Set the Boy Free

by Johnny Marr

  We finally came to an agreement with Rough Trade, and The Queen Is Dead was released on 16 June 1986 to much critical and commercial success, and was heralded as something of a masterpiece. It was gratifying that it was so highly regarded, but the best thing about it was that fans would finally get to hear the new songs. ‘Cemetery Gates’, ‘The Queen Is Dead’, ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’ were all well liked, but ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’ seemed to be universally loved.

  The release meant that it was a busy time for all of us, and especially for Morrissey, as he had the press to engage with. He decided to move to a flat in Oscar Wilde’s manor of Cadogan Square in London. It wasn’t in my plans for the band to move to London; I thought it was better for us to be in Manchester. We had a central base at my place, the songs for The Queen Is Dead had been written there, and creatively things had never been better. I was fully aware that we were a big group and that we couldn’t run things ourselves from the north, but the move meant we were going back to the situation we’d escaped in 1984, when we’d fled the interference of the London music scene to record Meat Is Murder. All the things we’d gained on our return to Manchester, the autonomy, identity, and the fact that we all lived within minutes of each other, were about to be sacrificed for a fragmented existence that was all about PR, where we would only see each other in TV stations and photo sessions. I thought it was a big mistake, and for the first time I was concerned about the differences in mine and my partner’s visions for the band.

  I moved into the Portobello Hotel in Notting Hill. Angie went back and forth between Manchester and London, and I spent any spare time I had in between promotional activities buying second-hand books in Camden and clothes from the King’s Road and Kensington Market. One of the first things I noticed about having money was that I was able to buy books. I read everything I could find by the Beats and on American film, and a whole world opened up for me. Most nights I was in a tiny hotel room with my acoustic. I had a lot of time to kill, and I found living in a hotel to be an inconvenience as I liked working at night. I would go over to Kirsty’s house to hang out with her and her husband, Steve Lillywhite, and it was through Kirsty that I found somewhere to live. She had a one-bedroom flat in Shepherd’s Bush that was unoccupied. Moving into the flat meant I could have some space for equipment. It also meant that Kirsty was my landlady, which was fine unless I messed up or broke something. She knew exactly where I lived, and was not someone you wanted to cross – unless, that is, you didn’t mind ten minutes of extremely colourful and creative expletives fired at you.

  I was in the flat late one night with Phil when the phone rang. I answered it and Kirsty said, ‘There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.’

  I waited a few seconds and then a very recognisable voice said, ‘Hey Johnny … it’s Keith.’

  I tried to act like everything was completely normal. ‘Oh, hi Keith … how are you?’

  ‘Good, man … have you got a couple of acoustics over there?’ asked my hero.

  ‘Let me see,’ I said, still trying to act normal. ‘Yes … yes, I do have a couple of acoustics.’

  ‘Great,’ said Keith. ‘Why don’t you come over and we can play. I’ll send a car.’

  I put the phone down and was springing around like the carpet was on fire. A vintage Bentley turned up and took me to Kirsty’s, where Keith Richards was waiting. I was pinching myself, but as extraordinary as the situation was, Keith is a very gracious man and a real musician’s musician. He made it easy to relate to him and for us to play together. We kicked around rock ’n’ roll songs with Kirsty like we’d been doing it for years, and then we’d talk and smoke a joint, have a laugh and put on an old soul record.

  High on Intensity, 1986

  THE LEGAL HASSLES and dramas during the making of The Queen Is Dead had started to test my resolve, and for the first time I would have rather done anything than go on tour. Most musicians live for being on the stage, but I was more interested in the studio and I wasn’t looking forward to going back on the road at all.

  I’d recently been in the studio with Billy Bragg to work on his album Talking with the Taxman about Poetry. It was interesting playing with another songwriter, and really good fun just being a guitarist and not having to take care of anything. I enjoyed sessions, they were all about music and invention, and I was lucky in that I was invited to make records with people I liked. I got an invitation to record from Bryan Ferry, who had been one of my favourite artists ever since I’d bought Roxy records in the glam days. He’d heard an instrumental Smiths B-side and wanted to write with me. I was honoured to be asked, and I went over to AIR Studios on Oxford Street. When I got there, I walked straight into the wrong session where George Martin was working on a Beatles track. I made my apologies and he was very friendly and let me listen to the multi-track of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. I stood at the mixing desk and tried to act composed and not say anything stupid.

  Working with Bryan Ferry was a great experience. There was a sense of discovery in his sessions, and at the age of twenty-two I was writing with one of my favourite ever singers. We hit it off and became friends, and I invited him to drop in on a Smiths session and meet the band. The rest of The Smiths were very excited about my working with Bryan and when Bryan came down to one of our sessions to say hello, it was a big moment.

  The legal moves to get us away from Rough Trade and on to EMI continued. The issue seemed to just keep gathering momentum once the lawyers got to work and I was handed a shiny new contract. The whole thing was a done deal – or was about to be a done deal, as soon as we signed it. It was rushed to us at the airport, just as we were getting on the plane to go on a six-week American tour, with no manager present, just a phone call from our lawyer that morning which I failed to properly take in. It’s hard to believe it, but we just signed the contract, put it back in the envelope, and Grant, our soundman, stuck it in a postbox to send it back to the lawyer. I really was that stupid.

  Andy was given a break by the courts for his bust, and we got to America for the tour. There were a couple of weeks before we left when we thought he wouldn’t be able to make it, and Andy went through the set with Guy Pratt from Bryan Ferry’s band on bass, which I thought was extremely professional and also very noble.

  At the hotel in America on the first day, before we’d even played a note, there was a delegation from the road crew in my room, threatening to cancel the shows because no one had been paid and part of the stage set hadn’t turned up. It was a situation that neither me nor Morrissey needed, and I ended up making a frantic call to the record company to ask them to loan us the money upfront so we could at least get the tour started and keep everyone happy.

  The shows were always good and high on intensity. We were scheduled to play two nights at the Universal Amphitheatre in LA, and were warned beforehand by the promoter that any riots or stage invasions, which we’d had in Toronto, would mean police intervention and a ban for The Smiths in California. The first night in LA was attended by some celebrities, and Joe Dallesandro, the cover star on our first album, came to meet us backstage. The Smiths’ shows in LA were always an event, and the amphitheatre was keyed up before we even started to play. Getting ready backstage was a ritual. It had been since we’d started out in Manchester three years earlier, except now we were in lavish dressing rooms with thousands of cheering people outside. I hovered around with my $10 in my pocket, my mind half focused and half distracted so as not to psyche myself out, strumming riffs on my Les Paul, usually from Raw Power – while Andy made amusing observations, calmly appearing not to even notice what was about to happen. Morrissey was self-contained and busy, attending to clothes, flowers, placards, and looking like he was getting ready for something pressing, while Mike tapped his sticks on chairs and Craig conscientiously played runs on the Rickenbacker to warm up. The roadies flitted in and out to consult with us about any last-minute changes and wished us luck, and the band stuck closely togethe
r while we made our way down the tunnel towards the stage. The shouts turned into a roar as the house lights went down, and Prokofiev’s ‘Montagues and Capulets’ boomed through the arena.

  The amphitheatre was totally charged when we started the set. We stormed the audience, and Morrissey took things to a new level by holding up a giant sign that read, The Queen Is Dead. Having Craig with us as a five-piece made a difference: we were a new incarnation of the band, with a more expansive sound and a more powerful presence. I felt more pressure to project as I looked out from bigger stages into vast venues where the crowds expected a bigger show, and it would take me a couple of songs to calibrate. Morrissey invited the audience to come closer, ramping up the energy and increasing the tension for the security, who were becoming decidedly uneasy. We introduced a brand-new song called ‘Panic’, and by the time we got to the encore all kinds of hysteria was about to break out. It was at this point that our singer delivered the following instruction to the audience: ‘If a security guard tries to stop you, kiss them on the lips.’ And with that, every member of the security staff stood back and the fans charged the stage.

  We came off the stage in LA and were told that ‘someone from Warner Brothers’ was demanding to see us. We knew it was Steven Baker, the vice president of the label which owned Sire, and I had the feeling that he’d probably found out about us signing the contract with EMI, which meant we would be leaving Warners. Steven was one of the few people in the music industry that The Smiths related to. He’d looked after us and we were friends, so signing to another label wasn’t good news and I knew it. I told the security to show him in while I went to change out of my stage shirt, and when I came back Steven was there but the rest of the band had vanished. The record company was pissed off, and Steven wanted to know why we were leaving the label. I was embarrassed, and felt my duties had gone way beyond my role as a guitar player and songwriter. All the unrealistic demands that were being made of me had become too much to ignore.

  It was on this tour that I got into drinking onstage, for no other reason than I wanted to let loose and thought it would be a good thing to do. We’d get through three-quarters of the set and I’d have a big tumbler of brandy and Coke on the drum riser. The night would be really kicking off, and I’d take the party to the limit during the last few songs, with thousands of people going wild and fans diving on to the stage. It was a heady experience, and I’d try to keep it going as long as I could after the show, until eventually the adrenaline would abandon my body and I’d drop wherever I stood. I relished the opportunity to dive into the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle and everything that came with it. Doing that every night started to take its toll, especially as I was so small, but it was a fun thing to do and no one could say I wasn’t living the dream.

  Getting to new cities and states was always good, and despite all the craziness, I’d call my family to tell them I was in New Orleans or Texas or wherever. The scheduling of the tour meant that we usually just saw the hotels, but I was always happy to be in places I’d heard about in songs and books, or because they were the home towns of bands and performers, which in America means most places if you’re a music fan. There wasn’t much sightseeing or shopping going on. On days off we’d all usually just stay in the hotel.

  We continued to play great shows around America, but the tour was becoming more and more unsteady. The expectations on us to perform to huge crowds and keep to a hectic schedule were taking their toll on everyone. The drinking and partying after shows didn’t help, but the band would walk onstage more than ready and were never less than totally professional. Things were particularly chaotic around us: the people who were paid to look after us were very loose, and with no one accountable. Young men aren’t exactly known for looking after themselves, and they are definitely not known for looking after each other, so we just kept on going, and when our latest tour manager was fired for making us miss a soundcheck one too many times, it fell to Angie to get us on a plane. By the time we got to the final week, we were ready to go back to the UK, and then when Andy got stung by a stingray in Florida and ended up in the hospital, we quit while we were relatively ahead and cancelled the last few shows.

  We returned to England, and three weeks later were back on a UK tour. There was some edginess and aggression at a couple of the shows, and I went straight from the stage to the hospital with Morrissey one night after he’d been hit in the head by a coin thrown from the crowd during the first song. I was tired of touring, and things weren’t working out between the band and Craig. He’d always been quiet, but he became more remote from the rest of us and had even taken to travelling on his own to shows. I thought he should be more enthusiastic about the band, and the more he retreated the more I took it as a sign of uninterest. He trashed some hotel rooms, which was his way of letting off steam, but it was extreme and was an anathema to the rest of us. In the end Craig, like all of us, was a youngster trying to deal with pressure in a crazy situation. It was a challenge for him when he joined The Smiths. On the face of it he’d landed a dream job, but he’d walked into an intense situation with a tightly knit group of people who had an unconventional way of going about things. We tried to make him feel like he belonged, and it worked well for a while, but he had to either fit in with our craziness or remain on the outside. That won’t work in a band for very long, and The Smiths and Craig parted company, leaving us to go back to our original four-piece.

  Crash

  ANGIE AND I went out for dinner one Sunday night with Mike and his girlfriend after the tour finished. We were at my house afterwards, and when it came for Mike and Tina to go home I offered to drive them back. I still hadn’t bothered to get a licence, and had been content to take on the roads with my own unique driving style. Angie protested about me getting in the car because I’d had a bottle of wine and half a bottle of tequila, but we got to Mike’s without any problems and I turned around and headed back to my place through the rain. About two minutes from home, I stopped at a red light and waited. Suddenly a deafening blast of music came through the speakers as the cassette of the song I was working on flipped around in the machine. The light changed to green, the song kicked in, and I put my foot down and accelerated as fast as I could go.

  Within seconds I hit a bend and steered violently. I was going way too fast. The car skidded and I lost control and it smashed with an explosive boom into the wall on one side of the road before bouncing back into the air across the road and into the wall on the other side. The front of the car crumpled, the dashboard caved in and the steering wheel shot up into the roof. The car kept bouncing on the road with steam hissing out of the front until it came to a stop and there was total silence. I heard myself breathing. I was suddenly sober. I stared out of the windscreen and saw that the front of the car was completely crushed and steaming. A chunk of the dashboard was centimetres from my face. I got out of the car and looked down at my body: I had to check that I was still alive. The car was stuck diagonally across the middle of the road, and I frantically tried pushing it in case any other cars were coming. I was in total shock, but what was happening was dawning on me and I started to run as fast as I could to my house to get someone or to hide. In my confusion I was hoping that no one had heard or seen anything and that by some miracle I’d be able to make the situation disappear. I was in a mad delusion as I ran over to my house, and I fell a couple of times. Some of the neighbours came out. They’d heard the crash and had seen a demented young pop star fleeing from a smashed-up BMW, running and falling in a torn-up Yohji Yamamoto suit. When I got to the door, Angie and Phil were already on their way to get me. They’d heard the crash and knew it was me. They led me back to the car and three police vans pulled up with their lights flashing. By now there were people everywhere. ‘Are you a charming man?’ asked one of the cops, who happened to be a fan. I had a severe pain down my side and my wrist had started aching. The adrenaline and the booze were wearing off and grim reality was kicking in as I sat on a wall and surveyed
the scene in the middle of the night. The front of the car was completely crushed like a tin can.

  When the band came round the next day and saw the wreckage, it came home to me how fortunate I was to have survived. I was bashed up a bit and had to wear a brace for my neck and my back and a temporary splint on my arm. The next week the band went into the studio and I produced our new single, ‘Shoplifters of the World Unite’. Two weeks later, on 12 December, The Smiths walked on to the stage at Brixton Academy. We were back to our original line-up and played a great show. It was the last one we ever did.

  The crash was a huge wake-up call. I’d been living close to the line and I knew it. It was time to curb the excesses, and I had a new positivity and sense of purpose. I didn’t want to do the same as I had been doing, onstage or off, and I didn’t think the band should be repeating itself either. With the next album I wanted to move away from some of the things that were considered ‘hallmark Smiths’. It seemed that no one could ever talk about us without using the words miserable and jangle, even though we’d proved we were much more than that, and I was eager to see where we could take things musically. In the UK there had been a movement of bands that had a specific indie sound, but I felt it had nothing to do with us, other than National Health spectacles and throwing some sixties influences around. The indie scene in England had become dominated by such wimpy music that if it had been any more fey, butterflies and petals would’ve come out of the speakers. I was also sick of the way the band were being perceived. We were starting to be defined by all the things we supposedly hated, as if all we were about was negativity, which I didn’t feel. On the rare occasions I did interviews, they were always about what The Smiths hated. I wondered if that was always going to be my lot.

  I was looking and listening out for new things. There was one record which was fantastic and stood out from everything else. Matt Johnson had brought out his new album, Infected, and everyone took notice. It was innovative, with great guitars and strong songwriting, and it managed to be a new kind of pop while still being socio-political. I was impressed by Matt’s use of new technology and his increasing skills as a producer. He was breaking new ground and I was pleased for him.