As if Morrissey hadn’t enough problems with his bladder ulcer, he is now having a feud with David Bowie! For the reissue of his 1989 single ‘The Last of the Famous International Playboys’ in April, Morrissey wanted to use a photograph of him posing with Bowie for the cover. The picture, which was taken by Linder Sterling at a private party in 1992, shows both men acting quite friendly at the time but things have really changed and, according to a Morrissey fan site, ‘Bowie has ordered EMI UK not to run the proposal artwork’, and nobody can explain why.
However, as pointed by the Guardian, Morrissey has been talking shit about Bowie for more than a decade and has made declarations such as:
‘[Bowie's] a business, you know. He's not really a person,…I could tell you stories … and you'd never listen to Let's Dance again,’ as Morrissey declared to British talk show host Jonathan Ross in 2004.
And he went even tougher when he said to GQ the same year: ‘Bowie is not the person he was. Now he gives people what he thinks will make them happy, and they’re yawning their heads off. And by doing that, he is not relevant. He was only relevant by accident.’
Of course, there was this famous 1995 episode when Morrissey left the UK tour he was doing with Bowie due to ‘illness’, but played a few dates in Japan only a week later,… It was rumored that Morrissey took off after a burst-up with Bowie backstage: Bowie didn’t take it well, and they never spoke again.
But there’s something I don’t understand, whatever happened between these two, why would Morrissey want Bowie on the cover of anything he is releasing if he has such a bad opinion of the glam rock star?
Whatever you are, Morrissey team or Bowie team, these two looked like an old couple still picking on each other 20 years after the end of their marriage.