"My parents were worried about me, certainly when I became so deeply interested in music and people like the New York Dolls who, at the time, were very peculiar indeed"
About this Quote
There is a quiet comedy in the way Morrissey frames youthful obsession as both a family emergency and an aesthetic awakening. “My parents were worried about me” opens like a confession from a wayward son, but the reason for alarm isn’t drink or delinquency; it’s taste. He’s describing a household where the real danger is not what you do, but what you’re drawn to - and how that attraction announces you as strange.
The phrase “deeply interested” does a lot of work. It’s not casual fandom; it’s an identity claim, the kind that rearranges a teenager’s posture, clothes, and future. Then he drops the New York Dolls as Exhibit A, a band that, in early-’70s Britain, read as glamorous, abrasive, and sexually ambiguous - a loud rebuttal to the drab respectability of postwar life. Calling them “very peculiar indeed” is slyly double-edged: it echoes the parental verdict while letting Morrissey savor it. Peculiar becomes a compliment, a badge, a map out of Manchester greyness.
The line also hints at class and generational friction. Parents “worried” suggests protective love, but it also signals fear of social missteps: that their child’s desire will lead him into the wrong rooms, the wrong friends, the wrong kind of visibility. Morrissey captures the moment when art starts to function as contraband. Music isn’t entertainment here; it’s a portal to a forbidden self, and the family’s anxiety becomes proof that the portal works.
The phrase “deeply interested” does a lot of work. It’s not casual fandom; it’s an identity claim, the kind that rearranges a teenager’s posture, clothes, and future. Then he drops the New York Dolls as Exhibit A, a band that, in early-’70s Britain, read as glamorous, abrasive, and sexually ambiguous - a loud rebuttal to the drab respectability of postwar life. Calling them “very peculiar indeed” is slyly double-edged: it echoes the parental verdict while letting Morrissey savor it. Peculiar becomes a compliment, a badge, a map out of Manchester greyness.
The line also hints at class and generational friction. Parents “worried” suggests protective love, but it also signals fear of social missteps: that their child’s desire will lead him into the wrong rooms, the wrong friends, the wrong kind of visibility. Morrissey captures the moment when art starts to function as contraband. Music isn’t entertainment here; it’s a portal to a forbidden self, and the family’s anxiety becomes proof that the portal works.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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