Set the Boy Free

by Johnny Marr

  Pete had invited Matt to stay at his place, and said that after he’d met me we’d all go to Legends, a club in Manchester which on Thursdays played electro and modern guitar music like Cabaret Voltaire, Gang of Four and Psychedelic Furs. The rest of the week it was full of beer monsters dancing to Abba. The sound system and lights were great, and I would go there most Thursdays and would often see the same people each week. Matt arrived and introduced himself, and it was like he and I had known each other forever. He was friendly and inquisitive, and I soon caught on that he was working class and had a fast intellect. He was wearing an old Levi jacket, matching 501s and beat-up boots. We started talking about music, and it turned out that he liked exactly the same chart stuff as I had when I was a kid, and when you’re passionate about things that are quirky and you meet someone who likes the same things in the same way, it’s powerful and significant. We hung out in Pete’s kitchen for a while and compared notes on how we wrote our songs, and when Pete produced his Höfner guitar we passed it back and forth and discovered that a few of our instrumental riffs sounded alike. Matt and I both knew something was happening, and then Matt said to me, ‘I’m forming a band, my next records are going to be under the name The The, why don’t you join me?’

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘if I can work out a way I can live in London, I’m in.’

  That was it: I had met a genuine kindred spirit, someone the same age as me who was excited about making a new kind of music. We went into town and hung out at Legends and carried on getting to know each other all night. I meant it when I told Matt, ‘I’m in.’ I just didn’t know in 1982 when or how it might happen.

  Pete Hunt finally had all the records from the shop at his house, ready for me to collect. Angie had just passed her driving test and was given the use of her parents’ old white VW Beetle for us to get about in. We went round to Pete’s and loaded all the albums and singles into the boot and on to the back seat. It took a few trips, but I eventually hauled the whole lot up to my room and stacked them in rows three and four deep until it looked like the hideout of a meticulous hoarder with amazing taste in music.

  Angie getting the car coincided with me reacquainting myself with the harmonica. The Beetle was the only place I could practise without driving everyone mad, and she had to put up with me blowing harp along to a tape of the Stones’ second album wherever we went. It was great for us to finally be mobile as we could see each other more, and I started getting good enough on harmonica to decide that it should feature in whatever group I put together next.

  Having all the records surrounding me in my little room every day was perfect. I was still rushing out each morning and going out to clubs after work, but then I’d spend a few nights in going through piles of albums by The Crystals and The Shangri-Las, or Wire and Can, and then I’d play my guitar until I fell asleep.

  Not having a band and getting back to writing on my own was really good for my playing. I was able to explore chord changes without being tied down to a bass player and a drummer. I ended up filling out my chord changes with melodies and little phrases, and was free to go anywhere I wanted. I was also getting away from some of the things that a lot of other guitar players had done up to that point, as a lot of the old standards were out of date and sounded too obvious. I had my little three-track cassette machine that enabled me to put down an idea and then layer a riff over the top, and I became quite good at coming up with things that sounded full without it needing much else besides the guitar.

  Eventually I started to get a collection of instrumental pieces together and I ended up with quite a few ideas for songs, which I would play on my guitar when Angie and I were driving about in the Beetle. One night when I was over at Joe’s, I told him I wanted to start a new band. I wasn’t sure how I was going to go about it, but I knew that the time was right to find a singer. I didn’t want to be the frontman. I had been reading everything I could about the Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham, and was fascinated by his reputation as a fast-talking visionary; he became as much of an inspiration to me as any musician. Joe listened. He knew the things I was into, and his view was that as long as the guitar was featured and we found someone who could sing well enough and who looked the part, then it could be good. I started checking out people who came into the shop. There were a couple of guys who fancied themselves as singers, but they were either too old or too goth. I asked Tony Wilson if he knew of anyone I could work with, and he was eager to match me up with a girl he had on Factory, but it was all jazz and bongos and I knew I was looking for a guy anyway.

  One Saturday I got chatting to a couple from Liverpool who told me that The Bunnymen were splitting up and that I should track down their singer, Ian McCulloch. That sounded great to me: Ian McCulloch would’ve been at the top of my list of singers at that point. I liked his voice, and his style was not a million miles away from mine. I figured Liverpool was close enough to make it work, and they said they’d get Ian’s number from the band’s manager, but then the following week I heard that The Bunnymen were advertising upcoming gigs, and it was back to the drawing board.

  All the time I was running around town I was thinking about forming the new band. Andrew said that I could play at a fashion show he was planning later in the year, and I knew that I could probably get a gig at the Manhattan Sound in Manchester. Lunchtimes and evenings I’d often go over to Joe’s office or house to hang out with him, and he would listen to my plans. One night I told him that the only guy I’d heard was any good was someone called Steven Morrissey, who Billy Duffy, who was now in London, had been in a band with a few years before. I heard myself talking and realised it might be worth trying, even if it was something of a long shot as I hadn’t heard anything about him for a long time. All I knew was that he lived somewhere in Stretford and that he had written stuff in the NME about New York Dolls. I thought about it for a week or so, and then I started to wonder how I might go about tracking him down.

  One night I went over to Joe’s to watch a South Bank Show programme about the songwriting duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, which he’d recorded on his VHS video machine. Video recorders were revolutionary at the time, and something of a godsend for music fans and film buffs as you could now watch your favourite band’s TV performances or films whenever you wanted; my friends and I would record any music show that happened to be on. Leiber and Stoller had become something of an obsession of mine, having written and produced records by The Drifters, Ben E. King, Elvis Presley and The Shangri-Las, and it was great to get the chance to see a programme about them. At one point Joe turned to me and said, ‘Watch this bit.’ On the screen, Jerry Leiber was telling the story of how he met Mike Stoller, and how he didn’t actually know his future partner but had heard that he was someone who wrote songs. He found out where he lived, went to his house and knocked on the door. Right then I had a eureka moment: I knew exactly what I needed to do. The only snag was that I didn’t know where the door was.

  The next day happened to be my day off from the shop. I got on a bus to my parents’ house and looked for a phone number I had for a guy who lived in Wythenshawe called Phil Fletcher, who I had met a couple of times with Billy. I called Phil and asked him if he had a number for Steven Morrissey. He told me he didn’t, but that the best person to ask would be Steve Pomfret, who lived around the corner from my parents. I walked over to his house and rang his doorbell. Steve, or ‘Pommy’ as he was known, answered the door and I told him I was looking for Morrissey’s address. He went off down the hallway while I waited in the sunshine. When he came back he was holding a piece of paper with 384 Kings Road written on it. He gave it to me, and when I looked down at it I knew it was part of my life story.

  Some things just happen and go by without any meaning, while other things you just know are meant to be. Right then I knew that the band I was putting together would be special; I knew it would be great.

  Pommy asked me when I was going round there and I said, ‘Now.’ Then he asked me if I knew
where it was, and I said, ‘No’. He thought that was funny, and as he wasn’t doing anything he suggested that he come with me. Everyone liked Pommy, he was friendly and a nice guy. I asked him if he knew any bass players, but he didn’t, so I asked him if he could play the bass and he said, ‘Not really.’ We caught up with all the new music we liked, and I spent most of the bus ride to Stretford talking about The Gun Club, who were a new band that I thought were the best thing around.

  It was a really beautiful day. Summer had come early and there were long shadows on the pavement as we walked through the south Manchester suburbs. After ten minutes we came to an anonymous but pleasant-looking semi-detached red-brick house with a little swing gate outside. I opened the gate, walked up to the door and knocked. There was no answer, so I waited a bit longer and tried again. Finally I heard someone walking down the stairs and the door opened. A young woman with fair hair and a nice way about her answered, and I said hi and asked if Steven was in. ‘I’ll just get him,’ she said. After a little while a young man appeared.

  ‘Hi,’ I said to him, ‘my name’s Johnny … and you know Pommy.’

  ‘Hi Steven,’ said Pommy.

  ‘Oh, hi Pommy,’ he replied. The first thing that struck me about him was his voice: he spoke quite softly and evenly. I could see he was somewhat bemused by his two unexpected callers, but he was courteous and said to me, ‘Hi, nice to meet you.’

  ‘Sorry to just turn up at your door,’ I explained, ‘but I’m forming a band and I wondered if you were interested in singing?’

  ‘Come in,’ he said, surprisingly unruffled for someone who’d just been asked to join a band by a complete stranger on the doorstep. The moment felt good.

  I followed Morrissey up the stairs and noticed his clothes. He was wearing suit trousers and a buttoned-up shirt with a T-shirt underneath and a baggy cardigan. His hair wasn’t a quiff but was short and fifties-like, and I thought his look was similar to the older guys around the Factory scene like A Certain Ratio, more bookish and intellectual than street. There was a life-size cardboard cut-out of James Dean from the film Giant on the corner of the stairs, and I noticed a typewriter as I walked into his room. I was wearing baggy 1950s Levis with bike boots and a sleeveless Johnson’s jacket. I was also wearing a flying cap and had a huge quiff dyed different shades of red. I sat on the bed and Pommy sat on a chair on the other side of the room, and then Morrissey, who was stood by his record player, said, ‘Would you like to play a record?’ I walked over to a box of 7-inch singles that was on a dresser and inspected all the Decca and Pye labels until I came to a Tamla record by The Marvelettes which I liked, called ‘Paper Boy’. I took it out and Morrissey said, ‘Good choice,’ then I flipped it over and put on the B-side, which was called ‘You’re the One’.

  We got talking and I commented on his collection of rare Tamla 45s. He asked if I’d ever been to America, and I raved about Dusty Springfield’s ‘Little by Little’. He played me Sandie Shaw’s ‘Message Understood’, which I hadn’t heard before, and then ‘A Lover’s Concerto’ by The Toys.

  Talk turned to Billy Duffy and his ex-girlfriend, Karen Colcannon, who we both knew, and I asked him about what had happened with The Nosebleeds. ‘Nothing happened,’ he said, ‘it was just a lot of waiting around.’ I explained that I didn’t have the other musicians for the band yet, though I had a couple of people in mind. I thought I might get back in touch with Si Wolstencroft, as he was a good drummer and he looked the part. Morrissey and I were both very much at ease with each other, it wasn’t a difficult situation at all, especially considering that I was explaining my hopes and dreams to someone I’d never met before, in his bedroom. It felt totally natural, and although he was a few years older than me there was an immediate understanding and empathy between us. He knew I was serious and that I could back up what I was saying. While all this was happening, Pommy sat in the corner just taking it all in. He could tell that something special was happening right in front of his eyes. He was completely silent, with a smile on his face.

  When it was time for me to leave, Morrissey – or ‘Steven’ as I was calling him – gave me a few sheets of paper with some words typed on them. ‘Songs,’ I thought, ‘that’s what it’s about.’ I folded them into my jacket pocket and suggested that he call me on the X-Clothes payphone at noon the next day. We said goodbye, and as I went out of the gate and into the sun I thought to myself, ‘If he calls tomorrow this band is on.’

  The next day at noon the phone rang. We talked for a long time about records and bands and he asked if I’d looked at the lyrics he’d given me. I had. They were for a song called ‘Don’t Blow Your Own Horn’, and I’d kicked around some chords for it but what I was doing wasn’t really knocking me out. I didn’t consider it to be a problem though, and after some more talk we arranged to get together at my place to start writing some songs. A couple of days went by and then an envelope landed through my door. Inside were a cassette tape and a photocopied picture of James Dean, and on the cassette was a compilation of songs by The Crystals, The Shangri-Las, The Shirelles, Sandie Shaw and Marianne Faithfull. I thought it was a good sign.

  Our second meeting was in my room at Shelley’s. Morrissey came over in the afternoon, and we made our way up the stairs past Shelley’s framed portraits of sixties stars until we got to the attic. It was another beautiful day, and through the open window we could hear the sound of the schoolkids playing. Morrissey took out some more lyrics for me to work on. As I took the pages I saw the title ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’, and without thinking about it I started playing a chord change along the lines of the Patti Smith song ‘Kimberly’. It seemed to scan right with the words and suggested a bass line, which I played at the same time. I continued to play, and then Morrissey started singing the words, and within a few minutes the tune was born. After laughing a lot and rehearsing it a couple more times, I recorded what we had on my tape machine, then I overdubbed a ringing guitar line on top, and my new partner and I had our first song. It felt like an important moment. I was thinking about the words and how the style was almost vaudevillian, although I hadn’t analysed what it was all about.

  I looked at the next lot of lyrics, for a song called ‘Suffer Little Children’, and as I sat cross-legged on the floor with my guitar and the two sheets of paper at my feet, I pressed ‘record’. As I looked down at the words again, my hands started to play a tune. Something was happening; the song was coming through the ether. I kept going with the verse and Morrissey started singing along, the words and story appearing in my eyes and my mind. I followed the momentum as my guitar delivered the music under the voice, and the song was suddenly all there, a song that didn’t sound like anyone else and didn’t feel like anyone else, a song about the Moors murderers. I didn’t know what to make of it. All I knew was how it felt, and it felt strangely true. My emotions were hanging in the air and I was just following the moment. I picked up a small musical box that was lying in the room, wound it up and went over to the window. I held the music box out of the window as it played its melody, and in the other hand I held a microphone and recorded it, along with the sound of the kids playing. Apart from the surprise of being presented with such unexpected words, there was one sentiment about coming from the north in that second song that caught my attention more than anything else, and it defined an aspect of us from that first day of us working together. It said to me, ‘We do things differently.’

  Morrissey and I had started our partnership, and whatever it was that we had, it was ours and was totally unique. We were two people who had already dedicated most of our young lives to becoming who we wanted to be. We’d both worked obsessively on what we were doing in a way that no one else around us could come close to, and we recognised in each other the same commitment and emotional need to follow our visions. We were different personalities and opposites in many ways, but the things that we had in common created an exclusive bond. We’d both chosen a life of total immersion in our passions, and a
n intense romanticism about pop culture, and when we came together we both thought that it just had to be destiny.

  Our conversations seemed to naturally flow. One of us would talk about something that seemed very important, and the other would encourage it. On the second day that we got together, I recited a list of things that I thought our group should be and would do. The first thing was that our debut album should be eponymously titled; then I said that our first single should have a navy-blue label with silver writing on it and in the brackets beneath the song title it should say ‘Morrissey and Marr’. I said that we should sign to Rough Trade Records, and then I predicted that even though she hadn’t made a record for years, we could write a song for Sandie Shaw. We didn’t have a group yet, and only had two very odd songs, but I saw all of those things for us and I knew it was just a matter of working at it.

  Angie arrived and met Morrissey for the first time, and we gave him a ride to the train station in the Beetle. When he left I turned to her and said, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, with her usual sure instinct, ‘I think it could work,’ and we took off to see Andrew Berry in St Anne’s Square, with me practising harmonica along to the Stones and my feet up on the dashboard.

  Everyone in town hung out wherever Andrew Berry was, and that usually meant that John Kennedy would be there too. John was another pied piper around town who I’d known from my schooldays at Sacred Heart, and was from one of the few other Irish families in Wythenshawe. John’s hair was always tinted some shade of blue, red or green, and unusually for the times he was very ‘out’ as a young gay man, in a way that was brave and inspiring. Everyone called him JK, and he was a creature of the New Romantic culture that had started with Manchester’s Pips nightclub, when it had essentially been all about Bowie and Roxy Music. Pips had been particularly influential as it was the place where the members of Joy Division and other bands hung out, and was also where Ian Curtis practised his dance – which, like a lot of people, he’d copped from Bowie’s appearance around 1976 on the Dinah Shore Show. Everybody danced liked David Bowie and Bryan Ferry, including me. But now was a different time, undefined, and we all had the feeling that something was about to happen.