The Smiths Reject Ridiculous Reunion Cash

The Smiths - the band who briefly persuaded the world that ramming flowers into their pockets and pretending to be deeper than they really were would help them get slow-witted girls - aren’t reforming.

That in itself isn’t news - as far as we know Talking Heads, The Beatles and Dodgy aren’t reforming either - but those bands haven’t been offered stupid amounts of money lately to get back together. The Smiths have; Morrissey revealed that The Smiths were offered $5 million to reunite for this year’s Coachella festival. But the band turned it down, which is a shame, as $5 million buys a hell of a lot of nice juicy steaks.

Morrissey (CDs) is a clever man. More than that, in fact: a clever man
with alarming eyebrows. He always seems to know what people want to
hear. So just as he was launching his new You Have Killed Me single, he
started spouting about how he was so dangerous that the CIA was after his ass.
And now that he’s promoting his Ringleader Of The Tormentors album,
Morrissey knows exactly what buttons to press: the Smiths Reunion
button.

Speaking at South By Southwest Music & Media Conference,
Morrissey told everyone about the constant offers he receives to get
The Smiths back together; most recently a $5 million offer from the
Coachella festival. When asked if he had considered the Smiths cash,
Morrissey said:

"No, because money doesn’t come into it… It was a fantastic journey. And then it ended. I didn’t feel we should
have ended. I wanted to continue. [Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr] wanted
to end it. And that was that."

All
but adding, "Plus people like me again now, and hardly anyone’s heard a
single note that the bloody Healers made, so stick that up your bot-bot
Johnny," there.

So it looks like the nearest anyone will get to seeing The Smith back together was the Johnny Marr/ Andy Rourke show
from earlier in the year. But never mind, because there’s always the
new Morrissey album to listen to, which - according to Morrissey
himself - is all about how brilliant trees and stuff are:

"Politically the world is ridiculous. But there’s still a
lot of beautiful things … Nature saves us, nature calms us down."

So speaks a man who hasn’t been to Manchester for a while.

Read more:

Morrissey: Smiths Turned Down Millions To Reunite - Billboard 

[story by Stuart Heritage]