Re: Article: "The Severed Alliance" by Johnny Rogan - 20th Anniversary Edition out no
Maconie also reviews Rogan's tome in the current issue of 'New Statesman'. No on-line link yet. I don't have a scanner or camera-telephone (Hey look, I'm just like Johnny R! I have OCD too.) Here's a wee bit though, from the NS site ~
"Also in Books, Stuart Maconie reviews Johnny Rogan’s Morrissey and Marr: the Severed Alliance – 20th Anniversary Edition. Rogan’s 1992 biography of the Smiths “astonished most with its Herculean endeavour”, despite having one especially prominent critic – Morrissey. Twenty years later, Maconie still finds the book “the definitive if daunting account of the most romantically mythic band of those times”. Given Morrissey’s mythologising approach to his upbringing, Rogan takes an almost paleontological approach to the Smiths’ prehistory, tackling the group’s family histories in detail. And while Morrissey’s brushes with scandal today border on the absurd, “Rogan reminds us of how genuinely subversive the Smiths were at the time, both musically and ideologically”. Most telling, perhaps, is how the Smiths’ “tortured, arcane financial arrangements underpin the whole narrative”. Far from a story of artistic detachment, “there is much that reads like accountancy here,” Maconie writes, with “many a page given to bank statements, receipts and the labyrinthine ways that the money was (unevenly) split between the members”.
Maconie compares Morrissey c.2012 to Ann Widdecombe, says Rogan is stronger on detection than appreciation, and concludes with ~
"Later this year (sic), we are promised Morrissey's own version of his life, the long-awaited autobiography. It will be fascinating to have a second opinion from a writer even more obsessed with Steven Patrick Morrissey than Johnny Rogan." Cute.
There is also an interview with Johnny Rogan conducted by Maconie's old mucker Andrew Collins published in the current, and last ever, edition of 'The Word' magazine.
