The Smiths’ main songwriter, lead guitarist, and prime role model for getting gracefully older without turning into a grumpy racist, Johnny Marr, has joined the growing list of rock musicians demanding Donald Trump stops using their music.
US broadcaster ABC’s political reporter Soorin Kim posted a clip, and accompanying video, last night on Twitter (latterly X), which noted that “You actually hear the Smiths more often than you’d think at 2024 Trump rallies.” The clip featuring The Smiths’ track Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want was reportedly from a South Dakota rally for the wall-building, great-making, very smart former president.
Marr’s response was pretty unequivocal: “Consider this shit shut right down right now,” the axemeister promised with typical Mancunian candour.
Marr, who previously “forbade” then-Tory-PM David Cameron from liking The Smiths’ music following his 2010 selection of the band’s This Charming Man on Desert Island Discs, isn’t the first storied British musician to seek to block the orange one from pilfering his work.
In 2019 Birmingham’s finest Ozzy Osbourne joined an ever-lengthening list of artists who have taken action to prevent Trump and his campaign team from using their music after the would-be presidential returnee posted a bizarre Tweet mocking US news channel MSNBC over technical problems that occurred while it was hosting a debate with Democratic primary contenders, featuring Osbourne’s 1980 hit Crazy Train as its soundtrack.
Former Black Sabbath singer Osbourne and his wife and manager Sharon called out the president’s unauthourised use of the track, telling Rolling Stone magazine: “Based on this morning’s unauthorised use of Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train, we are sending notice to the Trump campaign…that they are forbidden from using any of Ozzy Osbourne’s music in political ads or in any political campaigns.”
In April 2019, Warner Bros took legal action against Trump over his appropriation of Why Do We Fall?, an instrumental track taken from the soundtrack to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.
“The use of Warner Bros’ score from The Dark Knight Rises in the campaign video was unauthorized,” Warners said in a statement. “We are working through the appropriate legal channels to have it removed.”
Prior to that, Trump’s roll call of legal challengers reads like an A-Z of the rock’n’roll hall of fame. Among those who have taken action to prevent the divisive US president/former president from using their music are Aerosmith, Neil Young, Adele, REM, Elton John, The Rolling Stones, Queen, Pharrell Williams, Rihanna and Guns’n’Roses.
The Osbournes helpfully went on to suggest Trump uses the music of artists who support him in future campaigns, so we’ll eagerly await that Ted Nugent/Kanye West collaboration.
Reports that Morrissey has been dismissed as a potential running mate by the Trump campaign as “too right wing” were utterly unconfirmed at the time of going to press.
