When you get home, Johnny Borrell is waiting for you

It hasn't been a great twenty four hours for listening to the opinions of those with the initials JB. Joey Barton didn't exactly thrive on Question Time, while Tim Jonze in The Guardian struggles to shape Johnny Borrell's thoughts into some sort of shape.

What could you say as a solo artist that you couldn't with Razorlight?
Err … [long pause, repeats the question] I dunno, I always see more similarities than differences. Errrr … Shit. I dunno. I'm not sure I can answer that with any accuracy whatsoever. Erm, what was the question?

Borrell is a bit vague about the process that went into making his godawful solo album:

I got a group of musicians together and they turned up at my house in the Basque Country to record an album, expecting me to have a studio. But I didn't, I just had a house. We had this 17-year-old kid called João [Mello], who had just turned up from Brazil, playing saxophone.

Now, I might not know how things work in Borrell's world, but I'm pretty sure you don't find seventeen year-old musicians "just turning up" at your door by accident.

Still... Borrell's really pleased at this idea of just turning up, and doing it, in a house.

I didn't have a drum kit so we used buckets instead. Wherever we play – be it a street corner or a festival – there's something very real about it.

That's fair enough, right?

Except... here's Borrell feelings on the problem with modern music:

I think the art of recording is being lost.

That's a bit rich from someone who can't even been arsed to book a studio and find a set of drums.

Jonze then asks about the stupid song titles on the solo record. Borrell doesn't usually read the media, man, but he had read the piece in the Guardian about that:

Well, interestingly, my friend is in literature and she reads the Guardian. She read an article on your website and she said: "Wow, that's amazing, I've never read an article before where the first four sentences all end in an exclamation mark." Now, that's very poor writing. That's got to be bad journalism if your first four sentences have to end with an exclamation mark.

As Jonze points out in a footnote:

None of the first four sentences end with exclamation marks, although the last sentence of the article does end with four!!!!

"A friend in literature" who can't tell the difference between a dog's dick at the end of each sentence and - in a clear Harry Hill reference - an over-the-top four stick at the very end? Now, that's amazing.

He's clearly obsessed with the idea that The Guardian doesn't like him - a pop psychology read would suggest that Borrell is desperate that people consider him sharp, and worldly, and wise; that the Guardian spending a lot of time snickering at him must kill him.

In fact, while we're on the subject of the Guardian, there was somebody on the island, I don't know who, but they wrote a nice letter to the Guardian saying there was never a mention of Johnny Borrell without a mention of his arrogance. And they said that I'd been there for four months and they'd found me to be this and that. So who am I going to trust? The person I've engaged with in their community or the one who's written an article?

It's somewhat difficult to find this letter in the Guardian archive. Although it's amazing that Johnny "very, very rare that I read the press" Borrell managed to come across that piece as well.

Borrell seems convinced he's being asked "leading questions", like The Sun would ask. He's confused the idea of a difficult question with an awkward one.

If we're unlucky, he'll write a song about this. If we're really unlucky, a twelve year-old flautist will turn up at his yurt one day and we'll have to sit through a sodding concept album.

Morrissey: "I'm not a racist"

Morrissey has issued a statement denying everything:

On Friday of last week I issued writs against the NME (New Musical Express) and its editor Conor McNicholas as I believe they have deliberately tried to characterise me as a racist in a recent interview I gave them in order to boost their dwindling circulation.

Although, of course, McNicholas stressed in the paper that they didn't think he was "a racist", but then this is an argument where close attention to detail should be important, but just isn't happening.

Take, for example, the constant conflating on all sides of "a racist person" - someone whose political beliefs have an element built on the supposed superiority of some races, and "something being racist" - a thought or an action which has been dictated by an awareness of racial difference rather than because the architect of that action is "a racist." Nobody much believes that Morrissey is a racist, but much of his thought on immigration is racist. It's very easy for Morrissey to stand up and say "I'm not a racist" - but that, really, isn't the point:

I abhor racism and oppression or cruelty of any kind and will not let this pass without being absolutely clear and emphatic with regard to what my position is.

Racism is beyond common sense and I believe it has no place in our society.

Which is clear, and unequivocal, and heartfelt.

Mozzer suggests he's being stitched up because he turned down the chance to headline an NME gig:

To anyone who has shown or felt any interest in my music in recent times, you know my feelings on the subject and I am writing this to apologize unreservedly for granting an interview to the NME. I had no reason whatsoever to assume that they could be anything other than devious, truculent and unreliable. In the event, they have proven to be all three.

The NME have, in the past, offered me their "Godlike Genius Award" and I had politely refused. With the Tim Jonze interview, the Award was offered once again, this time with the added request that I headline their forthcoming awards concert at the O2 Arena, and once again I declined it. This is nothing personal against the NME, although the distressing article would suggest the editor took it as such.

That's quite a bold claim: that Conor McNicholas has been motivated purely by malice.

Although quite how McNicholas' malice would lead Morrissey to start talking about immigration isn't clear.

My own view is that award ceremonies in pop music are dreadful to witness and are simply a way of the industry warning the artist "see how much you need us" - and, yes, the "new" NME is very much integrated into the industry, whereas, deep in the magazine's empirical history, the New Musical Express was a propelling force that answered to no one. It led the way by the quality of its writers - Paul Morley, Julie Burchill, Paul du Noyer, Charles Shaar Murray, Nick Kent, Ian Penman, Miles - who would write more words than the articles demanded, and whose views saved some of us, and who pulled us all away from the electrifying boredom of everything and anything that represented the industry. As a consequence the chanting believers of the NME could not bear to miss a single issue; the torrential fluency of its writers left almost no space between words, and the NME became a culture in itself, whereas Melody Maker or Sounds just didn't. Into the 90s, the NME's discernment and polish became faded nobility, and there it died - but better dead than worn away. The wit imitated by the 90s understudies of Morley and Burchill assumed nastiness to be greatness, and were thus rewarded. But nastiness isn't wit and no writers from the 90s NME survive. Even with sarcasm, irony and innuendo there is an art, of sorts. Now deep in the bosom of time, it is the greatness of the NME's history on which the "new" NME assumes its relevance.

We're not entirely sure why Morrissey is so keen to share the history of the NME, and I'm not sure its entirely accurate. Unless Morrissey is surprised that a magazine no longer features writers from fifteen or so years ago, he seems to be claiming that the people who wrote for the NME in the 90s have vanished from the face of the culture: Andrew Collins, Stuart Maconie, Danny Kelly? Gavin Martin was in the Mirror talking about Cerys Matthews only yesterday. Paolo Hewitt is still knocking out two or three Paul Weller books every year.

It is on the backs of writers such as Morley, Burchill, Kent and Shaar Murray that the "new" NME hitches its mule-cart, assuming equal relevance. But the stalled views of the "new" NME sag, and readers have been driven away by a magazine with no insides. The narrow cast of repeated subjects sets off the agony, a mesmerizing mess of very brief and dispassionate articles unable to make thought evolve; a marooned editor who holds the divine right to censor any views that clash with his own.

Is it really the case that Burchill and Kent are so important to the current NME? Sure, the magazine trades on the name and brand which those writers helped to build up - but look at the NME, with its Frank Gallows cool lists: do you really think it is selling itself to an audience who revere Charles Shaar Murray, Morrissey?

The editorial treatment given to my present interview with the "new" NME is the latest variation on an old theme, but like a pre-dawn rampage, the effects of the interview have been meticulously considered with obvious intentions. It is true that the magazine is ailing badly in the market place, but Conor doesn't understand how the relentless stream of "cheers mate, got pissed last night, ha ha" interviews that clutter every single issue of the "new" NME are simply not interesting to those of us who have no trouble standing upright. Strangely enough, my own name is the only one featured in the "new" NME that links their present with the NME's distant past, therefore a Morrissey interview is an ideal opportunity with which to play the editorial naughtiness game.

Really, Morrissey? You're the only 'old' NME name who gets covered in the current paper? What about Ian Brown? What about Jarvis? What about Shaun Ryder? The eye-wateringly awful 'get the Sex Pistols to number one' campaign of a couple of months back?

This, regrettably, is what has taken place with this most recent interview, which, it need hardly be said, bears no relation in print to the fleshly conversation that took place.

'Fleshy conversation' and 'editorial naughtiness' - it's like he's morphed into an ITV impressionist doing Stephen Fry.

I do not mean to be rude to Tim Jonze, but when I first caught sight of him I assumed that someone had brought their child along to the interview. The runny nose told the whole story.

Jonze is lucky he doesn't mean to be rude. God alone knows what he'd have got then.

Conor had assured that Tim was their best writer. Talking behind his hands in an endless fidget, Tim accepted every answer I gave him with a schoolgirl giggle, and repeatedly asked me if I was shocked at how little he actually knew about music. I told him that, yes, I was shocked. It was difficult for me to believe that the best writer from the "new" NME had never heard of the song 'Drive-in Saturday'; I explained that it was by David Bowie, and Tim replied "Oh, I don't know anything about David Bowie." I wondered how it could be so - how the quality of music journalism in England could have fallen so low that the prime "new" NME writer knew nothing of David Bowie, an artist to whom most relevant British artists are indebted, and one who single-handedly changed British culture - musically and otherwise.

It is, indeed, depressing and surprising to hear Jonze didn't know the song - although we suspect that claims to not know "anything" about Bowie might have been hyperbolic.

Tim's line of questioning advanced with: "What about politics, then ... the state of the world?" - which, I was forced to assume, was a well-thought-out question. It was from here that the issue of immigration - but not racism - arose.

Fascinatingly, while taking quite some time to detail the David Bowie conversation, Morrissey skates over who first brought up the topic of immigration. Did Jonze lead him down the street, or did Mozzer happily volunteer the observations?

He doesn't say, instead deciding to highlight Jonze's poor grasp of London geography:

Me: If you walk down Knightsbridge you'll be hard-pressed to hear anyone speaking English.

Tim: I don't think that's true. You're beginning to sound like my parents.

Me: Well, when did you last walk down Knightsbridge?

Tim: Ummm....
Knightsbridge ....is that where Harrods is?

So, Tim was prepared to attack and argue the point without even being clear about where Knightsbridge actually is! The "new" NME strikes again. Oh dear, I thought, not again.

This is a splendid piece of misdirection. Again, it's embarrassing for Jonze to apparently not be aware where Knightsbridge is, but it's hardly important - the NME story wasn't built on the question of Morrissey suggesting that a particular London postcode had been lost; that Jonze isn't familiar with the area isn't the actual point.

I chose to mention Knightsbridge because it had always struck me as one of the most stiffly British spots in London.

Morrissey, presumably, isn't that familiar with the area either, then: given the presence of the Egyptian-owned Harrods, a number of tourist attractions and a slew of foreign embassies, surely Knightsbridge is anything but?

Morrissey then details the extent of what he says was a stitch-up:

When my comments are printed in the "new" NME they are butchered, re-designed, re-ordered, chopped, snipped and split in order to make me seem racist and unreasonable. Tim had told me about his friend who did not like the 1988 song Bengali In Platforms because the friend had thought the song attacked him on a personal level. I explained to Tim that the song was not about his friend. In print, the "new" NME do not explain this, but attempt to multiply the horror of Tim's friend by attributing "these people" and "those people" quotes to me - terms I would never use, but are useful to the "new" NME in their Morrissey-is-racist campaign because these terms are only used by people who are cold and indifferent and Thatcherite. 

All of the people I spoke to Tim about in the interview who are heroes to me and who are Middle-Eastern or of other ethnic backgrounds were of no interest to either Tim or Conor. Clearly, Tim had been briefed and his agenda was to cook up a sensational story that would give life to the "new" NME as a must-read national if not global shock-horror story. Recalling how Tim asked me to sign some CD covers, I do not blame him entirely. If Conor can provoke bureaucratic outrage with this Morrissey interview, then he can whip up support for his righteous position as the morally-bound and armoured editor of his protected readership - even though, by re-modelling my interview into a multiple horror, Conor has accidentally exposed himself as deceitful, malicious, intolerant and Morrissey-ist - all the ist's and ism's that he claims to oppose. Uniquely deprived of wisdom, Conor would be repulsed by my vast collection of World Cinema films, by my adoration of James Baldwin, my love of Middle-Eastern tunings, Kazem al-Saher, Lior Ashkenazi, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and he would be repulsed to recall a quote as printed in his magazine in or around August of this year wherein I said that my ambition was to play concerts in Iran.

Once again: owning a collection of world cinema DVDs doesn't mean your veiws on immigration aren't racist, and running over to the bookcase to show you can't be bad because you like Toni Morrison books isn't exactly engaging with the question, either.

And - since Morrissey claims to be so intolerant of people twisting and turning the truth - how come he just assumes that McNicholas would be "repulsed" by his world cinema films? And if so, why did Conor grant him space to mention them in the disputed piece?

What does a desire to play in Iran have to do with whether you believe people from other countries, other cultures have any place in the UK?

And, while we know that it was intended as a joke (a rare glimpse of a well-humoured man who has long since disappeared), is it really wise for Morrissey to suggest that he's a victim of Morrisseyist forces? To compare having an interview printed with a negative spin to being the victim of racism? At the very least, it suggests a lack of empathy and self-importance.

My heart sank as Tim Jonze let slip the tell-all editorial directive behind this interview: "It's Conor's view that Morrissey thinks black people are OK ...but he wouldn't want one living next door to him." It was then that I realized the full extent of the setup, and I felt like Bob Hoskins in the final frame of The Long Good Friday as he sits in the back of the wrong getaway car realizing the extent of the conspiratorial slime that now trapped him.

But then, like Bob Hoskins, you did get into the car of your own volition, Morrissey.

During the interview Tim asked if I would support the "Love Music Hate Racism" campaign that the NME had just written about and my immediate response was a yes as I had shown my support previously by going to one of their first benefit gigs a few years ago and had met some of their organizers as well as having signed their statement. Following the interview I asked my manager to get in touch with the NME and to pledge my further support to the campaign as I wanted there to be no ambiguity on where I stood on the subject. This was done in a clear and direct email to Conor McNicholas on the 5th of November, which went ignored and last week we found out that it had never even been presented to anyone at the campaign as that would obviously not have suited what we now know to be the NME's agenda. I am pleased to say that we have now had direct dialogue with "Love Music Hate Racism" and all of our UK tour advertising in 2008 will carry their logo and we will also be providing space in the venues for them to voice and spread their important message, which I endorse.

This, presumably, explains LMHR's sudden yanking of the web posting condemning Mozzer, then.

Who's to say what you should or shouldn't do? The IPC have appointed Conor as the editor of the "new" NME, and there he remains, ready to drag the IPC into expensive legal battles such as the one they now face with me due to Conor's personal need to misstate, misreport, misquote, misinterpret, falsify, and incite the bloodthirsty. Here is proof that the "new" NME will twist and pervert the views of any singer or musician who'd dare step into the interview ring. To such artists, I wish them well, but I would advise you to bring your lawyer along to the interview.

My own place, now and forevermore, shall not be with the "new" NME - and how wrong my face even looks on its
 cover. Of this, I am eternally grateful.

Impassioned stuff. What's missing, though, is any explanation of what he actually said. Yes, the interview may have been written to show you in a terrible light; yes, your interviewer might not have known about Bowie or Knightsbridge - he may even have had a runny nose.

But you don't deny your comments about how "the gates are flooded" or that "the British identity has disapperared" following an "influx". You don't seek to explain what you meant; to contextualise your words. Given an unfettered platform, you simply ignore the part of the interview which genuinely upset and disappointed people.

A masterpiece of misdirection. You have proved that you're not a racist - something you've not been accused of. You have done nothing to engage with the claims that your views on immigration and 'British identity' have racist undertones, though. The support for Love Music Hate Racism is welcome, but if you're going to start throwing firecrackers about immigration around, you should at least have the guts to continue the discussion when challenged.

Morrissey: NME toned it down, says Jonze

When Morrissey's management started complaining about NME's report on an interview he did with Tim Jonze, they claimed that Tim Jonze had emailed them saying:

"Hope you're well. I should mention that for reasons I'll probably never understand, NME have rewritten the Moz piece. I had a read and virtually none of it is my words or beliefs so I've asked for my name to be taken off it. Just so you know when you read it."

The implication being that NME took Jonze's work, and reworked it to make the November interview spawn a monster.

Late yesterday, Jonze posted to the Guardian's website, saying the opposite is true:

So before I continue, there's something that needs to be pointed out. Every single quote attributed to Morrissey is 100% correct, there was no provocation at all, and Morrissey was given a chance to apologise or clarify his views with a second telephone interview. At no point did he back down. Although Morrissey as a person was charming, courteous and (until this point) a joy to interview, I found comments such as "England's been thrown away" and "These days you won't hear a British accent in Knightsbridge" woefully ignorant. I wrote a piece saying that Morrissey - although liberal in many of his views - was using the language of the BNP and Enoch Powell when it came to immigration. In the piece I mentioned that his comments likening the UK to that of "going to Zagreb and hearing nothing but Irish accents" were offensive as they compared British ethnic minorities to tourists. I also said he was being overly nostalgic for a Britain built partly on empire and imperialism and that someone as well travelled as Morrissey had no excuses for such comments.

Yes, he had his name removed from the article - but because it was weakened, not because it was made stronger, says Jonze:

The piece was very critical and NME decided to tone it down, something I didn't agree with. They showed me several rewritten versions, some of which were very soft on Morrissey, one that was quite critical. None had any of my points or arguments in them and none of them were written in my voice. Furthermore, I hadn't even seen the finished version before it went to print (I still haven't seen it, as I'm currently writing this from the surreal surroundings of a beach internet cafe in Thailand). For these reasons, the byline was removed.

Jonze admits that the "byline debate" has been a "PR coup" for Camp Morrissey, although since his email to the management was the spark for that sideline, he can't really complain overmuch. There remains a mystery of why, though, of why he sent that email - as Suzanne points out in the comments on the Guardian piece, it seems a little odd to drop an email to someone along these lines:

"Hey, Merck, I would have written a piece ripping your client to shreds, but the NME is pussy-footing around with it, so I asked my name to be taken off of it. When you see the article, please remember that the NME didn't let me portray what a scum I thought Morrissey was. Have a great day."

It all makes Morrissey's threatened court case seem even more unlikely: can you really complain a magazine ripped you to shreds when the person who interviewed you insists you were being treated with kid gloves?

[Thanks again to Duncan]

Morrissey: the thin line between nostalgia and racism

It took many years for the NME and Morrissey to make up after the paper called him on his flag-waving, skinhead-teasing live appearance at Madstock in Finsbury Park. It seemed, though, that passing time and changes in the editorial team had smoothed over the breach. In 2004, he once again graced the cover.

So it was that Tim Jonze went off to interview Mozzer for this week's paper, expecting a fairly dull elder-statesman-of-rock-speaks piece.

That was, until Morrissey started to talk. Jonze asked about the state of the world:

"Can we help but be annoyed? Certainly in England, everyone is taxed for everything under the guise of saving the planet..."

If this sounds more like the sort of thing you'd expect to see in the Telegraph op-ed page than the NME, more is to come. Mozzer grumbles how there's "no democracy" in England, before moving on to the state of Britain:

Britain's a terribly negative place.

This from Morriseey, who has already spent three columns grumbling and moaning about everything from the way people write about him and Marr to how people carry cameras with their phones.

And it hammers people down and it pulls you back and it prevents you.

So far, he sounds a lot like those other expats who go off to live in tax exile and pretend it's a cultural rather than an economic decision, like Michael Caine.

Also, with the issue of immigration, it's very difficult because although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears. So the price is enormous. If you travel to Germany, it's still absolutely Germany [...] But to travel to England and you have no idea where you are!"

Oh.

Not, of course, that he has anything against people from other countries.

He stresses that he's worried about the loss of identity and concedes that there's something "nice" about the enrichment offered by immigration ("but you have yo say goodbye to the Britain you once knew"), before worrying that, ooh, you don't hear English voices any more:

[T]he change in England is so rapid compared to the change in any other country. If you walk through Knightsbridge on any bland day of the week you won't hear an English accent. You'll hear every accent under the sunapart from the British accent.

The converstaion turns to Bengali in Platforms, which Morrissey defends again on the grounds that the song was about someone who didn't belong, "just didn't", but not because of race.

So far, then, this is what you'd expect - a rich ex-pat muttering away about immigration "diluting" a nation, complaining about how you hear funny foreign voices on the bus - it's clear that, as with Dannii Minogue's racism over lunch with GQ a few years back, although this is unpleasant, it's being offered without malice. It's the soft racism that pervaded my parent's generation - "nothing against people from overseas", it's just they're different. Xenophobia from a fear of change, and lazy scapegoating of an easy target to blame.

It's disappointing, of course, to hear this sort of hateful rubbish being trotted out - an intelligent man who complains about the British government and ruling classes and media apparently getting his worldview from the news pages of the Daily Mail. We do love, by the way, that Morrissey cites Knightsbridge as the exemplar of Britishness - hanging around outside Harrods, a shop that sucks in tourists, you would expect to hear the sound of people from overseas.

There's worse to come, though. Worried by the tenor, Jonze sought a second interview to give Morrissey room to - presumably - explain the whole thing away as a silly misunderstanding. That didn't quite happen. Explaining his reasons for accepting a chance for clarification, Morrissey starts off well:

I just think it could be construed that the reason I wouldn't wish to live in England is the immigration explosion

He does mutter on that, rather, it's the "expense" and "pressure" which keeps him away, but the mere fact that he speaks of immigration as an "explosion" rather than an ongoing, two-way process that's been happening as long as humanity have been able to build boats hints that he does see people from overseas as a problem.

Surprisingly, he then claims that the face of Britain in Jean Charles DeMenzes, and how you don't "shoot someone seven times in the head by accident". This is quite surprising - does Morrissey feel that he'd be at risk of an accidental execution if he lived in Levenshulme? Did a man who lived in LA - a place not exactly unknown for difficulties with police over-reacting - really find the prospect of Lancashire so frightening?

Sadly, the question is left hanging, as Moz is pressed on if he regrets anything he said:

In my life, my favourite actor is an Israeli, Lior Ashkenazi, and my favourite singer was born in Iraq and now lives in Egypt.

Oh, god; he really is using the "how can I be racist, I watched all of Roots and once went to see Sammy Davis Jr play" defence. Albeit slightly QI-ed up.

The NME points out that immigration helped his parents into Britain:

Yes. But once again, it's different now. Because the gates are flooded. And anybody can have access to England and join in.

Apart from being sickening - flooded? - this simply isn't true; it's the sort of ill-considered rubbish you hear BNP supporters bleating. Anybody can have access to England? Really, Morrissey? Have you ever spent any time at a immigration office? Who do you think are all those people being deported constantly?

Of course, Morrissey tries to stress that he's only being sensible - you can't let everyone come in and sit on your bed, apparently - and denies being inflammatory. He then worries he's going to be stitched up - although, if he doesn't think he's being inflammatory or offensive, why would he be worried by that?

This is clearly contentious material - indeed, Conor McNicholas feels the need to produce an editorial column to stress that, you know, Morrissey isn't racist, probably:

I'm convinced Morrissey is ultimately just a nostalgic creature who pines for the England of his youth

Oddly, though, this doesn't stop McNicholas slapping this on the coverline:

Bigmouth Strikes Again: Morrissey "The gates of England are flooded. The country's been thrown away" Oh dear. Not again.

- which hardly suggests that the paper sees this as just a swansong for a prewar Blighty that never existed.

Meanwhile, True To You Morrissey fanzine carries a piece by Moz manager Merck Mercuriadis, giving a Morrissey view the background to the interview. He says they'd heard NME was planning "a hatchet job":

We immediately contacted the magazine's editor Conor McNicholas who refuted the suggestion that the NME would be anything less than supportive and personally posted on the site categorically denying the "rumours and untruths."

Clearly, rather than accepting that their man wasn't hatcheted, but more slapped himself round his own head, Mercuriadis then quotes an email he claims he got from
Tim Jonze:

"Hope you're well. I should mention that for reasons I'll probably never understand, NME have rewritten the Moz piece. I had a read and virtually none of it is my words or beliefs so I've asked for my name to be taken off it. Just so you know when you read it."

And, indeed, the article does appear under a clumsy "interview: Tim Jonze words: NME" byline, which makes the first person nature of the article a little odd, to say the least.

Morrissey's management sent an email to Conor; the response - claims Mercuriadis - was deliberately delayed to avoid any legal action keeping the paper from entering distribution. The response is quoted in full on True To You, but this is pretty much the tenor:

Obviously no-one is accusing Morrissey of racism - that would be mad given what Morrissey says - but we do say that the language Morrissey uses is very unhelpful at a time of great tensions. I am - as I say in the magazine - fully confident that Morrissey's comments are simply the result of a man in his 50s looking back nostalgically on the England of his youth, but his reasoning for that change is unreasonably skewed towards immigration and as a title we think that's wrong. I think he's simply naive and doesn't understand the atmosphere here. I don't think he wishes anyone any harm but I don't think he understand the climate or the possible interpretation of his comments either.

We wonder if McNicholas actually paused to consider - given the "climate or possible interpretation of his comments" - whether running a coverline of "the gates of England are flooded. The country's been thrown away" would be helpful or not?

Mercuriadis throws himself on our mercy:

When reading it we request that you think for yourself and consider what is question and answer and what is inflammatory editorial on the part of the NME which we assume can only be intended to create controversy to boost their circulation at the expense of Morrissey's integrity and for which no journalist is willing to be credited. It might as well say "anonymous."

It's true that the NME doesn't exactly come out of this looking great - it's trying to have its 'Mozzer race row' piece while desperately stressing that it doesn't believe Morrissey is racist - but the trouble is that even if you ignore the confused editorialising in the article, well, yes, Morrissey does still come across terribly. Not calling for race riots, perhaps, but using inflammatory, ignorant language and unacceptable imagery and singling out "otherness" as being a threat to "Englishness".

It's noticeable that Mercuriadis doesn't quite have the confidence to leave it there, but feels the need to stress just how not-racist Morrissey is:

As we all know, the NME does not speak for its readership, the artists do. Artists like Morrissey. The NME also does not speak for Morrissey. Anti-racist songs such as "Irish Blood, English Heart," "America Is Not The World" and "I Will See You In Far-Off Places" tell you the true measure of the man.

Well, perhaps they do. One has that clunky bit about how we shouldn't feel racist standing by the Union flag (which sounds like the sort of thing the UK Independence Party trot out); the other two contain kneejerk anti-Americanism which - while it might be delightful to those who indulge in geopolitics by numbers - hardly is the same thing as a condemnation of racism. In fact:

And don't you wonder/ why in Estonia they say/ hey you, you big fat pig, you fat pig, you fat pig

sounds suspiciously like lazy all-Americans-are-fat stereotyping to us.

It's true, though, that he does lament there never being a "black, female or gay" president, so how could he be racist, eh?

Somewhat surprisingly, Mercuriadis signs off by publishing a letter from Mozzer's legal team to Conor - one that's covered in "not for publication"s and "strictly private and confidential"s all over it.

The legal letter insists that describing Morrissey as racist would be "malicious" - although, as we've seen, the NME bends over backwards to deny that it thinks Morrissey is racist and threatens withdrawal of planned Mozzer 7" covermount, besides other comments. It also demands McNicholas apologies to Morrissey for - apparently - having told Tim Jonze that Morrissey wouldn't want "a [black person] living next door".

It's all a bit of a nasty mess - Morrissey revealing more deeply the unpleasant side to his character and then attempting to use legal letters from this being shared; the NME trying to take two positions at the same time; and a suggestion that McNicholas apologise for something he may or may not have said in private.

No, Morrissey doesn't think he's being racist; he doesn't realise he's stirring up a hornets nest. That's what actually makes it worse.

[Thanks to Duncan for the link]