"I've Changed My Plea To Guilty" guy and girl talking

terrancestamp

Well-Known Member
Does anyone have any information on the intro to the song? I am aware of Skeeter Davis "The End Of The World" playing at the start, but the guy and the girl talking has always puzzled me. They are also talking at the end. Does anyone know who that is and why he included that in the song?
 
Does anyone have any information on the intro to the song? I am aware of Skeeter Davis "The End Of The World" playing at the start, but the guy and the girl talking has always puzzled me. They are also talking at the end. Does anyone know who that is and why he included that in the song?

I hope someone knows - I'm always wondering about the film clips in his songs. Some are quite deep in the mix & I don't even notice them at first.
 
Cited by Goddard, besides Skeeter - it is Nevin's friend & waitress from Minneapolis (Suzy Solan) in random Dictaphone clips.
Regards,
FWD.
 
And this is completely absent on the US version of the song, I think?
 
Cited by Goddard, besides Skeeter - it is Nevin's friend & waitress from Minneapolis (Suzy Solan) in random Dictaphone clips.
Regards,
FWD.

My Mozipedia is buried under piles of Out back-issues so I can't get to it right now but isn't there a male voice on there saying something like Mary; PLEASE and I got, like, a mile from (something)? And getting up for work in the morning?
 
My Mozipedia is buried under piles of Out so I can't get to it right now but isn't there a male voice on there saying something like Mary; PLEASE and I got, like, a mile from (something)? And getting up for work in the morning?
Lol, that Mozipedia entry isn't too enlightening.
It's possible that it's Nevin & his friend on the dictaphone, but I don't think it's anything coded as Morrissey has done before.

Full entry for the song:
I’ve Changed My Plea To Guilty’ (Morrissey/Nevin), B-side of ‘MY LOVE LIFE’ (1991). Perhaps his finest collaboration with Mark Nevin, ‘I’ve Changed My Plea To Guilty’ is, furthermore, one of the greatest tracks in Morrissey’s entire catalogue. At the time, he seemed to agree, telling one interviewer in all sincerity it was ‘the best song, in my mind, that I have recorded’.
‘Sometimes there’s no point pretending that you’re innocent and so forth,’ he explained. ‘You may as well just jump off the cliff and say, “I’m guilty.”’ Standing in the shadow, if not the shackles, of Oscar WILDE, Morrissey throws his loveless heart to the lions, a willing martyr to an agonising loneliness trembling through his every soul-torn syllable. While in one sense eerily prophetic of the 1996 Smiths COURT CASE (bar the obvious difference in plea), the ‘emotional air-raid’ metaphor harked back to his earlier sleeve note for a never-released 1985 compilation by Ludus, the band of his best friend Linder STERLING. Reminiscing about his and Linder’s walks through Manchester, Morrissey wrote of their ‘hearts damaged by too many air-raids’.
The song’s power and beauty owed much to its simplicity, developing the stark piano and vocal template of Nevin’s earlier ‘THERE’S A PLACE IN HELL FOR ME AND MY FRIENDS’. Modelled on his home demo, Nevin constructed the opening and closing sound collage using samples of country singer Skeeter Davis’s 1963 hit ‘The End Of The World’ alongside Dictaphone recordings of a waitress friend from Minneapolis called Suzy Solan. The delicate mood cast was perfect for Morrissey’s condemned cell surrender, which is why the song inevitably lost some of its grace in concert when rearranged as a guitar track. But in its original form, ‘I’ve Changed My Plea To Guilty’ still hits the bullseye of heartache with a poetry and poise few Morrissey songs have matched since.

Regards,
FWD.
 
Lol, that Mozipedia entry isn't too enlightening.
It's possible that it's Nevin & his friend on the dictaphone, but I don't think it's anything coded as Morrissey has done before.

Full entry for the song:
I’ve Changed My Plea To Guilty’ (Morrissey/Nevin), B-side of ‘MY LOVE LIFE’ (1991). Perhaps his finest collaboration with Mark Nevin, ‘I’ve Changed My Plea To Guilty’ is, furthermore, one of the greatest tracks in Morrissey’s entire catalogue. At the time, he seemed to agree, telling one interviewer in all sincerity it was ‘the best song, in my mind, that I have recorded’.
‘Sometimes there’s no point pretending that you’re innocent and so forth,’ he explained. ‘You may as well just jump off the cliff and say, “I’m guilty.”’ Standing in the shadow, if not the shackles, of Oscar WILDE, Morrissey throws his loveless heart to the lions, a willing martyr to an agonising loneliness trembling through his every soul-torn syllable. While in one sense eerily prophetic of the 1996 Smiths COURT CASE (bar the obvious difference in plea), the ‘emotional air-raid’ metaphor harked back to his earlier sleeve note for a never-released 1985 compilation by Ludus, the band of his best friend Linder STERLING. Reminiscing about his and Linder’s walks through Manchester, Morrissey wrote of their ‘hearts damaged by too many air-raids’.
The song’s power and beauty owed much to its simplicity, developing the stark piano and vocal template of Nevin’s earlier ‘THERE’S A PLACE IN HELL FOR ME AND MY FRIENDS’. Modelled on his home demo, Nevin constructed the opening and closing sound collage using samples of country singer Skeeter Davis’s 1963 hit ‘The End Of The World’ alongside Dictaphone recordings of a waitress friend from Minneapolis called Suzy Solan. The delicate mood cast was perfect for Morrissey’s condemned cell surrender, which is why the song inevitably lost some of its grace in concert when rearranged as a guitar track. But in its original form, ‘I’ve Changed My Plea To Guilty’ still hits the bullseye of heartache with a poetry and poise few Morrissey songs have matched since.

Regards,
FWD.
It's a really great song, with samples or without. I wonder how Goddard got the info about the samples. Presumably Nevin?
 
It's a really great song, with samples or without. I wonder how Goddard got the info about the samples. Presumably Nevin?
Yes, confirmed as a Nevin interview in 2003 in the book's references.
Can't locate it though.
Regards,
FWD.
 
I realize I never heard the US studio version without the samples.
There are a few weird differences between US/UK releases of songs during the early 90's, I think. Off the top of my head, as well as this song, 'My Love Life' and 'I'd Love To' both have different mixes depending on whether you buy the UK or US version.
 
Summed up well by Wiki - not my usual go to site, but works in this case:

"The US and UK versions of "My Love Life" have some slight differences, both in the mix of the title track and especially in the mix of the B-side "I've Changed My Plea To Guilty." Both mixes of "My Love Life" use the same take, but the US version is a full 25 seconds longer at the end, while the UK version starts fading out at 4:08.

The UK version of "I've Changed My Plea To Guilty" runs 3:40 and includes two overlapping samples at the beginning of the track. The first sample is of a male voice apparently telling a story in a restaurant while dishes clink in the background, and a female companion laughs. The second sample is from Skeeter Davis' 1962 recording of "The End Of The World" played on a scratchy vinyl record. Both samples return at the end of the track, with the male voice continuing his story and the Skeeter Davis record fading out with audible vinyl surface noise. The US version of "I've Changed My Plea To Guilty" runs 3.11 and omits both samples. The US mix is somewhat brighter and contains the full coda of the song including the decay of the final piano chord."

Regards,
FWD.
 
Thank you, so I have the UK versions of My Love Life and I've Changed My Plea, but the US of I'd Love To.
 
Yes, confirmed as a Nevin interview in 2003 in the book's references.
Can't locate it though.
Regards,
FWD.

It's one of the many interviews Goddard conducted himself for the book, so I don't think it has ever been published.
 
Somehow I never knew that there is a different UK version of "Plea." I can't find it on YouTube, though. Can anyone share a link?

Thank you.
 
Somehow I never knew that there is a different UK version of "Plea." I can't find it on YouTube, though. Can anyone share a link?

Thank you.

Never even knew there was a different UK version either.
Turned out to be a nice surprise to find.
Kinda likin' the intro of the UK version and the outro of the US version.
 
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