Wait: The Smiths Almost Reunited in 2008? Really?

When concert promoters go to sleep, they dream of a short list of reunions they’d like to see. Led Zeppelin. Oasis. ABBA. If any of these acts deigned to return to the stage, the box office grosses would be huge, in the hundreds and hundreds of millions.

Another band on this dream list is The Smiths. Twenty-nine years after their split, people are still hoping that they might one day perform together again. And now comes this astonishing revelation that it actually almost happened.

The Guardian has a long and very inciteful interview with guitarist Johnny Marr. Deep within the article is this:

[I]t emerges that he and Morrissey were asking themselves the same question decades after the split, and that it almost did come to pass. In 2008, they met for the first time since the court case in a pub in south Manchester. “The conversation about re-forming came out of the blue. I didn’t go there with that in mind. But there had been quite a few rumours about it, so naturally we discussed it. ‘It could happen…’ ‘How d’you feel about it?’ ‘What if?’ And off we went.” Who was more keen? “I think we were both as keen as each other.”

[…]

They left the pub, contemplating a Smiths reunion, spoke a few more times, then Marr went on tour with the Cribs, and didn’t hear from Morrissey again.

Wow. Read the whole article here.