Johnny Marr: Morrissey wanted attention

Johnny Marr has suggested Morrissey was looking for attention when they had their public row last month.

The ‘Panic’ singer issued an “open letter” asking his former Smiths bandmate to stop talking about him in interviews, prompting the 58-year-old star to hit back on Twitter.

And Johnny insisted it was important to “defend” himself but he’s not interested in a war of words.

He told the Sunday Times Culture magazine: “When you’re attacked out of the blue, particularly in public, you have to defend yourself. The letter was designed to be insulting, wasn’t it? That has to have been the idea. If it’s something that’s not based in fact, you have to react in kind, which is just… with ridicule.

“Look, it was about [his wanting] attention, and I’m getting a lot of it. I’ve got my new record coming out, and that’s getting attention too. All my solo records have. I just do what I do. I’ll just carry on being who I am.”

Morrissey had “politely” requested that Johnny stop mentioning him in interviews as he accused the guitarist of talking about him as if he were his “personal psychiatrist”.

Writing in a blog entry on his Morrissey Central website, the 62-year-old musician began: “This is not a rant or an hysterical bombast. It is a polite and calmly measured request: Would you please stop mentioning my name in your interviews?

“Would you please, instead, discuss your own career, your own unstoppable solo achievements and your own music? If you can, would you please just leave me out of it?

“The fact is: you don’t know me. You know nothing of my life, my intentions, my thoughts, my feelings. Yet you talk as if you were my personal psychiatrist with consistent and uninterrupted access to my instincts.”

The ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ hitmakers split in 1987 due to personal differences between Morrissey and Marr and the controversial frontman is fed up of being made out that he is to “blame for everything”.

Morrissey continued: “We haven’t known each other for 35 years – which is many lifetimes ago. When we met you and I were not successful. We both helped each other become whatever it is we are today. Can you not just leave it at that?

“Must you persistently, year after year, decade after decade, blame me for everything … from the 2007 Solomon Islands tsunami to the dribble on your grandma’s chin?”

In response, Johnny tweeted: “Dear @officialmoz. An ‘open letter’ hasn’t really been a thing since 1953, It’s all ‘social media’ now. Even Donald J Trump had that one down. Also, this fake news business… a bit 2021 yeah? #makingindiegreatagain (sic)”.