Because he wants to. Ever since The Maladjusted reissue in 2009, and maybe even before, he is been a very merry revisionist of his own image and work. Maladjusted omits Papa Jack – and maybe another song – and I don't know the cover art on the reissue – nice as it is – is actually correct to 1997. I thought it was a later 2000's image used in the reissue.
Kill Uncle's reissue image is at least an image from that era, but the photo shopping is pretty bad. And "there is a place in hell "is the live version from KRQ- not the original haunting piano version
Viva Hatw omits "ordinary boys" and so on so forth. I would not be surprised if this release contains similar revisionism in terms of the tracklist
I think it does a disservice to his long and varied perseverance to retcon's his own history and image. The Morrissey of Beethoven had a very different aesthic and sound than the burgeoning crooner pictured on the cover of the upcoming reissue. It's okay to acknowledge that and indeed celebrate it, without necessarily projecting that the past is always better, the present and future doesn't have the same potential for greatness
It's nice that he's happy about this release I'm glad folks are excited. I hope that it's successful. And the shows are great I. I will continue to find decisions very odd – and the reality of celebrating live release of an album featuring a completely different band with none of the co-writers is perhaps the biggest head scratcher of all
Obviously it's his artistic prerogative to do whatever he wants with these releases, but love the original artwork – capturing as it does the artist as he was in an era, with that band line up.