Louder Than Songs: Why a Smiths Reunion Is As Unlikely As Ever.
Louder Than Songs: Why a Smiths Reunion Is As Unlikely As Ever.
By Gavin Fearnley
“Oh, but plans can fall through, as so often they do
And time is against me now”
‘Accept Yourself’ – The Smiths
Imagine this: Steven Patrick Morrissey picks up his phone. He reads the headlines. Not for the first (or last) time, he grimaces at what he sees.
There’s some Oasis news.
“The guns have fallen silent,” their press release solemnly declares. “The stars have aligned,” it postulates. The Oasis marketing machine seems to think an Oasis reunion is best announced in the style of Wilfred Owen.
Oasis? Oh, Steve’s familiar with his fellow Mancunians.
We know as much, given Oasis’ Noel Gallagher loves holding court as much as he likes reminding us he doesn’t support the England football team (“I’m not an England fan, I’m Irish,” the songwriter [with a famous union-flag guitar] delighted in telling BBC Radio 5 Live this summer).
“I went out with Morrissey once,” he told Radio X’s Johnny Vaughan. “It was one of the funniest nights I’ve ever had with anyone.”
“He’d cancelled a load of gigs because he had pneumonia and I was out in LA … and he texted me. He said ‘bring your credit card.’”
You know the rules. Don’t rat on your mates. Unless you’re Noel, that is.
“I get to this bar and he’s sat there and I go, ‘I thought you cancelled all the gigs [because of] pneumonia?’ And he said, [puts on Noel Coward-esque voice] ‘and yet here I am’.”
‘We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful’ Morrissey sang on his third studio album, Your Arsenal (“and if they’re northern, that makes it even worse”).
So the reunion of two fellow working-class lads from down the road in Burnage might just rankle, given they now stand to make … quick maths … gazillions of pounds.
Can a press release hyperventilate, you ask? It seems in Oasis’ case, very much so. “The great wait is over,” it fawns and wheezes.
Oasis’ statement announcing their reunion.
Morrissey, Morrissey, Morrissey. I bet the synapses were firing off at each other at a rate of knots.
There’s only one thing for it. Morrissey takes to the internet.
“In June 2024,” his website ‘Morrissey Central’ divulges, “AEG Entertainment Group made a lucrative offer to both Morrissey and Marr to tour worldwide as ‘The Smiths’ throughout 2025.”
Holy smokes!
“Morrissey said Yes to the offer; Marr ignored the offer.”
Oh.
“A Smiths reunion?” shrieks the music press excitedly.
“A Smiths reunion?” bewail fans of the band witheringly.
Admirers of The Smiths know very well it is unlikely to (and shouldn’t) ever happen.
You see, Johnny Marr also took to the internet. Or rather had already taken to the internet the day before Morrissey imparted his ‘it’s not me, it’s him!’ message.
Replying to (the abhorrently-named) @kill_morrissey on Twitter/X, who presupposed that “if Oasis can do it The Smiths can too … ,” Marr simply posted a picture of right-wing populist Nigel Farage, grinning with a pint in his hand.
Farage
We can’t know for sure what he was getting at.
BUT WE CAN HAVE A BLOODY GOOD GUESS, CAN’T WE NOW? For in the culture wars, dear reader, Morrissey is seen as frequently lobbing little parcels of controversy from the trenches.
The list of examples is substantial, but let’s just take some events from the two years in the run-up to the COVID-19 pandemic.
2018: Morrissey says “the modern Loony Left seem to forget that Hitler was left wing!”
2018: Morrissey labels the jailing of the founder of the English Defence League, Tommy Robinson, as “shocking”.
2019: Morrissey wears a badge from the now-defunct far-right group ‘For Britain’ during a New York residency, and for a performance on the Tonight Show.
It was the late Maya Angelou who said “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Something that Marr, one could deduce, has indeed done.
That aside, though, what are the chances?
Would drummer Mike Joyce be up for it, if invited? Hard to say. In a Facebook post from over ten years ago he stated “… if I was asked, I would probably say yes.” However, in 2022, he told the Irish Times that “it wouldn’t be The Smiths; it would be four blokes who don’t know each other in their sixties.”
Let’s also not forget that Joyce took Morrissey and Marr to court in the 90s, eventually winning a larger share of the Smiths’ profits; Judge Weeks ordered that he receive approximately £1 million in back-payments (Weeks famously described Morrissey as “devious, truculent and unreliable”).
THAT aside, though, what are the chances?
Well, it wouldn’t be “four blokes” anymore, given that bassist Andy Rourke, is sadly no longer with us having died from cancer in 2023.
In addition, frankly, it’s hard to imagine anyone else attempting the bass solo in ‘Barbarism Begins at Home’, something indelibly associated with the criminally-underrated Rourke.
THAT ASIDE, THOUGH, WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?
Back to Johnny Marr, and by his own account, the chances were actually once pretty good.
In his 2016 autobiography, ‘Set the Boy Free’, he describes the last time he and Morrissey physically met up (in a pub in south Manchester in 2008).
“There had been rumours for years that the Smiths were about to re-form,” he writes. “And they were always untrue. I had never pursued any offer.”
“Morrissey and I continued our dialogue and planned to meet up again … and then suddenly there was radio silence. Our communication ended, and things went back to how they were and how I expect they always will be.”
If that wasn’t enough, also consider Morrissey’s parting shot in his aforementioned statement.
“Morrissey undertakes a largely sold out tour of the USA in November,” it reads.
“Marr continues to tour as a special guest to New Order.”
One can, again, only make assumptions. What was the point Morrissey was attempting to make? Was it ‘I am an established name, whereas Marr plays second fiddle to others’?
You decide.
However, it takes only a little imagination as to how Morrissey himself would look, reunited on stage with Marr.
As a solo artist, he does indeed sell out venues; most famously the Manchester Arena in 2004, on Morrissey’s 45th birthday, wonderfully documented on the live DVD ‘Who Put the M in Manchester?’.
Morrissey Central
And whatever your views on Morrissey, the man has almost unrivalled stage presence.
He is Elvis-like. He has grown men and women hurling themselves at him. The sheer drama and urgency of his trademark finale at concerts – the taking-off and then throwing-of-his shirt into the audience before running off stage is timeless, and a remarkable spectacle.
Undoubtedly, he’s a giant when appearing live.
Except, maybe, when he had a fan thrown out during a gig in Hamburg in 2009 after a quip about not wanting to call his audience “Hamburgers” resulted in a member of the audience shouting “f*** you!” during a rendition of ‘Meat is Murder’.
Indeed, his performances are sold on the back of his own name, not ‘Morrissey and band’.
Yet, back in his role as singer in what would probably be labelled as ‘The Smiths’, as a mere wingman to one of the best guitarists and songwriters the UK has ever produced, how would he look? Or feel? Would he be comfortable to share the bill once more?
When Marr left The Smiths in ’87, due to what has been described as an increasingly strained relationship, Morrissey had only just turned 28. He’s now 65.
Being in your sixties, singing lyrics you wrote in your twenties might be okay in another context – say, as part of a solo career.
However, warbling them so emotionally next to the person who may or may not have inspired some of them is another matter (“I touched you at the soundcheck, You had no real way of knowing, In my heart I begged ‘Take me with you, I don’t care where you’re going…” – ‘Paint a Vulgar Picture’ from final Smiths album, ‘Strangeways Here We Come’).
Perhaps what’s most surprising about Morrissey’s statement, if we’re to believe this version of events, is that he agreed to a reunion in the first place.
In 2016, news.com.au asked him if the wounds had healed in the rift between him and Marr.
”It’s no longer a question of time or wounds,” he responded, “but simply that the issue is now so remote that the question doesn’t make sense anymore.“
Is it any less remote in 2024?
Possibly, as Morrissey reflected on the Oasis reunion, all these things may have felt irrelevant.
What was important – we might infer – was that we would all now know that one side of what the late Johnny Rogan called the “severed alliance” agreed to the “lucrative offer” whereas the other “ignored” it.
Can we also deduce from Morrissey’s statement, that this was his intention all along?
If Morrissey truly aimed to reunite the band before it was too late, he may have waited too long.
Time is against us, now.
The Smiths is dead, boys.