When I was a small child, the sad, dreadful sight of the poor blood-covered carcasses of cows, calves, sheep, goats, chickens and fish was unsufferable to me: it was enough to make me want to be vegetarian, but unfortunately my family did not understand me. My family was not too much carnivore, but the old idea that we need to eat meat in order to be fit was stuck in their mind.
As a sensitive and sensible child, Meat is Murder was the proof that my will to be vegetarian was not a strange thing: it was such a comfort to me to know that there was a young man in the UK who stood and sang against cruelty on animals.
Every Sunday afternoon, during my childhood and my teens, I used to listen to Meat is Murder in a sort of religious silence. We did not attend Mass regularly, but Meat is Murder was, to me, the weekly Eucharist. Morrissey's deep, beautiful and soulful voice and lyrics, the desperate cries of the beautiful Creatures being slaughtered - but still struggling for life - and the Requiem-like music written by Johnny Marr made me feel in deep communion with all the suffering animals.
When I was nine, during our Sunday lunch at home, when Mom was serving chicken, I improvised a poem about a lovely, little chicken living peacefully in a courtyard and then being suddenly killed, cooked and put on a plate. My Dad found my improvised poem so disturbing that he screamed: "Basta!"... and thus I knew I was right, even if I was obliged to eat the poor chicken "who should not be dead in vain".
The doctor and my dance teachers told my parents that I could not stop eating meat, so it was very difficult to change my parents' mind.
It took many years, but as a young adult, I finally become a vegetarian (almost vegan) even if my first years in Paris were not easy at all for a vegetarian life style: it was - and still is - far easier in Italy, but the French habits are slightly changing and it is now easier to avoid meat, fish and dairy.
Eight or nine years ago, when I came back home for Summer holidays, I had a great surprise: my mother and one of my siblings had turned 100% vegetarian and almost vegan. Had my dear Father lived longer, I am sure he would have become vegetarian too.
Below, the cover art of the great Smiths studio album Meat is Murder, recorded in 1984 and released on 11th February 2025.
Morrissey chose a 1967 photograph of Michael Wynn, an American Marine in Vietnam, having the motto "Make war not love" written on his helmet, and he replaced this motto by the title of both the song and the album. Cpl. Wynn disapproved the use of his picture for the album sleeve, but Morrissey's choice gave this photograph a new iconic dimension and meaning.
The un-altered picture (see below) was taken by Emile Francisco De Antonio and used for his documentary In the Year of the Pig (1968) which was Oscar-nominated in 1969.
The whole album is a masterpiece and it confirms that the Mancunian band, in spite of its short life, was meant to outlive the Eighties and "to go down in musical history", quoting Frankly, Mr. Shankly, from the Smiths album The Queen is Dead, recorded in 1985 and released in 1986.
Meat is Murder is a concept album on the theme of violence and its effects on individuals and society. The lack of empathy towards animals is the first step in the human descent into Hell, and I remember that, when I was a child, I saw very clearly the link between animal abuse and criminal acts: the mafiosi encourage children and young boys to torture and to kill cats and dogs, even very young, to test their "skills" and their cold blood.
The school of crime is the obvious place where children and teenagers learn how to hurt and to kill, but violence is taught also in family and at school, and the songs The Headmaster Ritual and Barbarism begins at Home are a reminder of this inconvenient truth.
Another stunning song is That Joke isn't funny anymore, and I remember that I used to listen to it very often, at the time I was bullied by a bunch of silly, jealous and hateful girls in middle school.
(To be continued...)
The making of "Meat is Murder" on The Smiths' YouTube channel.
Above: photograph and drawing by me.
(C) Vera da Pozzo
(C) Italy is Mine
(C) Italy is Mine and It owes Me a Living
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