Morrissey and Vince Eager

March 2015

MORRISSEY would like to be cremated to a song by a Notts rock’n’roller.

The master of the morose, who is at the Capital FM Arena tonight, chose Vince Eager’s 1960 single The World’s Loneliest Man as his No. 1 in a list of Songs To Be Cremated With.

And his fascination with the song has led to him checking into hotels as Vince Eager and even releasing the song as a B-side on his own single.

“I find it all quite bizarre,” says Vince, 74, who lives in Radcliffe-on-Trent.

“The World’s Loneliest Man was written especially for me by Jerry Lordan, who had written Apache and other hits for The Shadows.

“When I did my TV series in 1959, on one occasion I sang Paul Anka’s Lonely Boy. Apparently a lot people went into shops to buy it but I hadn’t recorded it. Because there was so much interest we decided to go for one in a similar vein.”

The single, produced by George Martin before he went on to work with The Beatles, failed to make the Top 40.

“I wasn’t happy with the recording, to be honest, but it sold quite well, around 30,000 copies, which today would get it to No. 1. It got to something like No. 45.”

Fast forward to the late 90s when Vince, one of the original British rock’n’rollers alongside Cliff Richard, Billy Fury and Marty Wilde, was in the US and working as a cruise director.

“I started researching for a book I was writing. I’d got my first computer and I searched for Vince Eager to see what I could find... and there was this story about Morrissey’s list of songs he wanted to be cremated with. And I was at No. 1.”

The list, called Singles To Be Cremated With, was in an article in the NME called Headful Of Heroes, published in 1989.

Vince says: “Now I didn’t know much about him. I knew who The Smiths were but it wasn’t my sort of music. So I asked a friend who said ‘oh he probably chose that because he’s a miserable sod like you’.”

The song includes the lines:

I don’t want to live in the past

Oh no, that’s where you belong

I’ve got nothing to live for tomorrow

And today everything went wrong

I am the world’s loneliest man... yes... yes I am...

Vince continues: “About 18 months ago he released a single with my song as its B-side. It wasn’t his version of The World’s Loneliest Man but my actual version – the single I’d released in 1960. That blew me away. He never got in touch and asked his permission. But it was out of copyright anyway so he was OK to do that.”

The A-side was Glamorous Glue and the seven-inch vinyl record was only released as a limited edition, with some fans paying £150 for it.

“When I was recording my album in Bristol, the guy who ran the studio told me that Morrissey had been checking into hotels overseas as Vince Eager.

“I didn’t believe it but he said there was a bass player who Morrissey worked with that he knew and he’d told him that.

“He’d also told him that Morrissey does really like the record but he thinks everything else I’ve done is rubbish,” he laughs.

“Which is fair enough I suppose – I don’t like his stuff either.”






MORRISSEY’S SONGS TO BE CREMATED WITH...


1. The World’s Loneliest Man – Vince Eager

2. Don’t Take The Lovers From The World – Shirley Bassey

3. What A Nice Way To Turn 17 – The Crystals

4. There, I’ve Said It Again – Sam Cooke

5. Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets – Dionne Warwick

6. Strange, I Know – The Marvelettes

7. Third Finger, Left Hand – Martha Reeves And The Vandellas

8. I Take It Back – Sandy Posey

9. Heart – Rita Pavone

10. Shoes – Reparata

Morrissey in quotes

March 2015

“The Brit Awards are ghastly. I would never accept a Brit. It would be like Laurence Olivier being happy getting a TV Times award.”

“The Brit Awards are ghastly. I would never accept a Brit. It would be like Laurence Olivier being happy getting a TV Times award.”


“Long hair is an unpardonable offence which should be punishable by death.”


“I wish that Prince Charles had been shot. I think it would have made the world a more interesting place.”


“I’m not very good at being dull.”


“The smell of burning animals is making me sick. I can smell burning flesh …and I hope to God it’s human.” – exiting the stage at Coachella in 2009.


“It’s the refuge for the mentally deficient. It’s made by dull people for dull people” – on dance music and club culture.


“Bring me the head of Elton John… which is one instance in which meat would not be murder, if it were served on a plate.”


“Life would be so colourful if only I had a drink problem.”


“Bob Geldof is a nauseating character. Band Aid was the most self-righteous platform ever in the history of popular music.”


“I would rather eat my own testicles than reform The Smiths, and that’s saying something for a vegetarian.”

“All human activity is fruitless unless pitted against the girls and boys singing on pop television, for they have found the answer as the rest of us search for the question. I will sing too. If not, I will have to die.”


“The Smiths only happened because I had walked home in the rain once too often.”


“The monarchy is foremost a business, and it’s important to them that the British public continue to finance the excessive luxurious lifestyles of the now quite enormous, wasteful and useless ‘royal’ family. I find it very sad.”


“Age shouldn’t affect you. You’re either marvellous or you’re boring, regardless of your age.”


“It is really on the same moral level as child abuse. It’s the same thing. Animals are like children, they look to us for protection.”


“If I met Vic Reeves, I’d have no desire other than to smack him in the face.”


“Just as the Mercury Prize lands like a voodoo doll in the hands of the unlucky recipient (who is usually to be found selling mattresses ten months later), a Brit Award generally goes to a lot of shriveled young souls who have not earned it.”

“(Sigmund Freud) made people feel so neurotic about their lives. I mean, if you dreamt about a lampshade, it meant you wanted to be whipped by the local vicar or something.”


“I am capable of looking on the bright side – I just don’t do it very often.”


“What’s the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning? Wish I hadn’t.”


“I do maintain that if your hair is wrong, your entire life is wrong.”


“(Richard Madeley) referred to me as an ‘insufferable puffed-up prat’. This is a bit rich coming from a man who actually married his own mother.”


“The rhino is now more or less extinct, and it’s not because of global warming or shrinking habitats. It’s because of Beyoncé’s handbags.”


“If more men were homosexual, there would be no wars, because homosexual men would never kill other men, whereas heterosexual men love killing other men.”


“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.”


“I don’t iron anything. Never have and never will.”


“The Smiths was an incredibly personal thing to me. It was like launching your own diary to music.”

“It seems unlikely that an end-of-the-world announcement would be believed nationally unless confirmed on BBC1 by Cheryl Cole whilst conditioning her hair.”


“We’re all lonely, but I’d rather be lonely by myself than with a long list of duties and obligations. I think that’s why people kill themselves, really.”


“Lady Gaga said to me, ‘You showed me how it’s done.’ I have no idea what she meant by ‘it.’”


“I have no love for myself as a human being, but I have immense pride in the music I make, and I believe it has an important place. Others do, too, and the thousands of people with Morrissey tattoos certainly proves something.”


“I think I’d be a prime candidate for canonisation.”


“The solo years have been more meaningful to the audiences than the Smiths years, but the press in England only write about me in relation to the Smiths era.”


“I never imagined I’d be a solo artist. And now I couldn’t imagine being part of a group.”

“I think we were all initially swept along with the Obama win, but he’s proven to be simply a set of teeth, and useless in every other regard.”


“Britain has been encouraged to become a nation of idiots (which, of course, is what it is not).”


“The fire in the belly is essential, otherwise you become Michael Buble – famous and meaningless.”


“The Smiths are never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever going to reunite – ever.”


Morrissey comes to the Capital FM Arena on Friday, March 13. Tickets are priced at £50.40 and £72.80 (includes admin fee), from the box office. Call 0843 373 3000 or visit capitalfmarena.com.

Diary

Lou Reed: Guitar strokes during Berlin

MONDAY
Celine Dion’s version of AC/DC's You Shook Me All Night Long is the worst ever cover according to Total Guitar magazine. Girls Aloud’s take on Aerosmith’s Walk This Way is second place, while Westlife’s smothering of Extreme’s More Than Words is in third.
Les Dennis interview next week.

TUESDAY
After This Is England and Control the next Nottingham shot movie will be a Mighty Boosh job. But not a TV-to-movie project. While written/directed by Boosh's director and featuring both Barratt and Fielding, Bunny And The Bull will be about a bloke stuck in a flat freaked by an infestation of mice remembering a disastrous road trip with his mate. Summat like that anyway. Shooting starts on Monday at the old Central TV studios.
Russell Crowe wants Sam Riley (Control) to play the dark Robin Hood in Ridley Scott's Nottingham. He's hardly likely to create too menacing a Robin. Maybe Crowe doesn't want to be upstaged.

WEDNESDAY
Irvine Welsh heading to Nottingham to sign copies of his latest novel Crime - interview next week.
Su Pollard to be awarded a 'seat for life' - brass plaque and all - at the Theatre Royal next week for her "services to entertainment".

THURSDAY
Notes on Lou Reed's Berlin show: A) he plays the guitar like he just picked it up for the first time last week (spontaneous jamming with Steve Turner - who can play - embarrassing to witness); B) He rarely smiles, preferring to sport a one-sided grimace as if he's had stroke. C). His fans in the (half empty) venue were largely middle-aged men, some of who you can guarantee didn't kiss a girl until they'd amassed a hundred albums in their teens. I spent most of the concert trying to breathe out of the left side of my mouth as the guy to the right STANK of stale smoke and BO.

FRIDAY
Up at 4 in the morning wasting my time researching Kristeen Young - who was booted off Morrissey's tour for saying he "gives great head" (he didn't see the funny side) - as later on she emails to say the promoter has pulled next week's gig because everyone's at Glastonbury.
The full line-up for Splendour announced. well the main stage anyway. Lemonheads and Sam Beeton are the only adds. Post website comments are unnecessarily grouchy. Look at the line-up for the Mandela concert.


Listening to: Dolly Parton; The Krankies' Fan-Dabi-Dozi; Led Zeppelin; Weezer; Disturbed; Nick Cave; Blood Red Shoes; The Corrections