This is probably a good place to post an interesting snippet, in light of our attempts to make sense of Morrissey and Marr's history through the distorting lens of the press:
"See the papers?"
"Yes."
"Not so nice."
"I guess not. They'll be worse," said Mailer.
[Robert] Lowell made a face. He had an expression in his eyes which only a fellow writer could comprehend--it said, "We are lambs--helpless before them." It was true. One could not communicate the horror to anyone who did not write well. The papers distorted one's actions, and that was painful enough, but they wrenched and garbled and twisted and broke one's words and sentences until a good author always sounded like an incoherent overcharged idiot in newsprint--there was even a corollary: the more one might have to say in a sentence, the worse one would probably sound. Henry James would have come off in a modern interview like a hippie who had taken a correspondence course in forensics. It really did not matter what was said--dependably one was always elliptic, incomprehensible, asinine. So a great wall of total miscomprehension was built over the years between writer, and the audience reached by a newspaper--which meant eventually most of America. So a particular sadness slipped sooner or later into every good writer--they were kept further removed from uneducated readers by the general horrors of journalistic mistranscription than by the difficulty of their work. Ergo, they suffered. Because every time they did something which got into the papers, the motive for their action was distorted and their words were tortured; since they made their living by trying to put words together well, this was as painful to them as the sight of an ugly photograph of herself on the front page must be to a beauty.
Over the years, one came to live with a recognition that the average reporter could not get a sentence straight if it were phrased more subtly than his own mind could make phrases. Nuances were forever being munched like peanuts. After awhile one gave up, one did one's little turn for whatever project was up, a cause, a book, an action, and suffered the publicity which at best was hopeless, at worst gave promise of burying you alive.
Armies Of The Night, Norman Mailer
Different cases, a writer and a musician, but I think the passage is relevant to Morrissey and Marr (moreso to Morrissey of course). What happens if you are trying to convey meanings and nuances to a writer who may not be smart or sensitive enough to pick up on them?
Just a general comment about the press and The Smiths. I think the article posted in this thread, by itself, is probabaly accurate and therefore reflects poorly on Johnny.