You Wouldn't Want To Meet Morrissey In Real Life. Here's Why
They say you should never meet your heroes, because you run the very real risk of bursting the bubble of idolatry you've blown up around that person. When it pops, what do you do with all the aspects of your personality that were based on their influence in your life? Who are you now? Have you been living a lie?
Case in point: You might end up asking yourself those questions after meeting Morrissey, the notoriously melancholy frontman for The Smiths. There are enough messed up details about Morrissey out there for you to get a good idea of why you wouldn't want to meet the "Meat Is Murder" singer in real life (as if that song weren't reason enough).
The truth is, despite the facade of the sensitive sad boy who would be happy to die by your side in a gruesome lorry accident, the guy presents as kind of a jerk. For example, as New Music Express reported in 2019, Morrissey fully supports the far-right, anti-Muslim British political party UKIP. Despite the party leaders saying absolutely ridiculous (and yes, racist) hogwash like immigrants are to blame for the country's traffic problem, as The Guardian reports, Morrissey doesn't equate supporting such idiocy with being racist. "Everyone ultimately prefers their own race," he said in an interview posted to his website. "Does this make everyone racist?" No, Morrissey. Your statement isn't even true. Everyone doesn't prefer their own race, but saying that — yes — makes you racist.
The time Morrissey met his own hero, Patti Smith
Morrissey himself has experienced the letdown of meeting a hero who turned out to be a royal sleazeball. According to Vice, he once met the woman described by Biography as a pioneer of the punk rock scene, Patti Smith. Morrissey was pretty bummed out by the reality of the person he'd venerated for years, in contrast to the flesh-and-bone person in front of him. "I did meet her and it was hugely disappointing," he said, though apparently with words a bit more disagreeable than those cleaned up and printed by the reporter. "She walked up to a [17-year-old boy] and loudly asked him an extremely vulgar question about how sexually endowed he was."
As it turns out, even Morrissey might agree that you wouldn't want to meet Morrissey — or any other of your venerated celebrity heroes — in real life. You'll most likely end up singing along with him: "... and heaven knows I'm miserable now." Even though he and Smith would go on to be friends years after that creepy moment, Morrissey learned a valuable life lesson that day: "it's sometimes better to cherish your illusions." What a Smiths thing to say.