Morrissey demands that Johnny Marr stop talking about him

The Smiths ever getting back together, always a long shot, has never seemed so improbable as it has recently thanks to Morrissey and Johnny Marr.

While promoting his upcoming double album, Fever Dreams Pt 1-4, Marr has been frosty towards his former band mate. “I’m really close with everyone I’ve worked with – except for the obvious one,” he said in an interview with Uncut Magazine (as per NME). “We’re so different,” he added understatedly.

The guitarist had previously also hailed Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock as the greatest lyricist he’d ever worked with, which you can imagine going down in Chez Morrissey like a lead balloon.

It’s now Morrissey’s turn to retaliate and he’s done so in the form of a lengthy open letter aimed directly at Marr, demanding that he kindly keep his name out of his mouth during interviews.

“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?,” the Open Letter To Johnny Marr begins.

“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?

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You found me inspirational enough to make music with me for six 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.”

Morrissey’s letter concludes by firing at the British media. “Yes, we all know that the British press will print anything you say about me as long as it’s cruel and savage,” he writes. “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 clickbait. 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.”

Say what you want about Morrissey but he always has a flare for the theatrical. ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ and ‘The Boy With the Thorn in His Side’ have never seemed as prescient titles as when Morrissey and Marr are warring. Perhaps it’s time interviewers stop asking the pair about The Smiths so much.

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