Morrissey Reveals $5 Million Offer For Smiths Reunion

03/17/06 1:00pm

by Phil Villeneuve (CHARTattack)

In the latest of musical news bites rolling out of this year's South By South West Music Conference, former Smiths singer/songwriter Morrissey revealed that organizers of the Coachella Music Festival offered the band $5 million to reform for a show. The offer was rejected.

When asked if the offer was even considered, the singer replied, "No, because money doesn't come into it," at which point the crowd applauded.

He continued, "It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am."

Morrissey spoke at a press conference before he was due to go onstage Thursday (he backed out of SXSW in 2004 due to illness.) His 17-song set included songs from his new release, Ringleader Of The Tormentors, as well as four Smiths songs.

"I didn't play Smiths songs for a long time," Moz said at the industry event. "But then I realized that those songs don't belong to somebody else — nobody will sing them as with as much feeling as me and no one will make them more meaningful than I will."

The rock icon had some other opinions to offer the gallery. He criticized U.K.'s Pop Idol, saying contestants were "imbeciles," and then added that the Arctic Monkeys hadn't paid their proper rocker dues.

"For them it's happening too quickly. They haven't proven anything and they haven't had to work too hard," he said. "It's all a bit unnatural. Yes they've sold 700,000 albums but it can't be gratifying. They haven't been driving up and down the M1 in a van for 15 years."

He also discussed the surprisingly optimistic tone of Ringleader Of The Tormentors, which comes out April 4.

"I'm just seeing lots of joyful things in life, which I didn't in the past, which maybe you noticed," he said coyly. "Politically the world is ridiculous, but there's still a lot of beautiful things... nature saves us, nature calms us down."

Morrissey will promote the new album with a six-week jaunt in the U.K. starting in April and is expected to do a North American leg sometime after that.