Set the Boy Free

by Johnny Marr

  The band’s attire for the show was the kind of thing we always wore: Mike, Andy and me were in crew-neck sweaters, Morrissey was wearing a blouse, and we all wore Crazy Face jeans. At seven o’clock, just before the show started, we were sent to make-up, and when Mike and I walked in, a woman inspected us, nonplussed, and asked, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘The Smiths,’ I said to a totally blank reaction.

  ‘Is that what you’re wearing?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said boldly and a little put-out.

  ‘Yeah,’ Mike reiterated.

  ‘On the show?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I repeated.

  We were aware that we were different from the rest of the acts on the show, and we were proud of it. We looked the same on the television as we did on the street because we looked like a band all the time; we didn’t need to change into anything different. Everybody else looked like they were from the circus.

  The broadcast started to a lot of noise and flashing lights, with people dancing vigorously all over the place. We waited behind a curtain while one or two bands were on, and then a couple of videos were played. I stood with Marilyn, the so-called gender-bending pop prince, who was on before us. I couldn’t work out if he was nervous or aloof; he seemed to be both. We were looking at each other, but we didn’t speak. Maybe he thought we were provincial nobodies. I couldn’t tell. What I did know was that his record wasn’t very good but he looked totally gorgeous.

  The time came for us to meet the nation. Someone introduced us the way I’d heard bands introduced on Top of the Pops so many times before, and off we went. The first thing I noticed was that our record sounded exciting, and then I was aware of how we must be coming over to people seeing us for the first time. It was curious: The Smiths, coming down the cathode ray tube. I was enjoying strumming Roger McGuinn’s Rickenbacker twelve-string that John Porter had borrowed for me from Phil Manzanera, when I noticed how vigorously Morrissey was swinging his gladioli and I remembered just how slippery the stages got at our shows. Every instinct I had yelled at me to stand as still as possible and not move a muscle, as all I could think about was sliding off the stage on live national television. Luckily ‘This Charming Man’ is a short song and I survived, but the stage was very slippery and I worried for The Thompson Twins, who were on after us.

  It was a significant day for the band, and a busy one too because we were also booked to play a show at the Haçienda the same night and had to get back up to Manchester for what turned out to be a homecoming celebration. We sped to Euston train station from the BBC with minutes to spare, and I called Angie from a payphone to ask her how we’d done on Top of the Pops. She sounded as bewildered as me and said, ‘I think you’ve blown some minds.’ Then I called my mother, who was impressed but relaxed about the whole thing and said, ‘You were very good,’ which I took to be a loving way to say it was great while keeping my feet on the ground.

  The band, Joe and Scott spent the train journey to Manchester standing in the aisles, joking and yapping excitably. I had no idea of the significance of our performance, and I couldn’t switch off my energy as we still had a show to do. When we arrived in Manchester after what seemed to be only minutes, Rob Gretton, New Order’s manager, was there to meet us with Mike Pickering. They were both stunned about the scene that awaited us at the Haçienda, and as Mike approached me he said, ‘There’s 2,300 people in there, and the place only holds 1,800 … plus there’s a thousand people outside on the street who can’t get in.’ We were bundled into two cars, and when we got to Whitworth Street I saw the whole area around the Haçienda was overrun with people. We couldn’t get the cars near the building, and when we stopped to get out, swarms of fans rushed at us, screaming and grabbing. Rob picked me up and carried me through the mob and into the dressing room, which was packed with friends and relatives who were all delighted about seeing us on Top of the Pops just a couple of hours before. I found Angie, and we snuck under the stairwell for a minute before I went on, then Tony Wilson led us to the stage with a camera broadcasting our arrival on to the video screens while the audience welcomed us as homecoming heroes. The place was totally heaving with bodies, some around the amps and some lying across the stage monitors. It was all such an incredible contrast to the scene only ten months before, when we’d walked on to the stage to a smattering of applause from a handful of our friends. Now everyone in the country knew about the band. Our Top of the Pops appearance had made a big impression, and would be more far-reaching than we would ever imagine, with many people citing it as momentous. In the space of two minutes and forty-five seconds, kids all over the country had seen us for themselves and suddenly decided they wanted quiffs, and guitars, and bowl cuts, and were raiding their mothers’ and sisters’ wardrobes for blouses and necklaces.

  I tried to make something of the Haçienda show, but halfway through the set I was spent. The day had finished me off, and all the people clamouring on the stage and my equipment made it impossible to play properly, so I just tried to sound as good as I could under the circumstances. A fan was screaming at me from about five feet away for most of the show. He was euphoric and had his shirt off, and I eventually realised he had been one of my friends from school. I couldn’t fathom it, it was too odd. At the end of the show I looked up and saw my dad surveying the hysteria. He was standing next to Grant Showbiz behind the mixing desk, who was cavorting merrily and smoking an enormous Peter Tosh spliff: ‘Look, folks! I’m in rock ’n’ roll!’ When we’d finished the encores, Angie and I escaped through the basement and we met Joe at the back of the building. He was jubilant, and his face told the whole story. He hugged us both and said, ‘It’s too late to stop now, Johnny, it’s too late to stop now.’

  New York

  LIKE EVERY BRITISH musician, it was my dream to go to America. As well as my discovery of The Velvet Underground, The Stooges and the CBGB’s scene, my parents had been obsessed with American imagery through their love of rock ’n’ roll and country music, and they’d shared it with me since I was little. I was brought up on a television diet of seventies movies and TV shows that introduced me to the skylines and crimes of Chicago and New York City, and the expanse and freedom of San Francisco and LA. So when it was announced that I was going to the States to play some shows, it couldn’t come quickly enough.

  One day, after I’d been in the office with Joe, making plans for the US trip, we drove back to his place, listening to music as usual. When we got to the house he switched off the engine and stayed in the car. Joe always imparted concepts he’d been thinking about carefully and precisely, so I sat and waited. ‘I won’t be going with you to New York,’ he said. I tried to comprehend this very bad news. I thought he was going to say that there was some serious business that he had to stay to take care of, but then he continued with, ‘I’m going to be leaving. I can’t manage the band any more.’

  I tried to grasp what he was saying but I couldn’t. I stared ahead blankly at the cars in the street and resisted from fully engaging with what was happening. I was aware that Joe and Janet were expecting their second child, but things wouldn’t have to change that much because of it. Everything was going so well and he loved the band, why would he leave if he didn’t need to? I couldn’t conceive of going forward without Joe. He’d believed in me before there were even any other band members. He’d given me somewhere to live and somewhere to work, and he’d put The Smiths before his business and personal life. He’d supported the band and given us a place to rehearse, got us a van and a PA, and he’d financed our first single. Joe didn’t just look after me, he looked after all the band.

  When he resigned, most people around the band felt that it was because of a conflict between him and Morrissey, but neither Joe nor Morrissey expressed that to me at the time. I resisted any speculation for everyone’s sake, but there was something about Joe’s resignation that felt unresolved to me. He informed the rest of the band of his decision, and he came with us to the airport when
we were going to New York. Angie and I had had a stupid argument the day before, which meant she wasn’t there to see us off, and it all felt like a lousy start to my first American tour. Joe checked us on to the plane and supervised us like he always did. I tried to act like everything was normal, but I was in complete denial about him not coming. It was only when he said goodbye, and me and the band proceeded without him, that I finally realised Joe wasn’t with us any more.

  We were met in New York by our promoter, Ruth Polsky. Ruth was smart and a very talkative champion of the UK music scene, and she’d had enough experience of young British bands to know that we would be impressed to arrive in America riding in a stretch limousine. Spirits were high as the four of us stared out at the city, as so many other British groups had done before. Driving over the Queensboro Bridge at dusk to see the Manhattan skyline for the first time was captivating, but it made me miss Angie and Joe all the more, and I wished they were both there with me to experience it.

  We’d been booked to play the Danceteria club the following night, and on the bill with us was the hip hop artist Lovebug Starski, who I knew from hearing his track ‘You’ve Gotta Believe’ at the Haçienda. It was 2 a.m. when we went on, and no one had any idea who we were. A combination of heavy jet lag and bad eyesight caused Morrissey to fall off the stage, but he gamely dusted himself off and carried on with the set until we finished with somewhat of a whimper. Afterwards, because it was New Year’s Eve and because I was in New York, I stuck around to catch up on some of the new electro records that had come out, and I hung out with Lovebug Starski.

  The other reason why we were in New York was because we were signing an American record deal with Sire Records. Morrissey and I had wanted to go with Sire because of the legacy of the bands that had been on the label, such as Patti Smith, The Ramones and Talking Heads, but what was just as important for me was that Sire Records was run by Seymour Stein. I had known about Seymour Stein not only through the new wave bands but because he was involved with Red Bird Records and the girl groups in the sixties. He had worked with so many great artists who I loved, and his story was fascinating.

  When we first met in London, Seymour had told me about how he had taken Brian Jones to get a guitar on 48th Street. I already knew that I would be going to Sire, but I made a deal with Seymour that I would sign to his label on the condition that he took me to 48th Street to get a guitar too. He liked the idea and he loved The Smiths and he agreed to my terms. We signed with Sire on 2 January 1984, and Seymour, true to his word, walked over with me to 48th Street and told me to pick out whichever guitar I wanted. I looked in the window of a couple of shops and couldn’t find anything, and then in a shop called We Buy Guitars I saw a red 1959 Gibson 355 hanging on the wall. We went inside, and I knew the guitar was special before I even touched it. Seymour bought the guitar for me, and I carried it back to the Iroquois Hotel on West 44th Street. When I got to my room, I took my new 355 out of its old, beat-up case, and with the very first thing I played I wrote our next single, ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’, then the B-side, ‘Girl Afraid’. That’s what happens with some instruments. They already have music inside them.

  It was really good fun buzzing around New York for the first time. Though it all looked so familiar, I felt a thrill of the unknown. The towering buildings and the winter sun were an impressive backdrop as I negotiated my way around the city through the constant rush of traffic and people on the sidewalk. Morrissey and I went over to Bleecker Street to buy some records, and I bought some clothes from the second-hand stores, and got to CBGB’s one night with Grant Showbiz to see a gig by our Rough Trade label mates The Go-Betweens.

  The Smiths had another American show to do, this time in New Jersey, and after that we were scheduled to travel to Boston. The tour was meant to be a short trip to introduce the band to the States, and then we’d get back to Britain, where the first album would be coming out. First, though, there was the matter of Mike. He had woken up the morning after Danceteria covered in spots on his face, his scalp and even his tongue. A doctor diagnosed chickenpox, and Mike couldn’t do anything except lie in a dingy, dark hotel room with cockroaches scurrying around, so we cancelled the remaining shows and hung around in New York. After a torturous couple of days, Mike was just about able to travel and we could return to England.

  The attention we were getting back at home continued as we got ready to undertake our first major headline tour of the UK. Over the previous months I had become aware that Andy was still using heroin, and he’d continued to live at home, where the scene was becoming increasingly worse. The only person I could think of who might know what to do was Joe, so I went to see him and he suggested that Andy could temporarily move into his basement to get away from the scene he was in. It seemed a good solution, and I was pleased for Andy to be freeing himself of his situation. I moved out of Janet’s cottage in Marple Bridge and returned to my room at Joe’s house while Andy moved into the flat in the basement for a couple of weeks to get himself straight. He and I were together all day, every day. We would hover around town during the day and visit Andrew and Angie in Vidal Sassoon, and at night we’d paint the ceilings and walls of my room with Si Wolstencroft while we drank endless amounts of vodka and listened to John Peel. Andy did what he needed to do, and by the end of it we were ready to start up again with a clean slate.

  When we got back from New York, I was asked by Mike Pickering to play on a session with his group Quando Quango for Factory Records. It was an intriguing prospect to be playing on someone else’s record, and I was curious to see how other people worked in the studio, especially a dance group. The record was being produced by Bernard Sumner of New Order, who I hadn’t met, but I’d been told that we would get along, and when I got to the studio Bernard was working on the track using a sequencer and a drum machine. I was impressed by how well he manipulated the sounds in a way that was part producer and part scientist, and he struck me as someone with a very specific musical agenda. I was a fan of his guitar playing in Joy Division and had liked the recent New Order releases. We stayed up all night, and when we’d finished recording he played me a new track he was working on for the group Section 25, called ‘Looking from a Hilltop’. It was brilliant and sounded like a New York electro acid trip exported to the Haçienda: psychedelic, but ultramodern, with hypnotic beats, abstract noises and pulsing synths. As we left the studio in the morning, we said we should work together again. I didn’t envisage a time when the guitarist from The Smiths and the singer from New Order might come to work together again, but it was an interesting idea.

  Earls Court

  I LEFT FOR the UK tour without needing to look at the itinerary. I dived into the prospect of playing thirty-two shows, and was excited to be playing to audiences for whom The Smiths were now their favourite band. Our crew were a tight unit, mostly made up of Mancunians with an alternative sensibility, and we’d acquired a talented young lighting engineer called John Featherstone, who became like family to us and who would be with us for every show from then on. Shortly into the tour, Ollie resigned as our roadie. I was sorry to see him go, but he’d become disillusioned with the job after Joe left and it was a sign that the times had changed. I drafted in an old school friend of mine called Phil Powell as a replacement for Ollie, and Phil became my full-time man and the band’s main roadie.

  Joe’s absence was obvious as the tour proceeded: there was a strong feeling of disorganisation that occasionally fell into chaos, which was made all the worse by a manic tour manager who didn’t appear to like anyone in the band or the crew. The tour manager’s role is crucial, as they’re responsible for running the whole operation on the road. They plan all the travel and make sure that all the technical requirements for the concert and the needs of the band are taken care of. They get the money after the show and pay everyone’s wages, and they carry all the cash to keep the whole thing going. The tour manager receives their instructions about all this from someone in authority, usually
the band’s manager, but, seeing as The Smiths didn’t have a manager, ours had to deal with someone else, and that someone else was starting to be me. Luckily I didn’t care about things like food or rest; everything was hearing aids and flowers as far as I was concerned. As long as we played well every night and everyone was happy, then I was happy.

  The shows were rowdy events, and I valued the relationship we were building with our audience. I could relate to the people who came to see us and who waited around to get autographs. We were the same age, and we were looking for similar things from life. Punk was long over and post-punk wasn’t really ours either. Smiths fans were looking for something that expressed their times and culture, and we wanted to find it for them and find it for ourselves. Being together all day, every day, meant the band were close and had become quite an insular gang. We had our own code, and our conversation consisted of all-knowing remarks and witticisms. The roles in the band had got stronger and more defined, and we were unified onstage and off. I felt a duty and responsibility to protect everyone, especially Morrissey. My attitude towards my new-found status was fairly casual, but Morrissey’s ascent to national fame and notoriety had been extreme, and he was suddenly known as the voice of his generation and public enemy number one in some areas of the press. What was required of him took a lot of physical sustenance. There was no one looking after us and making sure we ate or got enough rest, and even though I was younger I looked out for him and I could tell when he was about to get ill.