Posted by an anonymous person (original post):
"...much more interesting is the James Q Mag (March 2019) interview where Tim Booth bitches about Moz and gives praise for the Smiths early support.....Not sure why this hasnt been mentioned here yet ....very funny how Morrissey refused to go onUS tour without James and especially the "Calendar" picture anecdote!!!
Excerpt from the interview:
"...But [Tony] Wilson was amazing. He begged us to make an LP for Factory and we really should have. But we were steered away to Sire [The Smiths' American label]. Who were The Big Bad Wolf. Morrissey warned us about Sire. We should have listened."
Morrissey's patronage - inviting James as Smiths tour support, covering Jimone's What’s The World and naming them his "favourite" band in the music press - brought them the deserved spotlight they'd hitherto preciously avoided. The two sensitive, "celibate", vegetarian singers were obvious kindred spirits. "He was a good friend," Booth says of Morrissey. "He’d ring me up and say 'Come on out' and we'd go around church graveyards.""
Like in The Smiths' Cemetry Gates?
"Yes," he says fondly. "The Smiths were really lovely to us for years. Morrissey and Johnny Marr came to the studio when we were recording Stutter. They told us we should release Johnny Yen as a single, and we didn’t listen, and they were totally right."
Booth believes the friendship first strained when James turned down the offer to support The Smiths on their 1986 North American tour. "He went AWOL two days before. Rough Trade rang me up and said, 'Do you know where Morrissey is? He's refusing to go to America without you.' He went in the end, but I think he was a bit upset."
Five years later, solo Morrissey invited James to join him on the bill of an ITV music special celebrating 30 years of Amnesty International where he planned to preview his new single, a vaudeville retort to James’s newfound fortunes: We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful. "It was [about us]," confirms Booth. "Kevin Cummins took a lovely photo of us there together backstage. Then much later Morrissey did an official calendar. It was 10 pictures of him, one of The Smiths, and that one of him with his arm around me. And we looked sooo gay together! And I was like..." Booth’s eyebrows fandango. "That's a little out there! I had no problem with it. It was, 'Oh, really? You still love me? That's sweet.' But Morrissey fell out with me in the end because I stopped being a vegetarian. I think. Because of my liver, physically I got so sick with the diet. There are only certain things I can eat, even now." He scoops another spoonful of meaty broth. "And chicken soup is one of them."
"...much more interesting is the James Q Mag (March 2019) interview where Tim Booth bitches about Moz and gives praise for the Smiths early support.....Not sure why this hasnt been mentioned here yet ....very funny how Morrissey refused to go onUS tour without James and especially the "Calendar" picture anecdote!!!
Excerpt from the interview:
"...But [Tony] Wilson was amazing. He begged us to make an LP for Factory and we really should have. But we were steered away to Sire [The Smiths' American label]. Who were The Big Bad Wolf. Morrissey warned us about Sire. We should have listened."
Morrissey's patronage - inviting James as Smiths tour support, covering Jimone's What’s The World and naming them his "favourite" band in the music press - brought them the deserved spotlight they'd hitherto preciously avoided. The two sensitive, "celibate", vegetarian singers were obvious kindred spirits. "He was a good friend," Booth says of Morrissey. "He’d ring me up and say 'Come on out' and we'd go around church graveyards.""
Like in The Smiths' Cemetry Gates?
"Yes," he says fondly. "The Smiths were really lovely to us for years. Morrissey and Johnny Marr came to the studio when we were recording Stutter. They told us we should release Johnny Yen as a single, and we didn’t listen, and they were totally right."
Booth believes the friendship first strained when James turned down the offer to support The Smiths on their 1986 North American tour. "He went AWOL two days before. Rough Trade rang me up and said, 'Do you know where Morrissey is? He's refusing to go to America without you.' He went in the end, but I think he was a bit upset."
Five years later, solo Morrissey invited James to join him on the bill of an ITV music special celebrating 30 years of Amnesty International where he planned to preview his new single, a vaudeville retort to James’s newfound fortunes: We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful. "It was [about us]," confirms Booth. "Kevin Cummins took a lovely photo of us there together backstage. Then much later Morrissey did an official calendar. It was 10 pictures of him, one of The Smiths, and that one of him with his arm around me. And we looked sooo gay together! And I was like..." Booth’s eyebrows fandango. "That's a little out there! I had no problem with it. It was, 'Oh, really? You still love me? That's sweet.' But Morrissey fell out with me in the end because I stopped being a vegetarian. I think. Because of my liver, physically I got so sick with the diet. There are only certain things I can eat, even now." He scoops another spoonful of meaty broth. "And chicken soup is one of them."
