Aha! Proof that this is @#!!!.
As directed to me by someone...and I wish they had written 10 minutes sooner...*wink*, this is an excerpt of an interview posted on this very website where some guy is interviewing Joe Strummer in a magazine called The Big Takeover on the possibility of producing Morrissey.....
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JR: I like to ride ‘em, I do. He was a nice guy; he could take it. That would have been nice to see: The Smiths in a small club. As a result, I never saw them until they played the Beacon Theater, far less intimate, a year and a half later, after they’d already been discovered. Would have been great, huh?
Joe: I saw Morrissey not too long ago. Well, probably years ago now. I got a call one day: “Morrissey wants you to produce his next album.” [Jack laughs] And I went, “Alright, who is this? Stop shaggin’ around.” And he went, “No, I’m Terry” from whatever label, I can’t remember, but he was serious. So we went up to see him. It was this horrible show where he was supporting David Bowie at Wembley Arena.
JR: I remember when they did that tour, yeah. Bowie was covering his song “I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday,” which was a rip-off of Bowie’s “Rock n’ Roll Suicide,” which itself was no coincidence, since Mick Ronson produced that LP for Morrissey. So I am sure he was very serious about having you produce him. He likes working with his old heroes. You know he wrote a book on The New York Dolls before he was in The Smiths—I bet he would ask Thunders to produce him if he was still alive!
Joe: Ahh, but I wasn’t having it. The whole situation was beginning to piss me off. And his manager—it was a lady at the time—she came to me before the show and said, “So, what do you think?” And I said [snaps fingers], because I knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to cover “Can’t Explain,” that was part of the initial phone message. And I tried to imagine Morrissey singing “Got a feelin’ inside…” And I thought this was a stupid idea! So I said, “No, no. I’ve got a plan for Morrissey.” And they went “what is it?” I said, “Let’s have him cover ‘Pop Music’ by M.
JR: Whew. That would have put them off. I never liked that song.
Joe: I wanted to poke them with a stick. You see what I mean? Because the idea of trying to redo “Can’t Explain”—I couldn’t see the point of it. And I threw that in to see what they’d say, and Morrissey threw it right out! He just freaked out and left the venue.
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Now, after all of T H A T, would Morrissey be insane enough to approach him AGAIN and would Joe Strummer do a complete 180 and agree to produce some guy that he said was crap? That would be embarassing for both of them.
