There’s a possiblity of a legal battle between The Smith’s singer Morrissey and the music magazine NME.

Morrissey is accusing NME of doing a hatchet job on him after a recent interview. The magazine leads this month with the caption “Bigmouth Strikes Again” and an anti-immigration quote taken from the interview.

From the looks of things, NME are sensationalising parts of their interview with Morrissey and – in his opinion – making him look like a raving racist.

There’s a full run-down of the situation over on the Morrissey webzine, True To You which explains how:

• The interviewer, Tim Jonze, asked to be disassociated from the piece after an extensive rewrite by the NME editorial team. The article now credits Jonze with the interview, but the ‘words’ are credited to NME, which is unusual.
• An anonymous tip-off on morrissey-solo.com alerted his management to the fact that NME were planning a controversial piece based on the interview.
• Concerned emails from Merck Mercuriadis were only replied to after the publication deadline, meaning that regardless of their complaints, it would be too late to stop the issue going to press.

Check out the information posted by Merck on the True To You website. It really does give a curious insight into the tactics NME appear to be using, and raises a lot of questions about their approach, especially where Tim Jonze was so uncomfortable with the piece that he distanced himself from it.

The core accusation is that the editor, Conor McNicholas, is attempting to use the piece to cynically boost circulation. He’s certainly at the centre of a shitstorm, that’s for sure. Perhaps it’s time for him to speak out and give us his side of the story.