A unreleased song, that Mike Joyce had in his private archive.
Simon Goddard who wrote the book "The Smiths: Songs That Saved Your Life",
in which it is also mentioned, had access to this archive and talked
about it and other rarties in an interesting interview.
If you haven't read it, the link is bellow, it's an interesting read.
Sadly you can't hear it anywhere.
here's an excerpt:
AM: Stumbling across a previously
unknown Morrissey/Marr song must have
been quite a moment... but does it really bear
comparison with the rest of the Smiths' back
catalogue?
SG: Sadly not. I'm wary, because of the press
attention and the NME news story, of building
up "A Matter Of Opinion" too much. People
must remember that it's not like Nirvana's "You
Know You're Right", it's not a studio recording.
It's a tape player in the corner of a room
capturing a band who've only been playing
together a few weeks and the vocals are poor
quality. BUT it is a lost Morrissey/Marr song so
it is absolutely fascinating. Seriously though,
just listen to Buffalo Springfield's "Mr Soul" (it's
on the Neil Young Decade double CD which
everyone should have) and that is EXACTLY
what "A Matter Of Opinion" sounds like
musically but with different words and a
vaguely different vocal melody. It's not a lost
masterpiece by any means but it's very
illuminating to hear a fully-realised song that
got dropped because from thereon Morrissey
doesn't seem to have added words to anything
if he didn't deem the music good enough.
Discovering "A Matter Of Opinion" did nearly
give me a heart attack but the funniest thing
was when I rang up Mike and said "erm... what
the hell's this?" and he said, really casually,
"oh yeah, that song" like it was no big deal that
it had never been mentioned before. Having
said all this, it would be worthy of release on a
CD boxset or something but I don't want to
exaggerate either its quality or content just so
if (when?) people finally hear it they're not
disappointed.
> Intriguing, It won't ever happen. What's the unearthed track 'A Matter of
> Opinion' like though? Anywhere where I can go and hear it?
Simon Goddard's interview
