SDE: The B-sides and extra tracks from the Viva Hate period, although still available (notably on a three-disc Morrissey singles collection) are now somewhat lost, given that they do not form part of this special reissue.
SS: Yes, I think so. Personally, I think what should have been put on the reissue of the album is the demo and the B-sides of the period such as I Know Very Well How I Got My Name…
SDE: … And Hairdresser On Fire, which is a great track. For those in the US, this new reissue actually misses off TWO album tracks since Hairdresser was on the album over there…
he’s chopped off the front and the end of Late Night, Maudlin Street, which I think, again, is a wrong move.
SS: Yes, that should have gone on. And also, the other thing is that he’s chopped off the front and the end of Late Night, Maudlin Street, which I think, again, is a wrong move. I produced that track with an intro in mind and an outro in mind, and now both ends of it have been kind of butchered, really, in my estimation. So I’m not happy about that, either. But then again, what can I do? It’s not my album – it’s his.
US audiences see two tracks removed from the original Sire release
SDE: In 2010 you participated in the BBC Radio show “The Record Producers” and you were going to play some Viva Hate demos on that show – until Morrissey intervened…
SS: They were just demos, and I really wanted to show – in a complimentary way – how good the songs sounded, even as four-track demos. This was before I got back in touch with him again, so I was still a little bit of a ‘persona non grata’ at the time. I think I mentioned it on my website, and once he got word of it, we got a very strong legal letter from Morrissey’s solicitor saying how dare you do anything without the permission of Morrissey himself – you must hand over these recordings to us now. So I had to go back to Steve Levine who was producing those particular programmes and we decided that there was not much we could do about it, but he [Morrissey] had shot himself in the foot because he hadn’t won any friends at the BBC by doing that.
SDE: So I guess there was no question that those demos would have ever appeared on this new reissue?
SS: They are probably not good enough to put on the reissue of the album, but the reason why I wanted to play a little snippet of them on that radio programme – which was about me, not about him – was to show how an album grows from being a very tiny little demo idea, to a finished thing. The idea was only to play a little bit – a verse or a chorus from a demo. I had no intention of playing the whole thing. But it didn’t happen in the end.