An Open Letter To Steven Patrick Morrissey | Music

After a weekend in which the Queen was admitted to hospital with a bad case of stomach ache, it only seemed right to pay tribute to one of her biggest…erm, fans; Morrissey. Like the Queen, our Moz has been quite ill recently too but that hasn’t stopped him being…well, a bit irritating really.

Now, we’re big fans of Moz and The Smiths here at Red Molotov, but after careful consideration, we felt it was high time for a chat with the merchant of misery, the prince of pain, the leader of the lonely and whatever other ridiculous title anyone has ever bestowed upon him. As we don’t know Morrissey personally or have his email address (does he even have one?), we decided to write Moz a heartfelt letter. Moz, if you’re reading…

Dear Morrissey,

Hi Moz – do you like being called Moz? We can’t really imagine that you do what with being an intellectual and probably not being a fan of the practice of shortening one’s name to something ‘cool’ but Morrissey is quite a long name and we don’t really fancy writing that out every single time we address you so we’re going to stick with Moz.

Right, with that out of the way, let us introduce ourselves. We’re Red Molotov and we make funny t-shirts about politics, TV, literature and music. We’re big fans of you and your music Moz (well, most of it…), so much so that we’ve made quite a few music t-shirts with you and your old band The Smiths on them. We’re sure you don’t like the idea of being commercialised but hey, it keeps a roof over our heads and we only do it because we like you.

Look…there you are.

Basically, Moz, you’re a legend. Your contribution to popular music can’t be understated and, even though we’re getting a bit sick of seeing people walking down the street with thick rimmed glasses and massive quiffs in the 21st century, your contribution to popular culture in general has been massive too.

But recently, Moz, we’ve been feeling a bit differently about you. It’s not that we don’t like you or anything, it’s just…well…

You’re making it very hard to like you anymore.

Sorry, Morrissey…

Now, before you baulk and start accusing us of being meat-eaters or obese or boring or something, let us explain ourselves. We’ve long been ardent Morrissey defenders – the whole ‘Bengali in Platforms’ controversy? Misunderstood. The obsession with skinhead culture? Fair enough, plenty of people are. ‘England for the English’ in National Front Disco? Okay, it made us a feel a bit uncomfortable but we were still happy to defend you from a freedom of speech standpoint at least.

But it’s getting harder and harder to stick up for you anymore, Moz. We’re not sure when it started but the whole not performing at Coachella because you could smell meat wasn’t great – understandable, but a bit prima donna-ish for a lad from Manchester. In fact, that whole vegetarian stuff is getting a bit out of hand; we appreciate your love of animals and, compared to people like David Cameron, we get why you prefer them to people. But making every non-vegetarian vendor in the Staples Center close down for one of your concerts? Come on, Moz. You’re starting to sound like a parody of yourself. We can’t be sure you haven’t just disappeared and been replaced by Alistair McGowan or something…well, we can, because Alistair McGowan isn’t very good at impressions, but you get where we’re going.

Basically, Moz, stop taking yourself so bloody seriously. We know it’s your ‘thing’ to be a lonely outsider but it’s making you say some stupid things that make it impossible to defend you in any way. Calling the Chinese a subspecies? Claiming the tragic attacks in Norway are nothing compared to what happens at McDonalds and KFC? Not going on a TV show and insulting people just because some duck hunters were on the show too? It’s just not on, is it?

We’re not saying you should change Moz; we admire your unwavering conviction to your beliefs. We have a lot of beliefs too – we don’t like capitalism that much and we write regular blog posts about how much we don’t really like how the world is run. But we still sell t-shirts and we have a good old laugh at how bad things can get. We can accept that other people might not think the same way we do but rather than refusing to associate with them, we just take the piss out of them through the medium of clothing.

We’re just saying lighten up. For someone whose lyrics cover difficult topics like male prostitution and disability, refusing to accept that some people enjoy meat or enjoy crap culture comes across as awfully close-minded. Why not promote not eating animals through songs like you used to? Your old mucker Johnny Marr’s just released a new album and he’s a vegan! Give him a call and get that Smiths reunion sorted! Alternatively, we haven’t heard anything from fellow veggie Damon Albarn for a while and he’s always got some sort of wacky musical project up his sleeve. A Japanese-style anime band starring Morrissey? We’ve already pre-ordered the album.

On your down days (we’re guessing there’s a quite a few…), why not write a sardonic blog post about how annoying everyone is? We’ll even let you have a go on the Red Molotov blog if you want! Although you’ll have to conform to our house style. And we’ll have to approve what you write first. And…in fact, we’ll just stick to the blogging. You can give us an interview if you want though (get in touch @redmolotov or email enquiries@redolotov.com!).

We reckon you could do with a bit of a laugh in general too. We were going to send you over a My Family box set we bought from a charity shop last week but there are quite a few meat-eating scenes (and it isn’t funny either) so why not buy a funny t-shirt from us instead? We’ve even got funny Oscar Wilde t-shirts! By the way, this letter definitely isn’t a thinly-veiled sales pitch.

But this is a really funny t-shirt and you’ve had the same fashion sense for about 20 years now. Have a think about it…

Anyway, just cheer up Moz…we want to be proud to call ourselves fans again.

Lots of love, RM

(P.S: you really should buy a t-shirt from us).