Όπου δηλώνει ότι δεν υπάρχει ούτε ένας που να θέλει να ξαναφτιαχθούν οι Smiths και ότι οι Beatles είχαν 4 καλά τραγούδια και ότι δεν επηρεάσθηκε από αυτούς
Billboard: Hi Morrissey. Thanks for taking some time for us. Where are you right now?
Morrissey: I'm in France recording a new album. But surely you'd rather discuss the Smiths?
Well, since you mentioned it… Feb. 20 marked the 30th anniversary of the release of the first Smiths album. How did you mark the occasion?
Is it only 30 years? It feels like 60.
It’s been nearly five years since your last album. How are the trials and triumphs of the last few years influencing your new music?
The good and the bad must be documented. Life is a serious business, so why pretend it isn't? I'm amused by modern pop artists who can only sing about s.e.x ... as if nothing else mattered on the planet.
In 2013, you endured a series of unfortunate maladies that forced you to cancel many tour dates. Are you still ill?
Well, I'm expected to see Easter. It was a bad year. I was in hospitals so frequently that the doctors were sick to death of me, and there's nothing more ageing than lying in a hospital bed, trying to recover from hospital food. If your illness doesn't kill you then the hospital food sees you off. That's what it's there for. Anyway, it was my time to go to pieces. Much overdue.
On your next tour, you've asked Tom Jones and Sir Cliff Richard to open for you in L.A. and New York respectively. What impresses you most about these veteran frontmen?
Veteran is a gentle way of saying “old,” isn't it? Well, it's only my view of course, but everything is a question of style, and Tom and Cliff qualify greatly in the style department, and age has nothing to do with it. There are millions of obese 19-year olds who only buy clothes that blend in with the couch.
Recently you likened eating animals to pedophilia, a comparison some may find … extreme. Care to defend your point of view?
I don't need to defend my own point of view. When you eat an animal you subject it to spiritual and physical rape, you eats its breasts ... its rump ... you cut off its genitals ... whichever way you care to look at it, eating animals is violence at its most extreme.
Recently, the music world celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ landing in America. Were you particularly influenced, musically or otherwise, by the Fab Four?
I thought four of their songs were magnificent, and if a band can give you four magnificent songs then that's good enough for me. But was I ever influenced by the Beatles? No.
Despite your best efforts, many fans still hopelessly pray for a Smiths reunion. Are there any long-gone groups or performers you desperately wish would take the stage again?
I don't know a single person who wants a Smiths reunion! But, no, there aren't any bands I like to see again because your memory of them is how they were in their prime or at their best or at their most desperate, and you look to them to be someone that they no longer are.
What did you wake up worrying about today?
Ukraine. Why do news reporters call the people 'protestors'? They are the people! It's the government who are the rebels. Silly world, isn't it?
Lastly, what's one piece of advice you wish someone had given you in 1984?
You should always judge a book by its cover.
