I first started reading Interview Magazine’s new Q&A between Morrissey and his longtime friend/collaborator Linder Sterling with a notepad nearby, ready to jot down a few inevitably brilliant quotes. Three exchanges in, however, and the page was full, as this interview is not only an unrelenting quote machine, but also the most inspiring read of the day at worst and the Holy Bible of art-related conversation at best.
If I was ever forced into a competition of wits against Morrissey, Linder, a legendary visual/performance artist from Manchester, England, would be my team captain. I mean, nobody could compete with statements like this: “No good art has ever resulted from simply running naked through the hall and letting everything swing.”
The last time the pair published one of their exchanges was in 1979 for a U.K. fanzine in which “their questions and answers, written back and forth between each other over a span of weeks, are as much inventories of two poetic masterminds as lyrics all their own.”
Well, they’ve done it again.