I was Morrissey’s roadie (for one day) by Andrew Winters.
“Be careful, Andrew,” someone warns me. “Moz hates people who are boring . . . but then, he also hates people being too pushy around him. Establishing common ground quickly is important.”
If this tale is to believed, it’s no wonder that the Smiths could never find a suitable manager, a fact that Johnny Marr blames for why he quit the band…
Via lhb.
Right on schedule, the NME has a titillating headline that more than implies that Johnny Marr is mulling the idea of a Smiths reunion:
Johnny Marr: ‘The Smiths might reform’
Simple as that. He’s thinking about it, right? Well, not really. The money quote of the article is, “Stranger things have happened so, you know, who knows?”
He added: “It’s no biggy. Maybe we will in 10 or 15 years time when we all need to for whatever reasons, but right now Morrissey is doing his thing and I’m doing mine, so that’s the answer really.”
So, Johnny Marr’s totally dismissive answer to the question that will not go away is made into a leading story. Nevermind that Morrissey has publicly turned down upwards of £40 million to tour again and said he’d rather “eat my testicles than re-form The Smiths…and that’s saying something for a vegetarian.”
But the NME can dream…
Next week should have a Stone Roses reunion post.
With the fortieth anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper, ’tis the season to knock some idols off their pedestals. The Guardian asked a bunch of musicians to “nominate the supposedly great records they’d gladly never hear again,” and they came up with some fantastic quotes.
These days, well, it’s my contention that it represents the death of the Beatles as a rock’n’roll band and the birth of them as music hall, which is hardly a victory. The main problem with Sgt Pepper is Sir Paul’s maudlin obsession with his own self-importance and Dickensian misery. (Paul McCartney is the dark one in the Beatles, not John Lennon, because he writes such depressing, scary music.) It’s like a Sunday before school that goes on forever. It’s too dark and twisted for anyone with any light in their life. Then again, when he tries to be upbeat, it rings false – like having a clown in the room.
–Billy Childish on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
In America when you’re growing up, you’re subjected to the Doors as soon as you start going to parties and smoking weed. People think of Jim Morrison as a brilliant rock’n’roll poet, but to me it’s unlistenable. The music meanders, and Morrison was more like a drunk asshole than an intelligent poet.
— The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn on LA Woman
More after the jump…
A new documentary, Inside the Smiths, tells the story of the band from the point of view of Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce. Check out the trailer:
I wonder if it’ll show up on this side of the pond…
Via the fr0k.
Former Smith and current Mousketeer Johnny Marr is designing a limited edition shoe for charity: “I’ve been wearing PF Flyers onstage for quite awhile and to come up with a design on a sneaker that will also benefit a charity that is important to me is an exciting opportunity.”
Only 108 pairs will be available in the UK and the US, starting July 10. All proceeds will go to Pictor School and Cure Autism Now.
Smiths club in conservation bid – Salford Lads Club set to be given conservation status.
I spent the fall semester of my junior year of college studying abroad at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Over the Christmas holiday, my homie Derek Phillips flew over and the two of us spent a couple of weeks bumming around the British isles. Right around New Years Eve we found ourselves in Manchester. On a mission without knowing dick about shit, we asked locals until we ended up in front of the mecca of Smiths fanaticism: the Salford Lads Club.
Interview with Smiths Indeed founder Mark Taylor. I’m pretty sure I contributed a short piece to issue 8 or 9 of the fanzine. I know for sure that I got tons of mail via the penpals section. In these days of instant messaging and bit torrents, it’s hard to imagine writing letters by hand and mailing cassette tapes overseas, but that’s exactly what we did back then. It was hard work to be an obsessive fan before the internet.
Andy Rourke’s Bass on ebay. Used on all Smiths’ albums.
1. That riff. The funkiest little thing Johnny Marr has ever come up with?
2. It’s written from the point of view of a song. Its narrator is the song itself.
3. In the corner of your room, can you hear me?
There’s a new article about Syd Barrett on Last Plane to Jakarta. As with the vast majority of John Darnielle’s writing, this piece is at times hilarious and insightful and celebratory and sad. He hits pretty close to home for me in one of his famous “footnotes” discussing the track, “Opel” which remained unreleased until 1988:
It was a great moment for music, but a terrible moment for obsessive people around the world. For years we’d wondered what might lay gathering dust on some London studio shelf or in a Cambridge bedroom — what hidden treasures, what lost masterpieces? When sub-par material is unearthed, there’s hope for us: perhaps someday we’ll learn to enjoy what we have and stop losing sleep wondering whether there are unreleased full-band recordings from the Birthday Party’s final, turbulent, incredible year together. Perhaps we will stop digging through the endless morass of the internet trying to find Joy Division bootlegs we haven’t heard yet. (There are none.) Then something like “Opel” turns up — a lost recording that confirms the possibility that the very best stuff is still unheard. There is no hope for us, my friends. We are doomed to our sad record-collector existences.
I’ve done my share of obsessing. And I can tell you that it’s not healthy. I’ve driven myself pretty close to the edge of some fairly Syd-like insanity over some bands in my day. And it’s bad. You end up burning yourself out after while. That’s why you’ve got to learn to take it slow. Take it easy. You gotta just get it under control. Can stop any time. I’m still a record collecting addict, but I’ve learned to manage my addiction.
I went through a phase in high school when I bought every Smiths twelve-inch. That was a difficult thing to do on a part-time dishwasher’s wages in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Thank God for Vinyl Solution and Zak’s Diner, I guess. Herm at Vinyl kept that Smiths bin well-stocked and my Zak’s let me work just enough to buy my records. After I owned everything ever released (the elusive “This Charming Man” single was the final Holy Grail), I stopped listening to them. Almost completely. Only recently have I let them back into my life again. Slowly. And with an objectively critical ear. Johnny Marr’s production doesn’t sound nearly as perfect to me as it used to. It sounds muddy and overproduced a lot of times. You don’t really need twenty-five layers of guitar parts on one song, do you? And Morrissey’s lyrics which I once swallowed hook, line and stinker now mostly sound overdramatic and silly. But there are moments that cut through the nostalgia and still stand up on their own. “I Know It’s Over” is still a beautiful song. My man Phil is working on an extended feature about people’s continuing obsession with the Smiths. I look forward to seeing what he uncovers in the souls of all those people who are still feeling what I once felt.
