Set the Boy Free

by Johnny Marr

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Emily’s

  Ardwick Green

  Petrol Blues

  Terraces

  Wythenshawe

  West Wythy

  Town

  Angie

  Stagewear for the Street

  X

  Crazy Face

  Morrissey and Marr

  The Smiths It Is

  The Ritz

  Portland Street

  Hand in Glove

  London

  The Heatwave

  Marple Bridge

  Top of the Pops

  New York

  Earls Court

  Glastonbury

  Meat Is Murder

  America

  The Queen Is Dead

  High on Intensity, 1986

  Crash

  Talking Heads: 88

  Talk of the Town

  The New Thing

  Get the Message

  Nile

  Dusk

  Sonny

  High Court

  Boomslang

  The End of a Perfect Day

  Portland

  The Good Ship Modest Mouse

  The New Fellas

  We Share the Same Skies

  Inception

  Individual Citizen

  Too Late to Stop Now

  Acknowledgements

  Picture Section

  Picture Credits

  Index

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Johnny Marr was born in 1960s Manchester to Irish emigrant parents and knew from an early age that he would be a musician. Forming his first band at thirteen, Marr spent his teenage years on the council estates of Wythenshawe playing guitar, devouring pop culture and inventing his own musical style.

  It wasn‘t until the early eighties, when Marr turned up on the doorstep of a singer named Steven Patrick Morrissey, that both a unique songwriting partnership and the group recognised as one of the most iconic bands of all time were formed. In 1983 The Smiths released their first single, and within a year their eponymous debut album reached number two in the UK chart, paving the way for mainstream and critical success on their own terms.

  For Marr, tensions within the band and desire for a wider musical scope led to his departure from The Smiths in 1987, marking the end of one of the most influential British groups of a generation.

  But this was just the beginning for Marr. From forming Electronic and The Healers to playing with Bryan Ferry, Talking Heads, Kirsty MacColl, Pet Shop Boys, Billy Bragg, Nile Rogers and Bert Jansch; from joining The Pretenders, The The, Modest Mouse and The Cribs to recently collaborating with Hans Zimmer and receiving acclaim and worldwide success in his own right as a solo artist, Marr has never stopped. Here, for the first time, he tells his own side of the story.

  From roaming the streets of Manchester to constantly pushing musical boundaries as the most loved guitarist Britain has ever produced, Johnny Marr’s memoir is the true history of music – told by one of its very own legends.

  About the Author

  Johnny Marr is a musician and songwriter. Between 1982 and 1987 he was the guitarist and co-founder of The Smiths. He is now an established solo artist who has released two albums, The Messenger and Playland, to date. He currently lives in Manchester.

  www.johnny-marr.com

  For Angie

  Emily’s

  I STOOD OUTSIDE, gazing up, on one of those mornings when the sun scorched the pavement and Mancunians used to say it ‘cracked the flags’.

  It was summer 1968, I was nearly five years old, and every day we would walk past Emily’s corner shop and my mother would have to stop and wait while I stared up intently through the window at the little wooden guitar leaning on the shelf between the mops, buckets and brooms. My mother had got used to having to stop at Emily’s, and she and my father had wondered about their son being so taken with the toy guitar. It was always the same – we’d stand outside the shop while I gazed up – until that morning, when my mother took me inside and gave the money for it to Emily, who took the guitar down from the shelf and handed it to me.

  From the moment I got my first guitar, I had it with me wherever I went, carrying it around the way other kids carried their toy fire engines and dolls. I don’t know why I had to have it, but I was besotted with it, and from then on I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have a guitar.

  Ardwick Green

  I WAS BORN on Halloween, 31 October 1963, in Longsight, Manchester, and then moved with my parents, John and Frances Maher, to a house in the inner-city area of Ardwick Green.

  We lived there at 19 Brierley Avenue, in a row of seven houses, with a car mechanic’s garage at one end and eight houses facing us on the other side of the street. Our front door opened into the main room, which had a little fireplace and a black-and-white television, but we spent most of our time in the back room, where the radio was. Next to the back room was a small kitchen. The toilet was in an outhouse in the yard outside, and hung up on the wall of the back room was a tin tub that we used to take a bath in, in front of the fire. Upstairs was my parents’ bedroom, and behind that was the room where me and my sister slept. In the winter, my parents would put overcoats on top of us to keep us warm.

  The street was a mixture of working-class families of different nationalities: English, Indian, Irish, and a stern old Polish man called Bruno who had fled the Nazis in the war. At the opposite end of the street there was a tyre factory, with a fire escape hanging down from one of the walls.

  My parents were from a small town in Ireland called Athy, in County Kildare. My mother was born Frances Patricia Doyle and was the third youngest of fourteen children. She had grown up there in a three-room house, and at fifteen she moved to England to be with her four sisters and two brothers who had gone there to work. One time, she went back to Kildare to visit her family and went to a dance, where she met my father; he was two years older than her. She returned to Manchester, and my dad followed her, and they were married eight months later.

  My father was born John Joseph Maher. He never knew his own father, and he left school at thirteen to work on a farm, driving a tractor and sowing corn, to support his younger brother and three younger sisters. After arriving in Manchester he eventually found work in a warehouse and sent for his siblings and my grandmother to come over to England so that the family could all be together.

  Many of my mother and father’s brothers and sisters began to start families in Manchester. They were all in their late teens and early twenties. Lots of babies were being born, and there was a feeling of discovery as they all learned how to get by and make new lives in this new city.

  My mother was eighteen when I was born. I was named John Martin Maher, after my dad and my mother’s favourite saint. Our household was extremely Catholic, and my mum was especially religious. Mass was never missed, and at our front door there was a font with holy water. I spent a lot of my early years among statues and crosses and prayers, and there was a constant backdrop of religion in our house that felt very mysterious and deeply otherworldly.

  Eleven months after I was born my sister Claire came along, which meant we were known as ‘Irish twins’ on account of there being less than a year between us. It was good being one of a pair, and I liked having a sister for company. There were a lot of kids on the street, so there was always something going on. I was more introverted than my sister and was happy to spend time sitting on the pavement, poking an old ice-lolly stick into the tar on the road while I watched the other kids playing. Claire’s favourite trick was to switch all the milk and deliveries around in the morning on th
e neighbours’ doorsteps, so she could watch them all knocking on each other’s doors to exchange their groceries as a bit of farcical comic slapstick. She was upbeat and outgoing and would chase after anyone with a broom if they crossed us. These things pretty much summed my sister up; she was funny and sweet, but you didn’t mess with her, and I was always impressed with the things about her that were different from me.

  Both my parents were extremely hard-working. My dad never said too much around the house, although he was sociable in the community and well liked. He had needed to be tough as a boy, as he’d grown up without a father in a little household in the country, and to me he was a strong, brooding presence, doing whatever it took to bring up his own family. After working in the warehouse he took a job laying gas pipes in the road. He would leave the house at six in the morning to be picked up by a gang of his mates in a lorry, and then he’d be out digging all day. I was aware that my dad’s job was very physical, but he seemed to like to be out working. When he got home he’d be covered in black dirt from head to foot, and when he was getting cleaned up my mother would leave to get the bus to go to her job as a cleaner at the Royal Infirmary. She was always really busy.

  Living in Ardwick meant inner-city housing and the remnants of the post-Industrial Revolution; it was a mixture of streets and factories. The railway tracks ran over the arches across the road from us, and we’d see the trains going in and out of town. In between the railway tracks and our street was an area of derelict land called ‘the croft’. It had been a bomb site, and it was where Gypsy families sometimes settled in their caravans. I’d see the Gypsy kids on the croft and think it must be great to be living like that. They were wild and didn’t have to go to school; they were let loose to do what they wanted. It looked lawless and dangerous living on the croft, and one day I worked up the courage to sneak over to talk to them. There was a small bonfire going, and a few adults hanging around, and when I asked where they’d come from it was strange to discover that there were people who didn’t really belong anywhere. At night they’d be having parties and playing music really loudly on the radios in their caravans, with the trains going by.

  Around the corner from us was a little park called Ardwick Green, which gave the area its name. My mother would take Claire and me to play on the swings and roundabouts there on our way back from town. I loved it as it was the only green place around, and we went there a lot, but it was also a skinhead hang-out and they were usually on the lookout for people they could beat up. Sometimes there would be drunks and down-and-outs lying around, and at other times teenagers would be wandering about, usually scruffy and with very long hair, and seemingly very confused. Later I would discover they were hippies, but at the time I just thought they were down on their luck.

  Two streets away was the Manchester Apollo, which was a big 1930s art deco theatre that had become an ABC cinema. On some Saturday mornings I’d go with Claire to watch grainy old black-and-white sci-fi and cowboy films, and every time I’d get a new badge with ‘ABC Minors’ on it. Once in a while there would be a flash car parked outside the front, and a crowd of people would be gathered around to catch a glimpse of whichever British actor or TV personality was there, making a glamorous appearance on the pavement. The biggest attraction in Manchester in the 1960s, though, was Belle Vue fun park, a couple of miles up the road. It was billed as the ‘showground of the world’ and boasted a circus, which I thought was amazing, and a zoo, which was really grim, and the famous Kings Hall, where all the big 1960s pop acts like Manfred Mann, The Kinks and The Animals played.

  Nearly all of my time as a child was spent with my extended family from Kildare. My dad’s family of five and my mum’s family of fourteen meant that there were a lot of aunts and uncles and an ever growing number of cousins. I was often at my gran’s, or at one of my relatives’ houses, and as more babies arrived everyone relied on each other for support and help with looking after the kids. Sometimes I would be enlisted to keep an eye on the younger ones, even though I was only a little kid myself.

  My Aunt Josie and Uncle Patsy Murphy lived in the next street from us with my cousin Pat, who was a few years older than me. Pat had come over from Ireland and liked messing around with bikes. I would bring my toy guitar to their house and he would show me whatever new tunes he had worked out on his harmonica. Two doors up from them were my Uncle Christie and Aunt Kathleen with their three young boys, Chris, John and Brian. One mile over the other side of the railway was where my Aunt May lived with her husband Denny and my cousins Dennis, Ann, Mark, Geraldine and Jane, and a few doors down from her was my dad’s youngest sister, Ann, with her husband, Martin, and my youngest cousin, Siobhan. Two of my mother’s sisters lived a few miles away in Chorlton, and we’d get on the bus to visit them: Aunt Cathleen, Uncle Timmy and cousins Michael, Paul, Joseph and Tim; and Aunt Tess and Uncle Christie Brennan and cousins Gerry, Tony, Martin, Mary and Shane. Having so many relatives gave us all our own community and a shared sense of background and history that made us seem like a tribe.

  One morning I was in our back room, sitting on the floor and messing around with some toys, when my mum dashed in with my Aunt May. There was a Dansette record player on a cupboard and I watched them hovering over it excitedly as my mum put on a 45rpm record with a red label. The record dropped on to the turntable and I heard a simple guitar figure as ‘Walk Right Back’ by The Everly Brothers started to play. I watched the two women closely while they shared the song, and I saw my mother as a music fan. I loved the sheer joy they took in playing the record. When it was finished they pressed the switch again and the song started over. They continued playing it, pointing out bits and singing along, until I knew all of the song myself. I’d never seen anyone playing the same record over and over again, and I’d never seen anyone identifying bits of the music as it played. It was an infectious pop song with a cheerful sound and great voices, but the best thing to me about the Everly Brothers record was the loud guitar hook. After that, I listened for the same thing on every record I heard.

  Our house always had music going. My parents were both obsessed about singers and bands, and my mother bought records all the time. She would compile her own pop charts and compare her predictions with the real Top 20. One Saturday she decided she had to get a new record that was out, and me and Claire walked around all the shops with her to find it. Everywhere we went the record was sold out, but she was determined to get it and we ended up walking the three miles into Gorton to the last shop she could think of. When we got there the shop was closing, but they had the record and she made them stay open so she could buy it.

  If it wasn’t the records being played at home, then it was the music on the radio. My mother would stand me on a chair in front of it and I’d be there for hours while the UK Top 30 blared at me. Anything that had a distinctive guitar part would have me transfixed, and from the age of four I knew all the words to the songs in the charts, whether they were by Love Affair, The Four Tops or anyone else. Standing in front of the radio became a habit, and my mother could leave me and get on with the housework without having to worry about where I was.

  Television was another source of music. Many of the TV programmes that were around were light entertainment shows designed for the whole family, like Sunday Night at the London Palladium or the Happening for Lulu show, and I would wait expectantly through the comedians, magicians and dance routines in the hope that whatever pop act was on might include someone holding an electric or acoustic guitar. Sometimes a band would appear with the full complement of instruments, and I’d study their guitars regardless of who they were or what song they were playing. If you were really lucky it would be a real pop band like Amen Corner or The Move, but there was also plenty of disappointment when some solo act appeared on their own in soft focus, singing some soppy ballad with the sound of the BBC orchestra behind them.

  I’ve no idea if music is something that you’re born with or is bred into you, but the fascination I had with music
was something completely personal and natural, and I knew that if I wanted to be the real thing then my wooden guitar would have to be electric, or at least look like one. I carefully took the strings off it and laid it down on the concrete back-room floor. I got a tin of my dad’s household paint and painted my guitar white with a huge old paintbrush, and then I stuck two beer-bottle tops on it to look like volume and tone knobs. I got white paint all over me and most of the floor, but I felt like I had stepped up a level and I thought it looked fantastic.

  As we lived within walking distance of the city centre, we were always going into town to Lewis’s, the big department store, on the corner of Market Street. The roads in the city were noisy with the lorries and buses, but I loved seeing all the buildings and the busy streets, and there were always a lot of interesting-looking people in Piccadilly Gardens. When we got to Lewis’s we’d take the escalators to the fourth floor where all the electrical items were, and my mother would leave me on my own to look at the amplifiers. She was used to my obsession with guitars, but she was starting to think there was something a bit strange about a child wanting to stand and look at big black boxes with speakers in while his mother went to do the shopping.

  Claire and I went to school at St Aloysius, a 1960s single-floor prefab building on Stockport Road, just past the bus depot. I wasn’t crazy about school, but I was smart enough to get by. People at school would often get the pronunciation of my name wrong. I would be called Ma-her and May-er and even Mather. It was annoying, and I never really understood why it was so difficult to get my name right. It happened at the dentist and at the doctor’s too – it happened everywhere.

  My teacher was called Mr Quinlan. He was an eccentric man who brought a big green parrot called Major to school with him every day. Major was a big talker and had a cage in the classroom, and every hour Mr Quinlan would let him fly around the room, causing mayhem and landing on pupils’ heads. Most of us were amused by it, but my sister hated it and it gave her a phobia of birds for the rest of her life.