utterly stupid.” That last sentence should probably be the title of his next record, as it were.
Tackling yet another politically-charged track from Buffy Sainte-Marie (not to be confused with actress Eva Marie Saint), “Suffer the Little Children” (not to be confused with The Smiths’ “Suffer Little Children”), Morrissey revisits “The Headmaster Ritual” territory as he speaks of the oppressed youth and the adults who “manage” them into the production line. As such, Morrissey bemoans, “School bell go ‘Ding! Dong! Ding!’/The children all line up/They do what they are told/Take a little drink from the liar’s cup/Mama don’t really care if what they learn is true/Or if it’s only lies/Just get them through the factories into production/Ah, get them into line.” It remains tragically resonant well after 1969, when Saint-Marie’s Illuminations album first came out.
It is, in point of fact, the sixties that Morrissey can’t let go of as he segues into Phil Ochs’ “Days of Decision.” Himself something of a Bob Dylan knockoff the same way Jobriath is of Bowie (Morrissey has a soft spot for the underdog, after all–which again doesn’t make him a likely candidate for the cut-and-dried racism people accuse him of), Ochs’ rueful voice turns even more wailing in Morrissey’s interpretation. For the days of (government) decision tend to veer toward all the wrong ones, don’t they?
Taking to an old favorite topic of his–love unrequited–Morrissey finally gets to his perfect counterpart for covering, Roy Orbison. In an emotional reworking that conjures all the lugubrious emotions of “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me,” Morrissey lends his own signature lilt to the track to give Orbison a run for his (hologram) money. Continuing down his forlorn love path, the one he’s so adept at traipsing down, Morrissey is joined by Billie Joe Armstrong on Laura Nyro’s “Wedding Bell Blues.” An upbeat sounding ditty that’s filled with the portentousness of an ultimatum, Morrissey insists on a reward for relationship loyalty with, “Oh I was on your side Bill when you were losin’/I’d never scheme or lie Bill/There’s been no foolin’ but kisses and love won’t carry me till you marry me Bill.” And yes, it seems almost comical that Morrissey grew up idolizing songs touting these heteronormative ideals (Sandie Shaw being one such example of his beloved influences), the ones that so obviously set the tone for him to create such bewailing works attesting to pain of unrequited love (for of course all love is painful when one can’t acknowledge his sexuality).
To that end, “Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets,” originally sung by Burt Bacharach (often with his “discovery,” Dionne Warwick), is another tailor-made track for Morrissey’s brand of melancholy. Particularly when one is fool enough to fall prey to the sham of “whirlwind romance,” as indicated in the portrait painted by, “And when you fall in love too fast/The sunshine doesn’t last forever after whenever a drop of rain/First came the pleasure and then the pain.” And the pleasure followed by pain formula is nothing if not Morrissey’s songwriting bread and butter (though he’ll typically just settle for the pain-pain permutation).
To avoid such inevitable pain, it is often necessary to call upon “Lady Willpower,” originally written by Jerry Fuller and performed by Gary Puckett & The Union Gap. But Lady Willpower herself is immoveable to the desire of men, even someone as dashing as Morrissey, as he implores, “Did no one ever tell you the facts of life?/Well there’s so much you have to learn/And I would gladly teach you/If I could only reach you/And get your lovin’ in return.” Ah, again with the motif of unrequitedness.
Carly Simon’s “When You Close Your Eyes” is in contrast to the fated sadness of most of Morrissey’s affairs as it turns out he’s not merely dreaming of a love that is just as magic as it seems, realizing, “Big surprise, you’ve been informed you’re not asleep/Hard as you try you were never really meant to weep.” But oh, don’t except him to stay sappy like this for long as he follows it with Tim Hardin’s “Lenny’s Tune.” A morose tune indeed. And it’s one that Morrissey slips into with ease as he regretfully remarks, “I have lost a friend and I don’t know why/But never again will we get together to die.” The meaning, depending on how one views it, is applicable, in many senses, to losing the best friend one might have had in a significant other. For never again can that relationship be reconstructed.
Closing out his sixties and seventies-favoring series of covers with the all too fitting “Some Say I Got Devil” by Melanie Safka, Morrissey taps into his bad reputation with the lyrics–reworked slightly for more all-encompassing gender purposes–“Some say I got devil/Some say I’m an angel/I am just someone in trouble/I don’t think I’m in danger.” A commentary on the sexist perception of women as the weaker sex, Morrissey embraces the spirit of the “outsider” gender as he proudly asserts, “No, I know I’m not in danger/But some have tried to sell me all kinds of things to save me/From hurting like a woman, and crying like a baby/Something like a woman, crying like a baby.” Heaven knows he’s done his fair share of both on the hurting and crying like a woman front. A fact made evident in his careful selection of these songs, covered with the love that only a man who has been so hated could give them.
