Please Release Me

I Touched the Salt Shaker Morrissey Touched When He Ate at the Same Restaurant as Me, by Daniel R. Mann

When Daniel R. Mann first heard The Smiths as a teenager, Morrissey spoke to him, and millions of other people, personally. Daniel pursued this personal, intimate relationship with millions of other people at countless concerts and interviews in television studios, stadiums, and platforms where Morrissey might formally appear. He wrote intimate personal letters to his hero in which he emphasised how Morrissey was singing for him and him alone, no one else, how Moz’s music had been written as the specific soundtrack to his (Daniel’s) life.

After three decades of this hero worship, Daniel decided to take this intimate relationship to the next level and follow his hero around—from his home in Los Angeles to his formal concerts and appearances—in the hope his hero might acknowledge this personal spiritual unique connection with Daniel R. Mann and become his friend and soul mate and lover. The closest Daniel managed was to touch the salt shaker Morrissey had used when Daniel had followed Morrissey to a restaurant in Sherman Oaks. “The waitress had removed the salt shaker by the time I got to the table, but I brushed up against her and my pinkie definitely connected with the salt shaker. It wasn’t the glass his companion was drinking from as some people said. It was definitely Moz’s salt shaker. Definitely,” says Daniel. 

This is his remarkable story.

Out now in hardback from Kooky Stalker Books, £45.90.