Bigmouth has struck again and, heaven knows, he’s miserable now.

Morrissey is suing the NME and its editor for defamation after the music magazine quoted him on its cover this week as saying: “The Gates of England are flooded. The country’s been thrown away.”

The magazine lambasts the former Smiths frontman for taking a “naive and inflammatory” stance on immigration by employing language that “dangerously echoes” the British National Party’s current manifesto.

Morrissey’s reported comments come 15 years after the NME accused him of experimenting with racist imagery in some of his solo songs and by draping himself in a Union Jack at a gig in Finsbury Park, North London. The singer, 48, says that his words have been taken out of context and now, after one of the most intense relationships in British music, Morrissey and the NME could be heading for the High Court.

A spokesman for Morrissey said that legal proceedings would be served on the magazine and its editor, Conor McNicholas, today. “We are suing them for defamation,” he said. “They have not only misquoted Morrissey, they have omitted critical parts of the interview and distorted the tone of the piece, his responses and the questions he was asked in order to try and present an inflammatory case.”

The magazine and singer go back nearly 40 years. The New Musical Express was a crucial formative influence on Stephen Patrick Morrissey from the age of 10 as he grew up in Manchester as the lonely child of Irish immigrants.

In 1978, it reviewed his first band, the Nosebleeds, before becoming such a cheerleader for the Smiths and their lyrically adventurous singer in the 1980s that critics referred to it as the New Morrissey Express.

During the 12-year communication breakdown that followed the racism accusation in 1992, the NME named the Smiths as the most influential artists of all time.

Morrissey takes his legal battles seriously. He is still challenging, at great expense, a 1996 High Court judgment that ordered him to pay the Smiths’ drummer Mike Joyce £1.25 million in back earnings. The judge described the singer as “devious, truculent and unreliable when his own interests were at stake”.

This week’s NME interview presents a more relaxed figure, describing him as “charm personified”. But according to Morrissey’s camp, the interviewer Tim Jonze asked for his name to be removed from the final copy because “virtually none of it is my words or beliefs”. The article credits Jonze for the interview but, unusually, attributes the words to “NME”.

In it Morrissey, who now lives in Los Angeles and Rome, says: “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.”

He defends his right to provoke by saying: “If you consider yourself to be a social writer, then you have to stretch yourself and put certain topics on the table for discussion.”

A spokesman for NME said: “We can confirm that Morrissey’s legal representatives have contacted NME and pending the outcome of these discussions we won’t be commenting further.”

In tune

June 1974 The teenage Morrissey writes his first letter to NME

March 1983 NME gives a warm first live review of the Smiths

Feb 1988 Morrissey gives his first post-Smiths interview to NME

Aug 1992 NME accuses Morrissey of flirting with nationalistic imagery at a gig in Finsbury Park

April 2002 The Smiths named most influential artists of all time by NME

Source: NME

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