D
Dazza1982
Guest
Evening - hope we're good.
I was going to do a 'Morrissey solo collaborators' poll with a view to who your favourite/best was and might do that soon enough.
There is however a bit of an elephant in the room on this, seeing as his precise role within the Morrissey setup has been debated and remains unclarified.
What do we know for a fact? Vini Reilly (probably best known for in Durutti Column) was invited into the fold in the very early stages of Morrissey's solo career and is credited mainly for guitar parts on Viva Hate. My understanding is he was paid however much (a private matter) essentially on a 'session musician' basis.
However there are two sides to this story and it's worth a look:-
From what I've seen since Vini Reilly essentially claims to have taken Stephen Street's basic songs, greatly enhanced some and scrapped others - and to all intents and purposes states that he was a co-writer of Viva Hate. There is evidence to point in this general direction, namely the fairly ordinary sounding (from a musical point of view) tracks from that period that either became B-sides or were canned altogether, only to resurface up in the YouTube era.
Stephen Street (last time I checked) stands by his view that he was the co-writer of Viva Hate and the songs thereof - i.e. that Reilly was brought in to do a performative job in the studio and not a creative one.
At the risk of copping out I'm going to suggest that the truth might be somewhere in between.
In the most basic sense the likes of Suedehead, Hairdresser on Fire etc WERE Street's songs - the basic chord progressions etc.
What's telling to me is...as far as I'm aware Stephen Street isn't a musician of particular repute (I get the impression that it was more to do with Morrissey 'trusting' Street), whereas Vini Reilly was probably quite high up the list of 'closest you could get to Marr without being Marr' and a good fit for Morrissey both musically and in terms of personality.
There's no doubt for me that Vini added 'splashes' and 'colours' to those songs that greatly enhanced them - i.e. they would be significantly weaker without what he added. Does that make him a co-writer on the record? I'd say it does.
I actually work with a guitarist (I don't play guitar, only keys) and after the first session we did I offered a co-write on the stuff he'd improved greatly. He politely declined, but it did seem to be the right thing to offer.
Would be interested in what people know/understand about this situation and it's interesting that Morrissey never worked with either again. I'm pretty sure his next stop was a brief re-union with Smiths members followed by the Langer/Winstanley phase.
I was going to do a 'Morrissey solo collaborators' poll with a view to who your favourite/best was and might do that soon enough.
There is however a bit of an elephant in the room on this, seeing as his precise role within the Morrissey setup has been debated and remains unclarified.
What do we know for a fact? Vini Reilly (probably best known for in Durutti Column) was invited into the fold in the very early stages of Morrissey's solo career and is credited mainly for guitar parts on Viva Hate. My understanding is he was paid however much (a private matter) essentially on a 'session musician' basis.
However there are two sides to this story and it's worth a look:-
From what I've seen since Vini Reilly essentially claims to have taken Stephen Street's basic songs, greatly enhanced some and scrapped others - and to all intents and purposes states that he was a co-writer of Viva Hate. There is evidence to point in this general direction, namely the fairly ordinary sounding (from a musical point of view) tracks from that period that either became B-sides or were canned altogether, only to resurface up in the YouTube era.
Stephen Street (last time I checked) stands by his view that he was the co-writer of Viva Hate and the songs thereof - i.e. that Reilly was brought in to do a performative job in the studio and not a creative one.
At the risk of copping out I'm going to suggest that the truth might be somewhere in between.
In the most basic sense the likes of Suedehead, Hairdresser on Fire etc WERE Street's songs - the basic chord progressions etc.
What's telling to me is...as far as I'm aware Stephen Street isn't a musician of particular repute (I get the impression that it was more to do with Morrissey 'trusting' Street), whereas Vini Reilly was probably quite high up the list of 'closest you could get to Marr without being Marr' and a good fit for Morrissey both musically and in terms of personality.
There's no doubt for me that Vini added 'splashes' and 'colours' to those songs that greatly enhanced them - i.e. they would be significantly weaker without what he added. Does that make him a co-writer on the record? I'd say it does.
I actually work with a guitarist (I don't play guitar, only keys) and after the first session we did I offered a co-write on the stuff he'd improved greatly. He politely declined, but it did seem to be the right thing to offer.
Would be interested in what people know/understand about this situation and it's interesting that Morrissey never worked with either again. I'm pretty sure his next stop was a brief re-union with Smiths members followed by the Langer/Winstanley phase.
