Article: The Smiths '80s radio-station takeover: What really happened according to th

The Smiths '80s radio station takeover: What really happened according to the police report

Update from westword.com 25 Feb 2013

Excerpt -

....I have bought a gun for this time. When I tried it the first time I had a fake gun. I'm going to Y108 and I'm going to take control of the station and play all the Smiths and the Morrissey tapes over the air. (As I re-read what I've wrote it sounds crazy to me.) When it's over I'll give myself up. I do not expect to die, but if that happens I won't really mind. I will not hurt anyone else that doesn't try to stop me. I really don't expect to be successful....

 
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UPDATE 27 Feb 2013, Interview With James Kiss and Greg Fadick - westword.com

http://blogs.westword.com/backbeat/2013/02/smiths_80s_radio_takeover_conclusion.php

Excerpt -

The first and probably most obvious question for [James] Kiss some 25 years later is why he had hatched a plan to take over the radio station in the first place, and perhaps equally as plaguing, why the Smiths? "My intention was to throw my life away," Kiss recalls. "If you're going to throw your life away, you might as well do it in a way that makes the most sense to you, I guess.

"I guess you would have to understand the Smiths and know the Smiths, which I'm sure you do," he adds, "to understand that there's something poetic about a Top 40 radio station playing all Smiths songs." It certainly would have made for a startling contrast to listeners, as the station's playlist at the time consisted of songs like "Don't Need Nothing but a Good Time," by Poison, and a host of other tunes with similarly superficial sentiments, such as "Don't Worry, Be Happy," by Bobby McFerrin. "Oh, my God," says Kiss. "To somebody who's depressed, when that song comes on...oh, God."
 
This is a really interesting story. So glad that the kid hit rock bottom without ending up in jail (or dead) and then got his sh*t together and turned himself around. So glad that he didn't kill anyone or The Smiths could have been painted with the brush of "the music made him do it", much as Black Sabbath and others have been blamed for kids going crazy in the past.
 

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