The Smiths Offered Meat-Free Coachella to Reunite at Festival, Morrissey Says

Smiths reunion rumors have been coming and going for years, but how's this for a twist? A new claim from Morrissey suggests that organizers of the annual Coachella festival are so desperate to snag the reunited Smiths as headliners that they've promised the pro-animal-rights singer a vegetarian-only menu for the entire festival if they agree to play.

That's right -- don't expect to chow down on hamburgers in Indio, Calif., next year if the Smiths are on the Coachella bill. Morrissey famously cut his solo set at Coachella 2009 short after smelling smoke billowing out of an onsite barbecue, so it makes sense that organizers would make such a promise. And the Smiths did title a 1985 album 'Meat Is Murder.'

But don't hold your breath for a reunion. Band members have been denying comeback reports for years, and according to one rumor, Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr were offered upward of $75 million in August 2007 to embark on a global tour billed as the Smiths. (There was no mention of bassist Andrew Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce being included in that deal, which Marr later said he heard about but was never officially approached with.)

The Coachella offer also excludes Rourke and Joyce. "[After 2009] the agents for Coachella offered a 100 per cent vegetarian event for the following year if I would agree to headline with Johnny Marr as the Smiths," Morrissey tells the Herald Sun. "Fascinatingly they made it clear that they would 'not require' the Smiths' bass player or drummer... which I thought certainly said something."