The Smiths & Morrissey thread

Get the popcorn out pop pickers!

Morrissey responds to recent Johnny Marr interview

"This is not a rant or an hysterical bombast. It is a polite and calmly measured request: Would you please stop mentioning my name in your interviews?

Would you please, instead, discuss your own career, your own unstoppable solo achievements and your own music?

If you can, would you please just leave me out of it?

The fact is: you don’t know me. You know nothing of my life, my intentions, my thoughts, my feelings. Yet you talk as if you were my personal psychiatrist with consistent and uninterrupted access to my instincts. We haven’t known each other for 35 years - which is many lifetimes ago. When we met you and I were not successful. We both helped each other become whatever it is we are today. Can you not just leave it at that? Must you persistently, year after year, decade after decade, blame me for everything … from the 2007 Solomon Islands tsunami to the dribble on your grandma’s chin ?

You found me inspirational enough to make music with me for 6 years. If I was, as you claim, such an eyesore monster, where exactly did this leave you? Kidnapped? Mute? Chained? Abducted by cross-eyed extraterrestrials? It was YOU who played guitar on ‘Golden Lights’ - not me.

Yes, we all know that the British press will print anything you say about me as long as it’s cruel and savage. But you’ve done all that. Move on. It’s as if you can’t uncross your own legs without mentioning me. Our period together was many lifetimes ago, and a lot of blood has streamed under the bridge since then. There comes a time when you must take responsibility for your own actions and your own career, with which I wish you good health to enjoy. Just stop using my name as click-bait. I have not ever attacked your solo work or your solo life, and I have openly applauded your genius during the days of ‘Louder than bombs’ and ‘Strangeways, here we come’, yet you have positioned yourself ever-ready as rent-a-quote whenever the press require an ugly slant on something I half-said during the last glacial period as the Colorado River began to carve out the Grand Canyon. Please stop. It is 2022, not 1982."

Morrissey. January 2022.
He's started something he couldn't finish there. Fair enough.
 
What’s prompted it? Has Marr been invited to pass comment on his political views for example? (And done so?)
Excerpt:

Speaking in a new interview with Uncut, the 58-year-old said: “[The Smiths are] one of the things I’m proudest of. One of the things that I must be proud about – not only myself but the whole group, because that was our MO. Whatever s*** was going on, nothing got in the way of what was coming out of speakers – and there’s a lot to get in the way.

“It’s a simplistic way of putting it, but one of the reasons I’ve been in so many bands was because I wanted to be loyal to them. It won’t come as any surprise when I say that I’m really close with everyone I’ve worked with – except for the obvious one. And that isn’t that much of a surprise because we’re so different, me and Morrissey. But all of these different musicians, I can pick up the phone to anyone, and just pick up from where we left off.

“Everyone I’ve worked with has been great. The only thing that turned to s*** was The Smiths. Which is a shame, but s*** happens. I hate talking about the group I formed in those terms, the group I loved. But, y’know, let’s get some perspective.”
 
Excerpt:

Speaking in a new interview with Uncut, the 58-year-old said: “[The Smiths are] one of the things I’m proudest of. One of the things that I must be proud about – not only myself but the whole group, because that was our MO. Whatever s*** was going on, nothing got in the way of what was coming out of speakers – and there’s a lot to get in the way.

“It’s a simplistic way of putting it, but one of the reasons I’ve been in so many bands was because I wanted to be loyal to them. It won’t come as any surprise when I say that I’m really close with everyone I’ve worked with – except for the obvious one. And that isn’t that much of a surprise because we’re so different, me and Morrissey. But all of these different musicians, I can pick up the phone to anyone, and just pick up from where we left off.

“Everyone I’ve worked with has been great. The only thing that turned to s*** was The Smiths. Which is a shame, but s*** happens. I hate talking about the group I formed in those terms, the group I loved. But, y’know, let’s get some perspective.”
I think Marr got a bit of heat from the media when they were making out Moz was a little bit racist for his comments/lyrics about 'Englishness'? I remember seeing a couple of Marr interviews where he put a bit of polite distance between them or even made out that he always knew Moz was the next Tommy Robinson and he (Marr) kept him on the straight and narrow during the smiths years.
 

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