GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2025/26

DAVID McGRATH

‘Making an Album with Morrissey’

CLIVE IS A RECORD PRODUCER IN HIS PRIME AT THAT TIME, turning down Madonna albums and doing coke with David Bowie. He’s having dramatic ups and downs with the band Madness, top of charts one minute — locked in the booth of Vauxhall Corsas the next.

And you’re not coming out until we get our fuckin money, Clive.

How do I get you your money locked in the booth of a Vauxhall Corsa?

You’ll figure it out.

After he escapes Clive burns a million pounds in cash with the band KLF up in Scotland. It’s an art piece. A commentary on capitalism or whatever.

Every single minute of Clive’s life back then is unexpected.

There are suitcases he’s to hide in his house and not ask questions about. There’s a man on his couch he doesn’t know. It’s gone on too long now to ask him his name. Or how he came to be living on his couch. He goes to America to produce the next big thing but they kick him out for drinking on the sound desk. And right now, Clive is in a hotel room with Elvis Costello and some arsehole has just thrown a television through a window.

It was naff, Clive says to me years later. We all just stood there looking at the broken window then we look out the window in hope nobody was hurt.

Then my mobile phone rings. Hello?

Clive, says the record company. What are you doing?

I’m with Elvis. Someone’s just thrown a television through a window.

Original.

Think it’s hit a cleaning lady. Fuck.

We want you to make an album with Morrissey.

Clive has a think. I’m not really Morrissey’s cup of tea.

Up to that point Morrissey had released one solo album after The Smiths. Viva Hate. It was good. It had ‘Suedehead' and ‘Everyday is like Sunday' on it. Two classics from Morrissey so Morrissey was coming in hot and demanding. And Clive was known for working with hot and demanding.

Booths of Vauxhall Corsas and all that.

He wants a Madness sound.

Again, Clive insists on having a think. But Morrissey’s not Madness, Clive says.

Jesus Christ, Clive. Morrissey wants a Madness sound so he’s getting a Madness sound. We’ve hired Hook End Manor for as long as it takes. Don’t worry about the cleaning lady. We’ll sort it.

It’s a relief being told not to worry about the cleaning lady. She looks like she got a proper whack from the television. The record company always knows exactly what to say.

Clive taxis halfway across the country to Hook End Manor with the party in tow. When they arrive, David Gilmour from Pink Floyd is there because he owns the place. Gilmour has cocaine and hookers. The party rises over two days into a crescendo then implodes after a séance gone terribly wrong. They unlocked something from the otherworld. Sunlight comes up over smashed human bones. A woman is saying she’s pregnant with the Antichrist. Get it out of me, she’s saying. Get it out of me. Gilmour is stark raving naked on the lawn and crying. Mascara is caking down his face and he’s saying sorry to his mother in heaven.

The record company is kicking everybody out.

Clive’s so stoned that he’s allowing himself be kicked out, too.

Not you, Clive, the record company says. You fuckin idiot.

The party is on the way to Jimmy Page’s house and Clive wants to go. What? Clive asks.

You’ve been on the clock three days, Clive. Where’s our album?

Morrissey’s not here, Clive says. He shrugs around at all the Morrissey not there.

He’s been here for a week, Clive.

Clive looks around. Where? I haven’t met him.

What’s that got to do with the price of fish?

What?

Write some fuckin songs, Clive. Here’s the start of some. The record company flings Clive a scrunched-up notebook that was prised from the cold and overdosed dead fingers of the last poor prick.

And then what?

And then slip them under his door?

What door?

Jesus Christ, the record company says. It’s had enough. It turns around for one last thing before it leaves. Wilderness is outside to fend off hookers, dealers and television tossers. It’s you and Morrissey until there’s a fuckin album. You’re not burning up our million pounds you cunt.

Clive is shocked. I didn’t burn the million pounds. I was nowhere near that.

We don’t give a fuck. You know the idiots. That’s enough.

The front door slams guilty by association.

Clive is alone. There is only the sound of fuck in his brain from the two straight weeks of drinking and drugging.

Where am I?

He reopens the front door that has just been slammed. The record company is getting into its car and driving away. Wilderness is stepping out of his parked white van. Wilderness is a massive man. Envisage a doorman with two houses in Spain and bodies in their foundations. That’s Wilderness.

What do you need, Clive?

It’s unsettling that Wilderness knows his name despite them never having met. Clive steps back inside the house without answering.

Clive goes through into the dining room where there is a large dinner table set for dinner but there is no dinner. A few placemats have been scattered and cutlery disrupted. Clive seems to remember a woman standing up on the table and setting her nipple tassels on fire. Sure enough there are burnt-up nipple tassels at his feet.

Up in the games room the pool table has been abandoned mid-game.

Clive still has the scrunched-up songs in his hand. He goes over to the grand piano in the reception hall and starts to bang away at the ivories but its nonsense. Its not art. He has enough.

This is fuckin stupid, he says.

Wilderness once again asks what he needs at the front door.

A lift to the nearest station, Clive says. Where is this? Where are we?

Back inside, Clive.

But it’s fucked.

You’re not coming out until you have an album. You signed a contract.

I was fucked.

The ink wasn’t.

He’s not even in here.

Slide the songs under the door.

What door?

Wilderness gets back inside his van and continues with War and Peace. There’s violence if Clive wants it.

Wilderness knows he knows it.

That’s the end of it.

Clive goes back inside and quickly comes up with a song. It is the shittest song ever written. He brings it up the stairs of the East Wing and walks with it down the hall of previous masters on the wall. All of the doors are open along the hallway. It reveals rooms where the world had been carved up over brandy. Trade routes, globes and boundary lines. Gilmour has tried to make it his own by putting up a poster of The Dark Side of the Moon.

From the only closed door at the end of the corridor comes the sound of a skull being crushed by the slow and steady beat of an open palm. There is raw guttural screaming. It is primal and blood curdling.

Clive slides the song under the door.

The skull crushing stops immediately and there is a ferocious shuffle and voraciousness towards the song behind the door.

Clive runs back downstairs in fear. He looks around for booze to settle his nerves. There’s none in the fridge or cupboards. He goes to the cellar to check for a wine collection. Nothing. Clive watches Little Jack clack marbles for a while then he goes to bed.

The Manor creaks and cracks of Little Jack’s marbles and the snores of dead masters and the turning pages of Tolstoy. And after a while this burnt time crumbles thick like hash and the house sets, almost admitting enough is enough for one day. The plumbing slows down and little ticks of clatter are so few and far between that Clive is drifting off to dream without alcohol in his body for the first time in many years.

Clive takes one last look at the world to try and hold onto it before he sleeps and suddenly Morrissey is sitting at the end of his bed, looking at him as he’s drifting off.

Fuck me. Jesus Christ. What the fuck? Clive says.

Morrissey presides over his terror. You’re my international playboy producer?

Fuck me.

Clive is hyperventilating. He knows it’s Morrissey but he thought he was fucking dead there for a second.

Do you want this album, Clive? Morrissey says like he’s a reincarnated king. His chin is higher than his nose when he says it.

I don’t know, Clive says.

What do you mean you don’t know?

I was drunk. I feel like I’ve woken up sober in the middle of this thing.

Do you hate me, Clive?

I don’t hate you. I don’t know you.

Do you hate me?

I don’t hate you, Morrissey.

Well OK then. Let’s do this better. Slip the songs under my door.

Clive knows nothing of non sequitur arguments and thinks that’s that — he’s making this album.

Before Morrissey leaves his bedroom he pisses in the corner. Little miss pissy, Morrissey says as he buckles up his trousers.

The next morning Clive writes a lovely little song. He slides it under the door before dinner. In the dead of night Morrissey is at the foot of the bed again but this time he’s naked. What the fuck was that, Clive?

What was what, Morrissey?

That song.

Are you naked?

I’m naked on the outside because it’s how I feel on the inside, Clive. Don’t fuck with me, Clive.

I’m not fuckin with you, Morrissey.

So what was that song?

It was a song.

It was upbeat. It was an upbeat little bastard of a song, Clive. With aeroplane pigs. Are you looking to put a little pair of frilly knickers on me, Clive?

I don’t know what that means?

Ride me so hard you win the Grand National on me, Clive?

Morrissey.

Crack an egg in my arse and fuck me so hard it scrambles?

What?

Morrissey flibbers his lips and hits himself hard in his own head. Why is your song so upbeat?

Morrissey — you were told I was coming from ‘Come on Eileen' and ‘Baggy Trousers’. That’s pop. Upbeat pop. I don’t do grey fuckin post-industrial Northern fuckin misery for little Englanders.

Morrissey becomes furious by Clive’s delusion that life’s a party full of upbeat pop. To pretend to be happy could only be idiocy. He moves up the bed on all fours. Morrissey pinches Clive’s cheeks together. Clive’s lips are now pursed in Morrissey’s face and there is a smell of piss in his nostrils from Morrissey’s little miss pissy incident the night before.

I was told, Clive, you little zygote — that you were drinking yourself to death.

Who told you that?

Morrissey gives Clive a crack across the head for the question. What’s it like?

What’s what like?

Death. Doing what you do. Dying one drink at a time. Drinking yourself to death everyday and then waking up reborn. Death defying little cunt.

Clive has a think. It’s like…

Morrissey cracks him across the head again. Don’t tell me. Tell the song. Save your life in the song. Then slip it under my door.

The next morning Clive is at the piano with death on his mind for the first time in his whole life. He pours himself into the piano by way of fat and splashing tears on the ivory. He takes as much pause as the note requires andpresses another key on the piano and thinks of everything that’s been given to him and all that he’s felt and the song is like no other song he’s ever written. He thinks of his father. He lands the ending like a virtuoso. Clive cannot move for a long time after it’s written. Little Jack comes to his side. He has been listening to the song and it has moved him. A very beautiful tune, sir.

Thank you, Little Jack, Clive says. Could you slide it under Morrissey’s door? I’m just going to sit here for a minute.

Little Jack is happy to help and floats away off with the song.

Little ghost bastard, Morrissey shouts upstairs. Frightened the fuckin bejesus out of me.

Clive waits for Morrissey to appear at the foot of his bed later that night but Morrissey’s a no-show.

After a few days Clive eventually knocks on Morrissey’s door. He hears his song in there.

Morrissey?

Go away.

What are you doing with my song?

That’s none of your business, Clive.

Of course it’s my business. It’s my song.

There is a long and drawn-out silence. Get rid of Little Jack.

What?

If you want your song. Get rid of Little Jack. I can’t stand the clacking. It’s driving me fucking crazy.

He’s only seven.

Fuck him off.

How do you expect me to do that?

Well, Jesus Christ, Clive. I imagine he’s tethered to the fuckin headstone. Have you never seen a horror film?

I don’t watch films.

There is no more from Morrissey until his demand has been met. Clive walks down the cellar and can’tbelieve that this is his life.

Little Jack is there clacking marbles. Clive moves towards the headstone to pick it up. Little Jack stops his game and looks at Clive. He seems to know then that he’s to leave the house.

I’m sorry, Clive says. It’s not me. Morrissey is upset by the clacking.

It’s all right, sir, Little Jack says and starts scooping up his marbles for the move.

Clive carries the headstone out to the stables and leaves it in with the Pink Floyd pig. It breaks him that he’s about to leave Little Jack out here alone and Clive is angry for the first time. For the trick Morrissey has caught him in. For controlling him with his own love for music. For making him get rid of Little Jack who is harmless. Clive cries. He hasn’t cried in forty years and now he’s cried twice in as many days. Morrissey is a ten ton truck of fuck that’s killing him. Clive storms back inside the house and kicks Morrissey’s door to try and say something.

What the fuck was that? Morrissey shouts from inside his room.

Fuck you!

Morrissey comes out. You’ve done it now, Clive. Kicking my door. I’ll have you shot.

Fuck you, Morrissey, Clive says and in the next few days it’s war. Clive is no-more-mister-nice-guy and Morrissey goes full blown Morrissey. They throw things at each other. They smash things. They stand in doorways to stop the other leaving the room. They lock each other out. Wilderness has to call the locksmith at all hours of the day and night. They sit out on the roof and threaten to jump. They hold the other’s possessions to ransom until they get what they want. They falsely accuse to provoke. They deny they said that. Morrissey cracks Clive across the head then holds out his own chin to be punched. Clive has not hit him but he has clenched his fists and been, in his words, very close. They fight until they are physically exhausted and with their last scrap of energy remaining they pour it into a song.

Morrissey produces a song about a sex soldier sent back in time to impregnate the women of the past. And the sex soldier can freeze time so when time is frozen he has sex with all of these women.

It’s a rape fantasy, Clive tells him. Total psycho shit.

Morrissey goes fucking bananas. He cannot take criticism. He goes for Clive’s throat.

He holds my throat, Clive says to me years later, tight, Clive emphasises, like really tight, trying to squeeze the life out of me. He hates me enough to kill me because I said his rape song was a rape song. And then I start to choke him, and we’re out in the middle of Oxfordshire choking one another to death and I look in Morrissey’s eyes, me at the centre of his attention, our world crumbling down around us in the choke, and we were to die there together, his hate just as good as love because at least we were feeling something. I saw the infinite universe in his eyes as I died this death to become his God in this death we’d share, a light to never go out.

Until Wilderness and the cleaning lady broke us up. Morrissey takes a swipe at me, but when I duck, he absolutely connects this almighty punch to the face of the cleaning lady. There was blood everywhere and I’m distraught because no matter where I seem to go there are bludgeoned cleaning ladies. I’m some curse on cleaning ladies so I go to bed

When I wake up my phone’s ringing. It’s the record company. Clive, what the fuck?

What?

Morrissey’s saying you were sneaking into his room at night trying to wank him off.

What? That’s absolute horse shit.

Saying you’ve been porking the cleaning lady. Jesus Christ, Clive.

He’s a fucking liar.

That’s what he said you’d say.

Where is he?

He’s gone back to Manchester to get started on the album.

Get started? It’s finished. I finished it.

Oh yeah? Finished it when? Finished it between fucking the cleaning lady and wanking yourself off at the end of Morrissey’s bed?

He’s a fucking liar. He did all that shit.

Two cops arrive to the front door of Hook End Manor and tell me to fuck off, says Clive. And that was making an album with Morrissey.

Thirty years later Clive sits in a café and finishes reading my story, ‘Making an Album with Morrissey.’

What’s all this Little Jack stuff? Clive asks.

Well, I say. You told me your little boy visited when you were making the album and you all played football. You said Morrissey was really rough with him, slide-tackling him when he was only seven.

But why not just say that?

Because the story is about you and Morrissey making an album. Just you and Morrissey. In the house together alone and the situation killing you both. I think it confuses it if we talk about family visits and people coming and going. It’s better if you’re trapped. And it’s not finished yet.

How does it end?

Well, I say. Clive goes after Morrissey for stealing his album and Morrissey is in court behind a screen saying he’s traumatised from Clive’s harassment and sexual assault and everyone thinks Morrissey is this lying, disgusting piece of shit that should be doing a prison sentence for false allegations.

Clive looks at me. He’s suspicious. I think this is your story, he says. I think this a revenge story on your ex. A way of calling her a cunt without saying it specifically. Morrissey is your ex. I think, under the guise of writing my autobiography, in actual fact, you’re writing your autobiography.

I make to say something.

Stop, Clive says. You little zygote.

Clive, I say.

Enough, he says and cracks me across the head. I fuckin hate it. None of its true. And he’s rattled vicious from having made this album with Morrissey. Years later the ghosts of it are unresolved and it has scared him this fight that won’t stop in his head, the details of which he’d get the electric chair if anyone could read his mind, these ghosts destined to fight onwards, still fighting as a couple of frozen dead souls hurtling through space after the Earth explodes in nuclear fire, banging against each other and their frosty scowls in purl for the perfect song, on and onwards into interminable and undying death.