Morrissey, in response to a recent interview with Johnny Marr, featured as the cover story in Uncut Magazine for their latest issue, has asked his former Smiths songwriting partner to “please stop mentioning my name in your interviews”.
During the Uncut Interview, where Marr was promoting his forthcoming double album Fever Dreams Pt. 1 – 4, the famed guitarist had stated: “I’m really close with everyone I’ve worked with – except for the obvious one”. Marr elaborates that his relationships with most people he has worked with have “been great”, and he can call them anytime, like an old “army buddy”. But, he adds, this is not the case with Morrissey, who he is not close with, because they’re “so different”
Yesterday, posted via an open letter to Morrissey central, Morrisey wrote a 377-word response to Marr, haranguing his former bandmate to stop mentioning his name at all during interviews, stating that he and Marr “haven’t known each other for 35 years.”
Read the full letter below (Updated with Marr’s reply):
“OPEN LETTER TO JOHNNY MARR.
January 25, 2022
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.”
On the morning of January 26th, Marr replied via Twitter stating that an “open letter hasn’t really been a thing since 1953”, and that “this fake news business” is a bit 2021.
See the tweet below:
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