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Morrissey vs Marr

As thread title

  • Morrissey

    Votes: 9 22.5%

  • Marr

    Votes: 21 52.5%

  • Can't choose between them - both equally awesome

    Votes: 3 7.5%

  • Both shit

    Votes: 5 12.5%

  • Something else

    Votes: 2 5.0%
  • Total voters
    40
J

Johnny Vodka

The Abominable Scotsman
So you have the option of Moz on his own or Marr on his own... which do you choose?

Moz on his own...



Marr on his own... I know this isn't a Smiths song, but good demonstration of his skillz.

 
Nobody does self pity like Morrissey, not even Billy Corgan. Loads of ppl play guitar like Johnny Marr (nowadays). So on the uniqueness front, it has to be Mozza. (Some of) our generation's Philip Larkin etc.

Johnny Marr is a more pleasant character I'm sure, but it's pop music innit. Being nice is no plus.
 
What are we talking about, the music? The person?

Morrissey's post-Smiths output is clearly better than Marr's (if not a patch on the Smiths) but he's also quite clearly a racist cunt.
 
mojo pixy said:
Nobody does self pity like Morrissey, not even Billy Corgan. Loads of ppl play guitar like Johnny Marr (nowadays). So on the uniqueness front, it has to be Mozza. (Some of) our generation's Philip Larkin etc.

Johnny Marr is a more pleasant character I'm sure, but it's pop music innit. Being nice is no plus.
Click to expand...

Dunno. I'm not one of those middle aged guys who worships guitars; Marr is one of the few guitarists who I find awe-inspiring. But as a singer, he's bland, while Moz is probably one of the most charismatic front men ever...
 
Morrissey by some distance. His solo output is hugely underrated. His book was crap mind.

Marr's solo ouput is dire, his collaborations have been mainly poorly chosen and he's a personality free zone live complete with toe curling 'jokes' and social democrat slogans that he seems to think pass as radical politics.
 
Both largely shit solo. A couple of listenable efforts apiece, but only because they had so much capital to trade with in the first place.

Much as they're sidelined, and Rourke in particular often blamed for the break-up, the rhythm section had as much to do with the uniqueness of the Smiths as the frontmen. Many of Andy Rourke's basslines still stand out as unlike anything else in pop music.
 
Morrissey, easily. Some of his early solo stuff was really good, Vauxhall & I is a particular favourite. As for Marr, the first Electronic album was good but always seemed to me more of a Bernard Sumner effort. After that, I thought Modest Mouse were hugely underwhelming and his solo stuff (guitar-)boring.
 
billy_bob said:
Much as they're sidelined, and Rourke in particular often blamed for the break-up, the rhythm section had as much to do with the uniqueness of the Smiths as the frontmen.
Click to expand...

I thought it was settled that Johnny Marr broke up The Smiths as he couldn't take any more of Morrissey's twattishness/childishness
 
rubbershoes said:
I thought it was settled that Johnny Marr broke up The Smiths as he couldn't take any more of Morrissey's twattishness/childishness
Click to expand...

Well, I'm treading on thin ice, as a fan but not a particularly obsessive or completist one, and others will be better informed than me. The way I've heard it told is the tension and sacking/unsacking of Rourke over heroin use was at least the beginning of the end. That may be partly Rourke himself trying to talk up his role, but given how (I think) they're one of those bands that only works because of the unique contribution of each of them, it makes some sense.
 
RainbowTown said:
Oh dear, Morrissey's at it again, bitching away:

www.independent.co.uk

Morrissey tells Johnny Marr to stop talking about him in interviews

‘Must you persistently, year after year, decade after decade, blame me for everything?’ former Smiths frontman asked of his old bandmate
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk


www.morrisseycentral.com

MESSAGES FROM MORRISSEY - MORRISSEY CENTRAL

MESSAGES FROM MORRISSEY on MORRISSEY CENTRAL
www.morrisseycentral.com www.morrisseycentral.com
Click to expand...

He’s right though. Every time Marr has one of his dire solo albums to promote Morrissey crops up in his interviews…
 
I think he's been pretty consistently clear in everything I've read that he'd rather not talk about Morrissey. As marty21 says, every interviewer wants the scoop on WHAT JOHNNY REALLY THINKS OF RACIST MOZ more than they want any tedious promo guff about his 'latest offering'. And as Marr doesn't appear to be a racist knob himself, I don't blame him for at least sometimes allowing himself to be drawn into commenting. It's Morrissey's narcissism that led to that letter, not anything Marr's actually done.
 
billy_bob said:
I think he's been pretty consistently clear in everything I've read that he'd rather not talk about Morrissey. As marty21 says, every interviewer wants the scoop on WHAT JOHNNY REALLY THINKS OF RACIST MOZ more than they want any tedious promo guff about his 'latest offering'. And as Marr doesn't appear to be a racist knob himself, I don't blame him for at least sometimes allowing himself to be drawn into commenting. It's Morrissey's narcissism that led to that letter, not anything Marr's actually done.
Click to expand...

Agreed, there is nothing to stop him commenting. But his reticence to talk about Morrissey seems to evaporate when he's got product to punt. It's also the case that, regardless of Morrissey's desperately sad and horribly bitter political trajectory, that he has got the right to respond to being used to promote Marr's career.
 
Smokeandsteam said:
But his reticence to talk about Morrissey seems to evaporate when he's got product to punt.
Click to expand...

Really? Isn't it just that that's when journalists tend to want to talk to Marr?

E2a: I don't really have an axe to grind here: I don't like any of Marr's solo stuff and only a couple of early Morrissey solo tracks, and I'm not one of these people who thinks the Smiths were only any good because of one or the other of them. So I didn't come here to 'defend' Marr. I just think this all stems from Morrissey's pique about the fact that these days he's (quite rightly) widely seen as a twat and Marr isn't, and he's only got himself to blame for that.
 
billy_bob said:
Really? Isn't it just that that's when journalists tend to want to talk to Marr?

E2a: I don't really have an axe to grind here: I don't like any of Marr's solo stuff and only a couple of early Morrissey solo tracks, and I'm not one of these people who thinks the Smiths were only any good because of one or the other of them. So I didn't come here to 'defend' Marr. I just think this all stems from Morrissey's pique about the fact that these days he's (quite rightly) widely seen as a twat and Marr isn't, and he's only got himself to blame for that.
Click to expand...

Nobody likes Marr’s solo stuff, and that, perhaps, is why he likes to dig out Morrissey to drum up a bit of interest. Given the obvious dislike my own view is that the best thing would be to say nothing period and just let their brief but magnificent shared history speak for itself.
 
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