Morrissey asks Johnny Marr to please, please, please stop bringing him up in interviews
Morrissey penned an open letter to his former The Smiths bandmate
There are countless reasons to dunk on Morrissey, so you can’t really blame his former The Smiths bandmate Johnny Marr for not being a fan of the guy. Over the years, he hasn’t hidden his true feelings. He even made the shady comment that the best band he’s played with is Modest Mouse. But Moz has had enough.
On January 25, Morrissey published an open letter on his site in which he makes a “polite and calmly measured request” for Marr to please, please, please let him get what he wants this time—and that is, for Marr to stop mentioning his name in “click-bait” 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?” he wrote.
He continued, “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?”
Morrissey also went on to remind Marr that he voluntarily decided to be in The Smiths. He asks if things were really that awful, then why he didn’t leave the band earlier? “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,” he wrote.
As Marr detailed in his memoir Set The Boy Free, his friction with Morrissey is what led him to becoming disillusioned with the band, and is ultimately why he left.
Needless to say, Marr wasn’t moved by Morrissey’s plea. He fired back on Twitter, “Dear @officialmoz. An ‘open letter’ hasn’t really been a thing since 1953, It’s all ‘social media’ now. Even Donald J Trump had that one down. Also, this fake news business… a bit 2021 yeah? #makingindiegreatagain.”