You have to remember it was British audiences who raised throwing stuff at performers to an acceptable practice back in the punk years. Also the same people who made the Smiths popular in the first place.
The actions of some dumbasses is just truly amazing. Morrissey comes on stage to sing his heart out and some moron tosses a beer bottle… a PLASTIC one! When in hell are you going to have that good a trajectory at Morrissey again? You couldn’t pay the few extra pence to get a glass bottle? If you can ring him with a plastic one you’d surely be able to get him with the glass one.
Some said it was half full, others that it was half empty. Morrissey himself said it was just right apparently. And that meat is murder.
I can’t remember if it was Princess Margaret or Princess Michael of Kent who hurled a Pepsi machine at Chuck Berry when he wouldn’t do another duck walk.
I’ve heard of Jeff Buckley and Kate Bush.
it was in the cite I responded to.
I believe you. It’s just that reading the statement I would expect to have at least heard of him. After sampling his music nothing jumped out at me as familiar and in fairness it’s not something I would seek out. Not sure how big a star he or Smith are in the States. When I see a statement that someone is the greatest thing since sliced bread I would expect more public awareness of him but then there are so much music available it’s tough to be known beyond one’s niche sound.
Ask me why and I’ll spit in your eye. I’ll spit in your eeeeeeeyyee 
Ah, yeah, I just read that link, but I had to search for the reference. Had you ever heard of New Musical Express (NME) magazine? It’s just a music magazine, one of many, in England. The hoity-toity writers/editors/whoever who made up that list in 2002 used as criteria
Most of those things are specifically geared to the magazine itself, how many times on the cover, how many features written, readers’ letters, meaningless crap. As meaningless as Rolling Stone’s Best of whatever or any other pretentious list. You probably haven’t heard of 99.9% of the artists ever mentioned in the pages of NME. I used to read NME, Melody Maker, Sounds, Q, and other English music magazines, but even I haven’t heard 95% of the people ever mentioned. Those kind of magazines, it’s their job to be pretentious.
What I’m getting at is that just because some silly magazine in England says they’re “the most influential band ever” doesn’t mean that The Smiths are considered that way by anyone else besides ardent fans. Influential, yes, very much, but take what one magazine says with a big grain of salt.
On the other hand, they are well-known to millions of music fans, if only by name. Just because you haven’t heard of them or Morrissey doesn’t negate that.
On the third hand, it’s true that they were much more popular in England than here, much like Kate Bush, who is unarguably one of the most influential female artists ever, but one who most people in America have never heard of. Out of curiosity, do you know her name from a general knowledge of music or because you hang around the Dope and there are lots of fans here?
Basically, you can’t take a music magazine poll as the gospel that The Smiths really are THE most influential band ever, but even bands/artists that you’ve never heard of can indeed be among the most influential bands/artists ever.
Isamu, is that a Smiths reference?
During his solo at a concert in the early 80’s, Neil Schon of “Journey” was hit with a beer bottle, purportedly hurled by an dude who didn’t appreciate Schon’s attention on his girlfriend. Wounded and bleeding, he played on.
Rock on, Neil.
Yep. Enjoy
wow that takes me way back. 
Oh bollocks. As a percentage of those who liked their music would it be 0.1%, or 0.001% or what who threw stuff? The rest probably thought those doing the throwing were antisocial violent twats. As they were and are.
If you haven’t heard of Morrissey or the Smiths, that is completely your fault. They were huge in the 80s and early-90s.
Your ignorance is not the same as a lack of public awareness.
Some of his newer stuff is pretty good (the stuff off You are the Quarry, not heard his latest).
Sounds like Morrissey’s being a mard fuck: getting soaked by folk throwing beer/water/whatever, and getting hit by the bottles and plastic glasses as they fall, at rock concerts in the UK is par for the course (I always assumed it was like this everywhere). Walking off the stage for getting hit by a plastic bottle half filled with water? Grow a dick, mate.
FWIW, there is no traffic in Liverpool and hasn’t been since, like, the 1970s.
Oasis left a NYC stage c. 1990 because some in the audience were throwing coins at them. And a couple of weeks later James (a well-known band from Manchester, UK) lectured the audience for not catching stage divers and, IIRC, alluded to the Oasis thing: as though to say that New Yorkers don’t know how to behave.
I’m sure James wouldn’t even bother to say that in Liverpool because everyone knows that skouses never know how to behave 
I don’t think he’s the most influential artist ever, but The Smiths were (and still are) pretty influential. Many of the Manchester bands from the late 80s and early 90s, like the Stone Roses, Mock Turtles etc., were rip-offs of The Smiths, similarly Oasis, Libertines etc. and other bands from the 90s, and until today, were heavily influenced by them.
They can’t be all that obscure in the States, How Soon is Now? was the theme tune for the TV series Charmed.
Nitpick, Capt. Ridley’s: Stone Roses rip-offs of the Smiths? I don’t think so. Not saying that they were anywhere as good or as important as the Smiths just that they were part of (arguably the center of) a later vibe for neo-psychedelic rock. What started to be called “the Manchester Sound” in other words wasn’t really a homage to the Smiths even though no Manchester band could be innocent of connection to the Smiths any more than the Smiths could be innocent of Joy Division.
When you’re up on stage, you’re pretty much defenseless. The lights are in your eyes, so you can’t really see to dodge anything. I don’t blame any artist for walking off when that starts to happen.
I’m sorry, but you have to be out of your mind to say that the Stone Roses were a ripoff of the Smiths. They were the anti-Smiths. That statement is so far off it’s comical.
I’m not a huge fan of his but the idea that Morrissey focused on suicide and miserableness is not correct. His “schtick” is actually quite chirpy and life affirming. It is about being happy to be soft or weird or hopeless by society’s standards and finding your own way in the world. Even revelling in your own oddness.
Well that is what I have gathered from my exposure to his work anyway. If anyone disagrees I would love to hear their opinion.
Anti-Smiths? That seems like overkill. “I Wanna Be Adored” is the antithesis of “How Soon is Now”?
Don’t think so…
Their attitude, primarily. They were certainly influenced by the Smiths, but the whole depressed/angsty thing was wearing very thin on people at the time. The Stone Roses were much more about a psychedelic 60s sound and house music mixed together, and they were much more in-your-face about it.