Morrissey cares about his music, and so does Johnny Marr. What fans of both, and fans of their former band, the Smiths, care about is just getting new sounds with the hope that the group will one day come back together. What fans don't want is more division, though that is all they ever really get.
To be fair to Marr, most of the venom comes from Morrissey. That is to be expected because the singer has made it his life's work to complain about people he feels have wronged him. Whether they actually did it intentionally or not is not important to him. He believes he knows his truth to be, well...true.
The latest issue stems from an upcoming BBC documentary, which appears to have not yet been confirmed, about the Smiths that could air in July. Morrissey believes the doc shows him as a sinister presence, and Marr as the good guy of the band's story.
Morrissey rages at Johnny Marr about BBC's reported Smiths documentary
In a since-deleted post on Morrissey's official website (the text was saved by Stereogum and published in full by Consequence, and you can read it here; it's quite long), the singer made several claims about Marr. None of which will be surprising to long-suffering Smiths fans.
For one, Morrissey wrote that Marr has "intentionally divided the Smiths audience into Marr or Morrissey factions."
To be transparent, I am a huge Smiths fan. I have followed Morrissey's solo work a bit more closely than Marr, though I appreciate what Marr has done since the Smiths broke up. I can honestly say that it is Morrissey who has been the more divisive figure, both in terms of how the Smiths are viewed and his own solo career.
Morrissey has seemingly been bent on destroying any momentum of his solo work over the last two decades by canceling so many concerts long after tickets were purchased. Morrissey doesn't appear to care much about his fans, you see, but does care how he is viewed. It's an odd struggle.
The vocalist also claimed, as he has often done, that "the Smiths was my voice, my lyrics, my song titles, my album titles, my single and album artwork, my vision, my vocal melodies, my emotions.” Morrissey then says that Smiths fans who hate him are akin to “saying ‘we hate David Bowie, but we love the Spiders from Mars.’"
Clearly, Morrissey was one of the two most important parts of the legendary band, but without Marr's unique and high-level guitar work, the Smiths aren't nearly as great as they were. That's how most bands work. The vocals and frontman (or frontwoman) must sell the band, but the guitarist is what mainly makes the music work.
Morrissey also added, "His predatory sport of ‘calling Morrissey names’ is now in full washing-machine overdrive. Why isn’t he bored of it all yet?"
The odd part is that he is the only one complaining about this latest issue. Johnny Marr has said nothing publicly. The squeaky wheel is the one trying to get all the grease in this sad situation.
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