Morrissey To <em>NME</em>: Racism Is “Beyond Common Sense” (Also, You Suck Now)

Well, the NME learned a valuable lesson this week: Never corner Morrissey, because he’ll put you on blast with a volubility that shames just about anyone you currently have on staff. Responding to the accusation that statements he made during a recent interview were racist and in addition to the lawsuit he’s reportedly bringing against the tabloid, Morrissey has penned a withering 1,800-word NME take down for The Guardian that’s mostly designed to clear his name, but also turns out to be one of the more eloquent summations of the rag’s post-’90s/Britpop irrelevance.

The NME have, in the past, offered me their “Godlike Genius Award” and I had politely refused. With the Tim Jonze inteview, the Award was offered once again, this time with the added request that I headline their forthcoming awards concert at the O2 Arena, and once again I declined it. This is nothing personal against the NME, although the distressing article would suggest the editor took it as such. My own view is that award ceremonies in pop music are dreadful to witness and are simply a way of the industry warning the artist “see how much you need us” – and, yes, the ‘new’ NME is very much integrated into the industry, whereas, deep in the magazine’s empirical history, the New Musical Express was a propelling force that answered to no one. It led the way by the quality of its writers – Paul Morley, Julie Burchill, Paul du Noyer, Charles Shaar Murray, Nick Kent, Ian Penman, Miles – who would write more words than the articles demanded, and whose views saved some of us, and who pulled us all away from the electrifying boredom of everything and anything that represented the industry. As a consequence the chanting believers of the NME could not bear to miss a single issue; the torrential fluency of its writers left almost no space between words, and the NME became a culture in itself, whereas Melody Maker or Sounds just didn’t.

Into the 90s, the NME’s discernment and polish became faded nobility, and there it died – but better dead than worn away. The wit imitated by the 90s understudies of Morley and Burchill assumed nastiness to be greatness, and were thus rewarded. But nastiness isn’t wit and no writers from the 90s NME survive. Even with sarcasm, irony and innuendo there is an art, of sorts. Now deep in the bosom of time, it is the greatness of the NME’s history on which the ‘new’ NME assumes its relevance.

Wow, he could almost be talking about…blog backlash. Moz also rather mercilessly ridicules his interviewer, Tim Jonze, wondering how anyone writing for a British music magazine could not be familiar with the work of David Bowie, mocking his grasp of the interview process, and questioning how Jonze could be “prepared to attack and argue the point” over immigration in Britain, the alleged statements which initially sparked the “racism” accusations, without a basic grounding in British socio-political/geographic history. (Then he goes on to tell us that he enjoys books and music by a lot of people of varying ethnicities and whatnot.) Morrissey and his management stand by their claim that the entire interview was twisted for sensationalistic effect by Jonze and NME editor Conor McNicholas, while Jonze wrote his own response for the Guardian last week where he claimed that “every single quote attributed to Morrissey is 100% correct, there was no provocation at all, and Morrissey was given a chance to apologise or clarify his views with a second telephone interview.” However it will all play out with the lawyers, an incensed Morrissey is our entertainment gain, and he’s definitely won this round in the ongoing saucy war of words.

I Abhor Racism And Apologise – For Speaking To The NME [Guardian]