Songfacts®:

• The song is, in its base form, a hero-worship of the Kray Twins, who were infamous London gangsters that have since died. The song's protagonist claims that he "Did not mean to kill, I am not naturally evil," possibly being a reference to copycat killers.
  
  It's not out of character for Morrissey to write from the perspective of the deranged and abhorrent. Check out his 1992 song "Jack The Ripper."
• Morrissey wrote this song with his producer, Stephen Street, and released it as a single in 1989.
  
  After his group The Smiths broke up in 1987, Morrissey put out a solo album in 1988 called Viva Hate that had two UK hits: "Suedehead" and "Everyday Is Like Sunday." "The Last of the Famous International Playboys" was his next single and seemed to augur in another album, but instead he just kept releasing more singles, eventually compiling them along with some unreleased songs on a compilation called Bona Drag in 1990.
• "The Last of the Famous International Playboys" was the first song by either Morrissey or The Smiths to make a Billboard chart in America - it went to #3 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart.
  
  The Smiths were very popular in the UK, where they were based, but couldn't break through in the US, where they were darlings of college radio but couldn't get much further. Morrissey's solo career started the same way but then he gradually found a following and was able to draw crowds to his live shows there in the early '90s.
• Morrissey's Smiths bandmates Andy Rourke (bass) and Mike Joyce (drums) played on this track. Later in 1989, Rourke and Joyce took legal action to claim a greater share of royalties from their contributions to The Smiths, which soured their relationship with Morrissey and scuttled any chance of reuniting the group.
• Morrissey's videos could be a bit lazy - "November Spawned A Monster" is all just him hanging out in a desert. In "The Last of the Famous International Playboys," he and his band perform the song in front of a green screen but don't bother compositing anything onto it. There is a subplot, though, with actor Jason Rush seen wandering about.