FEATURE:
You’re Gonna Need Someone on Your Side
Morrissey’s Your Arsenal at Thirty
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ALTHOUGH he is a controversial figure…
and his political views have got him into trouble a lot, I am concentrating on the positive side of Morrissey. After The Smiths broke up in the 1980s, Morrissey embarked on a successful solo career. Whilst some may say his best solo album is 1994’s Vauxhall and I, its predecessor, Your Arsenal, is my favourite. It turns thirty on 27th July. In spite of one very controversial song, The National Front Disco, and one that may come across as very un-P.C. in today’s scene (You’re the One for Me, Fatty), Morrissey’s third studio album is a hugely strong work that vastly improved upon 1991’s Kill Uncle. With band members like Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer offering more range, a harder sound and swagger, there is a lot of life, depth, and variation across Moz’s 1992 release. Whilst the line of “England for the English” on The National Front Disco can either be seen as Morrissey writing about a misguided character or projecting his own political ideals, I am not too sure. It does slightly sour the album. Elsewhere, there is plenty to love. The confident and swinging opener, You’re Gonna Need Someone on Your Side, races from the gates and announces Your Arsenal as this emphatic and vital album. Whilst his former Smiths songwriting partner Johnny Marr is notably absent in terms of the melodic and musical gifts he brought to the band, there is a consistency on Your Arsenal that keeps you hooked and brings you back for repeated listens. My favourite tracks include Certain People I Know and I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday. The latter is one of two songs co-written (by Morrissey) with Mark E. Nevin (the other being You're Gonna Need Someone on Your Side).
At the moment, Morrissey is performing his residency in Las Vegas. Maybe it signals that he is nearing the end of his recording career or is slowing down. His more recent work has yielded mixed results, though there was this period from Your Arsenal in 1992 through to Vauxhall and I in 1994 where he was near his peak with The Smiths. Albumism looked back at the magnificent Your Arsenal in 2017:
“Produced by Mick Ronson, Your Arsenal was the debut of Moz's new lineup, including former Polecats guitarist Boz Boorer and Alain Whyte, both of whom had toured with him in conjunction with Kill Uncle (1991). Boorer would go on to produce Morrissey's albums from there on out, as well as write several songs alongside Moz. But coming from a rockabilly background, both Boorer and Whyte added a harder sound to Morrissey's music, kicking right off with "You're Gonna Need Someone on Your Side." If you listen closely, you can hear a little bit of "Handsome Devil" in the guitars. But despite the brutal melodies, it's quite a romantic song, an ode to the necessities of friendship (I know, I'm as surprised as you are): "Day or night, there is no difference / You're gonna need someone on your side."
Similarly, the penultimate "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" heads into the heartbreak anthem "Tomorrow," and I'm never quite sure if this is a love song or if it's Morrissey being Morrissey, the sarcastic bastard we all love. This also makes use of the sampling that we saw previously on "Rubber Ring" and others.
"I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday" was covered by David Bowie on 1993's "Black Tie White Noise." Morrissey idolized Bowie, appearing on stage with him in 1991. But during appearances on a tour in 1995, the two had a falling out, which left a bitter taste even after Bowie's untimely death last year.
All of the opening track's generosity is immediately dismissed on "Glamorous Glue," with the House-esque refrain, "Everyone lies, everyone lies" and a heavy-handed slap at both L.A. and London. At his best, Morrissey has always been a cheeky, clever poet. But at his worst, as we see here, he is lazy and dull, repeating the same worn tropes many more before him have used to greater effect. We get it, Morrissey, California is full of polished ugliness. But geez, can't you find something else to bitch about?
And of course, "The National Front Disco" has new, horrifying relevance in the era of Trump and Brexit and the rise of the alt-right. This song, about a young man joining a far-right group, remains controversial—does the anthem warn or celebrate? Of course, Morrissey says it isn't racist, but everyone knows Morrissey is kind of a racist prick and we only let it sort of slide because The Smiths are just so damn good. "England for the English" sounds a little bit like "America First," doesn’t it?
Nevertheless, there are still some remnants of the Morrissey we love, as best evidenced in the bwang-twang lick that opens "Certain People I Know" and even the guilty pleasure "You're The One For Me, Fatty" (I know I should hate this song, but I don't, which makes me feel like a total jerk and I'm sorry)”.
Prior to wrapping things up, I want to bring together a couple of reviews for 1992’s Your Arsenal. Although some were mixed and a bit critical – many highlighting songs like The National Front Disco as a worrying or too-controversial inclusion -, there was ample praise for a extremely solid and enjoyable album. This is what CLASH wrote back in 2014:
“Four years into an unwanted solo career, and lacking the kind of melodies such a wordsmith needs to hang his withered gladioli upon, a reboot was required.
Having assembled a youthful and far-from-virtuoso group around him in order to tour 1991’s limply polished and lyrically unfocused ‘Kill Uncle’, Morrissey wanted that band dynamic on record. With legendary guitarist Mick Ronson on production duties, the glam world the artist had studied and his producer had lived was brought back to life.
Several songs inhabit the personae of challenging characters in typically provocative fashion, whether football hooligans or members of the National Front. The latter is more pitied than condemned across one of the album’s strongest melodies, ‘The National Front Disco’.
‘Certain People I Know’ may be a shameless T. Rex rip off, but it does features a gloriously mannered Moz vocal, while ‘I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday’ is a grandiose ballad with more than a nod to Bowie’s ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide’.
As is his want, Morrissey has tinkered with the 1992 original record for this reissue, subbing out closing track ‘Tomorrow’ (original video below) for its mildly more muscular American mix, but otherwise it’s business as usual. The accompanying DVD features an early performance by this line-up, which is a mildly diverting if sonically unspectacular curio alongside a still largely splendid record”.
I am not sure whether there will be much in the way of celebration and coverage on the thirtieth anniversary of Your Arsenal. It is an album that definitely should be explored more. I hear the odd song played here and there. Featuring some of Morrissey’s best lines and vocals, go and listen to the album if you have not heard it. This is Rolling Stone’s take on Your Arsenal from 1992:
“Mope no more. forsaking the cozy glow of cult-hero worship on his fourth solo album, Morrissey hurls himself into the cold cruel rock mainstream. Your Arsenal is the most direct — and outwardly directed — statement he’s made since disbanding the Smiths. Buoyed by the conversational grace of his lyric writing, Morrissey rides high atop this album’s rip-roaring guitar tide.
Just last year, the meticulously obscure Kill Uncle positioned Morrissey as the postpunk scene’s answer to Elvis Costello: an eccentric major talent perfectly content to bask in a stuffy hothouse atmosphere. Your Arsenal admits a blast or two of less rarefied musical air, and it works wonders. “You’re Gonna Need Someone on Your Side” is not only one blitzkrieg bop of an opening cut, it aggressively sets Morrissey’s new interpersonal agenda. The onetime poet-recluse boldly approaches a fellow neurotic (“with the world’s fate resting on your shoulders”), offering pointed and hard-won counsel: “Give yourself a break before you break down.” All the while, two blunt and fuzzy guitars cough up a glam-metal variation on the Bo Diddley beat.
Onetime Bowie foil Mick Ronson produces Your Arsenal to stunning effect. For all the sonic thunder, he imposes a much-needed pop discipline on Morrissey’s grander instincts. His penchant for maudlin balladry held firmly in check by taut arrangements and riff-driven melodies, Morrissey turns his sharp eye to the crumbling world outside his window. This time, the moody slow songs (“I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday,” “We’ll Let You Know”) really do linger and haunt. The deeply affecting “We’ll Let You Know” (“We are the last truly English people you will ever know”) and the disarmingly uptempo “National Front Disco” peek into the sad, sick world of Britain’s neo-fascist youth movement; Morrissey probes this twisted mind-set with psychological depth and deftness. Rather than preach against the general evils of racism, as most topical rockers would, he puts us inside this hopeless situation for a few revealing minutes.
Not that Morrissey’s a Brit isolationist, by any means. “We look to L.A. for the language we use,” he insists on the raucous media-age anthem “Glamorous Glue.” Spitting out the line “London is dead” a half-dozen times after that, punctuating the psychedelic groan with his own croons and hoots, Morrissey faces down the wildly uncertain New World Order with dark humor and a clear head. Your Arsenal is stockpiled with the rock & roll equivalent of smart bombs: compact missives that zoom in on their targets with devastating precision. The repercussions last long after the rubble is cleared”.
Humorous, edgy, tough, controversial at times, beautiful at others, it is fascinating diving into Your Arsenal. I wanted to shine a light on Moz’s second solo studio album ahead of its thirtieth anniversary on 27th July. There is no denying that it is…
ONE of his greatest solo albums.