A fantastic photoshop of Robert Smith and his arch enemy Morrissey.
 
To be fair, Morrissey doesn’t seem to like anyone or anything very much including his old bandmates from The Smiths. He also doesn’t like Siouxsie Sioux, either. According to Sioux, the pair haven’t spoken since they collaborated on the 1994 single “Interlude” after a dispute involving of all things, a fucking bulldog. He’s called Kate Bush “unbearable” noting her voice was utter “trash.” Moz hates meat, roller coasters, rain, cold weather and dance music, most likely because it’s too hard to be morose when someone is laying down a sick beat. He detests Stevie Wonder and even hates his birth name of Steven as it reminds him of Colonel Steve Austin as played by actor Lee Majors in the television series The Six Million Dollar Man, which also means he probably hates Lee Majors as well. It’s hard to say if Moz likes anything aside from animals—although his ire is particularly strong when it comes to hating on perpetually glum Cure vocalist, Robert Smith.

The vicious word volley between Smith and Morrissey (downplayed by Moz in 2004 on CNN), has been documented to an extent by a timeline thanks to author and blogger Andrew Barger. The feud started after Smith had been told about comments Morrissey made in a 1984 interview with UK mag The Face. During the interview, journalist Elissa Van Poznak asked Moz if he had a loaded gun and was in a room with Mark E. Smith of The Fall and Robert Smith, who would be “the first to die.” Moz must have been feeling extra cranky on this occasion as he coldly answered he’d “line them up so one bullet penetrated both simultaneously.”

Here’s Robert Smith recalling his reaction to Morrissey’s wild threat in an interview with NME which would kick off years of verbal sparring between the two:

“When I was told that at the time I kind of took umbrage, ‘That’s fucking nice, cunt.’ I felt it was a bit unnecessary. I’d never said or done anything. So that engendered one of those tedious feuds. I’ve never met him, I’m not even sure we’ve been in the same room. I’m sure it’s the same for him, he got really aggravated at my response. I was very over the top, but I felt justifiably so, having just been shot in print. It was one of those things, a mini Blur/Oasis thing. I don’t think I played along with it enough for it to become anything more. It kind of got resurrected from time to time, I think on his fansite it got reinvigorated, and there have been various attempts to reignite it, but I think he’s actually said something really nice about us recently, about the fact that I’m a little bit wayward. Honestly, I’ve never really had a problem. I felt it was unfair that he would shoot me. If you asked him again, he might choose to shoot himself rather than me and whoever else it was.”

 

Another fun photoshopped image of Moz and Robert Smith.
 
In light of wanting to get right to the good stuff in this post, here are a few of the best of the worst things Smith and Moz have said about each other since the early 80s:

In an interview to NME in 1989 (the NME is another thing Morrissey hated by the way), Moz accused The Cure of giving “a new dimension to the word crap.” Upon hearing of Moz’s latest dig, Smith responded to Morrissey’s insult saying at least The Cure had “added a new dimension in crap, not built a career out of it.” He would later slag Moz calling him “so depressing” and “if he doesn’t kill himself soon, I probably will.” Far from done Smith continued to rail on his sworn enemy with this gem:

“If Morrissey says not to eat meat, then I’m going to eat meat; that’s how much I hate Morrissey. He’s a precious, miserable bastard. He’s all the things people think I am.”

In the November 1993 issue of Spin magazine, Smith went after Morrissey again admitting he “never liked him, and still didn’t.” At some point during their insult fest, Morrissey allegedly referred to Smith as a “fat clown with makeup weeping over a guitar.” Ooof, now that’s cold blooded even for Moz. I’ve posted an amusing animated video below of Morrissey and Smith recounting much of this tale because no such real-life footage of this epic battle exists. Yet…
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Miserable in Manchester: Amusing letters and music reviews from a young Morrissey
Robert Smith responds to fans about death, dreams & his tombstone in ‘The Cure News’
Three Imaginary Boys: The Cure back in the 1970s when they were still teenagers
Heaven Knows He Was Miserable Then: Morrissey’s first postcard to a pen-pal from 1980