Johnny Marr

by Richard Carman

  The second track, ‘You’ve Got Everything Now’ runs at a nervy, bass-led punk pace, with Morrissey’s phrasing desperately trying to pull the pace of the song back, but instead – as the band hit the choruses – the track takes on a perfect beat as Johnny’s tumbling riffs quickly establish another trademark. ‘Miserable Lie’, despite its mournful opening, soon kicks into a savagery and energy that caught the flavour of the early live Smiths perfectly. On ‘Pretty Girls Make Graves’, the song’s circuitous minor chord sequence is set firmly against Johnny’s jaunty, acoustic strumming on the half-notes and Rourke’s walking bass. The jangling electric picking is typical of what would become synonymous with Smiths’ music, the feel of the song would reappear later in songs such as ‘Frankly Mr Shankly’, but the dichotomy between the mournfulness of Morrissey’s vocal and the optimism of the electric guitar, between the jolly strumming and the minor key is perfect Smiths, the ability to maintain two or more concepts at one moment within the same song.

  Similar phrasing is picked up early in the next track and reflected throughout the sinuous course of ‘The Hand That Rocks The Cradle’, which Simon Goddard cleverly notes throws a nod to Patti Smith’s ‘Kimberly’. ‘Still Ill’ is one of Marr’s most effective riffs, ‘Paperback Writer’-like and as fresh as the day. One of the great things about Johnny’s work – especially on early songs like ‘Still Ill’ – is that, rather than simply defining an introduction, shatteringly good riffs run throughout, and define the entire song.

  ‘Hand In Glove’ and ‘What Difference Does It Make?’ sit together on the album as if the last ten years of pop music had been waiting for this moment alone – two pieces of such perfect pop, crafted and presented with a devastating confidence and bravado that belies the youthfulness of the band. Then ‘I Don’t Owe You Anything’, with Johnny’s Burt Bacharach-like stabs and jazzy linking chords works perfectly to slow the album down before its big finish. ‘Suffer Little Children’ was dropped from the band’s live sets quite early in their career. The version immortalised as the closing track on The Smiths was one of the few songs on the album with which Marr was happy in retrospect, but outside the band the response to the song was phenomenal and routinely sensational. Rarely has a song snuck into the back end of a relatively unknown act’s debut album caused so much fuss: Morrissey was laughably virtually branded an associate of the Moors Murderers himself in the hysterical UK tabloids, as the crimes of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were raked over by newspapers happy to make headlines out of misrepresenting an artistic statement. For Smiths fans overseas, the track may have meant less, but for anyone growing up in the North West of England in the mid-Sixties, the story remained one of the most affecting of that decade.

  While the press tried desperately to kick up a fuss, Morrissey retained a dignity in his own responses to the furore. To informed, intelligent listeners, the song was a desperately moving collection of images, literate and haunting, indeed infinitely less offensive than many of the books and articles already written on the subject. The entire piece is like a movie, plot unfolding, character developing, drama ensuing. Marr’s guitar modulates between A and D major seventh chords for much of the track – a fragile and graceful tone, the same structure as Erik Satie’s delicate piano piece Gymnopedie No 1. Johnny’s arpeggio’d chords recall a similar delicate and elegant tone. As Morrissey’s vocal becomes more and more haunting, Johnny’s sense of drama and mood drops quickly into a minor key as the voice of Brady’s accomplice takes the stage. The disarming laugh of Myra Hindley was provided by Morrissey’s friend Annalisa Jablonska.

  The Smiths is like one of those grainy kitchen sink movies so beloved of Morrissey, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning on vinyl. Its tone is conversational, earthen, but its themes are elevated and troublesome. Musically it is articulate and sensitive but at the same time kick-arse rollicking good fun. It remains one of the best debut albums of all, and – if it wasn’t perfect – it was better than anything else around at the time by a long way.

  The album’s cover ‘starred’ Warhol cohort Joe Dallesandro, and caused almost as much concern for some of the band members as it caused excitement with reviewers. Designed by Morrissey and Caryn Gough, the artwork set the standard for Smiths releases to come: a very careful selection of images that portrayed both the concept behind the band and some of the artistic influence and ethos behind the conception of the album itself. Here, of course, the cropping of the original still from Warhol’s movie Flesh masked some of the homo-eroticism of the image, but implied enough to encourage speculation regarding the band’s sexual stance.

  Looking back on the album a couple of years later, Marr told Melody Maker that he was “not as madly keen on it” as he had been. He felt that the attack and ‘fire’ was missing from the record, and reflected the feeling of many of the fans that perhaps the later Hatful Of Hollow captured this early Smiths sound better. Morrissey was also said to be not entirely happy with the production, although he too recognised that it was better than anything else around. Although the album had now been recorded twice, with two different producers, bizarrely rumours circulated that there were moves afoot to re-do it again. Idealism was one thing however, and having reportedly cost Rough Trade £60,000 – a sizeable sum for an independent label – the chances of The Smiths’ debut album being re-recorded or re-mixed yet again were probably nil.

  Johnny proudly called The Smiths music “rock from a housing estate”, and indeed they categorically made fundamental pop music. They spliced liberally from the music that influenced them, juiced it up with lashings of their own flavouring, and passed the unique result on to a new generation. The key trick was that they never allowed those influences to drown their own musical voice. In the same way, The Beatles had blended Buddy Holly and Carl Perkins influences with Motown and skiffle to come up with ‘Beatles’ music. CP Lee calls this process “pop lore” and likens it to the folk tradition of passing traditional songs and formats through the generations. The process applies equally to all pop formats, however, and not just traditional folk. “It just refers to popular formats or popular music, whether it’s folk music or pop music,” says Lee. “Or blues music. But you can see [how Marr] dips into and carries on a tradition, by amending it.” While those influences remain submerged within the musical phrasing, and the lyrical concerns, the music is nevertheless new. As much as Morrissey continued a tradition of Northern writers and performers from George Formby and Gracie Fields to Shelagh Delaney and Alan Bennett, so Johnny’s music had mixed up the glam of T. Rex with the finger-picking folk of Bert Jansch and Davey Graham, the raunch of the New York Dolls with the pristine production ethics of Sixties girl groups, yet the music of The Smiths was unassailably Smiths’ music, unique and new.

  A tour to support the album took in Sheffield University, North Staffs Poly, Coventry and Loughborough, but came to a grinding halt when Morrissey developed throat problems. Gigs were cancelled in advance, but a series of TV and media appearances kept the Smiths flame alive. Speaking to NME, Johnny spoke of the differences between himself and Morrissey as personalities, and clearly flagged his happiness that Morrissey remained the spokesman for the band while he generally kept out of the public eye. A second appearance on Top Of The Pops promoted ‘What Difference Does It Make?’ – shown again later in the month as the single made its way up the charts. Then more TV, more radio, more magazines. With the tour back on track, the void left by the departed Joe Moss was finally filled after a fashion, albeit a somewhat confusing fashion.

  Ruth Polski, late of the New York Danceteria gig, re-appeared on the scene in the UK claiming to be the band’s manager, and a disagreement with Scott Piering, who said he was in charge, ensued. “I don’t think she ever was ‘the manager’,” recalls Grant Showbiz “She was one of a number of people who may or may not have had a conversation at four in the morning, and woke up imagining she was the manager.” She wasn’t the first to do that – in the business as a whole – and, according to Grant �
��not the last.”

  Ruth Polski returned to the USA, and was tragically killed in a car accident some time later. As far as The Smiths’ sound-man was concerned, she never caused any hassle. “She was just a kind of funloving creature,” he recalls. But issues of money and organisation continued to rear their ugly heads as the tour proceeded, while the pressures on Johnny and Morrissey increased. To whatever extent Polski and Scott Piering did argue, it was Piering who took the upper hand in the management issues at stake. Nobody really filled Joe Moss’s role like-for-like. “No-one ever said to me, ‘Joe’s gone – he’s looking after us,’ or ‘He’s gone – they’re looking after us,’” Grant told me. Rather, Piering was one of a whole group of people who, over time, contributed. “Everyone at that point – they were just going ‘Fucking hell – this band is going to be massive,” says Showbiz.

  Grant Showbiz remembers the late Scott Piering fondly, and knows that his management of the band was always well-intentioned. “Close up he could see the disarray because he was travelling with us,” Grant notes today. “He thought ‘[These people have] had a go. Why don’t I step in and see what happens?’” What happened of course was that the Smiths continued to be too hot to handle. “It was great,” says Grant, “watching Scott trying to be a bit more corporate and a bit more organised.” But corporate and organised was not what The Smiths were about.

  The band charged through all corners of the UK before coming to earth in London in mid-March. At the Hammersmith Palais, Sandie Shaw became the only other singer to front The Smiths besides Morrissey, previewing her own version of ‘Hand In Glove.’

  Shaw’s version of the song was recorded at Matrix studios in London, in February 1984. The band included ‘Jeane’ and ‘I Don’t Owe You Anything’ in the same sessions. Although the single only scraped into the Top Thirty on its spring release, Sandie was of course no stranger to the higher reaches of the UK charts. Over the course of the Sixties, she established herself as both the coolest woman in British pop and the first of the UK’s occasional winners of the Eurovision song contest, in an era when participation in that event was not seen to be quite as naff as it is today. Sandie’s high cheekbones and long, dark fringe made her as much a visual icon of the time as a musical one, and her trademark barefooted TV appearances guaranteed her column inches in the press too. Her chart debut, ‘(There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me’ was an iconic snapshot of 1964 power pop; her stylish follow-up ‘Girl Don’t Come’ was exactly the kind of melancholic-yet-breezy tune to appeal to both Morrissey and Marr. By 1984 Sandie was a long way away from being a chart regular, but while it may have been fifteen years since her last lowly chart placing, she was only thirty seven – hardly a pop star dragged from her pensionable years! She was the perfect partner for Morrissey and Marr.

  By now, Johnny and the rest of the band had joined Morrissey living in London, with Marr a resident of Earl’s Court. Before recording with The Smiths, Shaw had been badgered over several months by Johnny and Morrissey, and it was a novel experience for Johnny, Andy and Mike to have a girl singer up front. Simon Goddard recounts the frequent visits to the local veggie restaurant enlivening what was an enjoyable set amidst the turmoil of the current tour. While the live schedule floundered on, the three instrumental Smiths backed Sandie on an entertaining Top Of The Pops appearance during which Johnny, Andy and Mike – in homage to Sandie’s Sixties predilection for shoelessness – performed barefoot while Sandie herself delivered Morrissey’s lyric whilst rolling, impassioned, across the studio floor. It was a memorable appearance for Smiths fans.

  The tour had taken in various dates in Europe – several concerts were cancelled – and the tour manager had parted company with the band, increasing the sense of disarray around the entire operation. The role was taken over by Stuart James, before the release in April of ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ offered some respite and continued the band’s chart onslaught, reaching (unbelievably) their highest chart placing at Number 10. Written, as noted, immediately after the New York debacle, the track had been recorded with John Porter at Island Studios in London in February. While opinions of the song among band members have varied over the years, ‘Heaven Knows…’ remains one of the best loved songs in the Smiths’ catalogue, combining both Johnny’s sophisticated, articulate guitar and some of Morrissey’s funniest and most heart-wrenching lyrics, perhaps better than any other early single. Another two appearances on Top Of The Pops saw, in the latter of the two, Johnny wearing some rather splendid bling around his neck, while Morrissey paraded handsomely with a large branch hanging from his back pocket. Stylish and funny and miserable and cool were The Smiths in 1984.

  TV shows and gigs in Europe were resumed for a few days, followed by a similar handful of dates in Ireland, before returning to the heady heights of Carlisle, Glasgow and Scotland. June saw the band play at Glastonbury. As a sideline for Smiths watchers, there was the release of one of Johnny’s first projects outside The Smiths, the Quando Quango single ‘Atom Rock.’ Quando Quango was an Anglo-Dutch electro dance set-up, formed in Rotterdam in 1980. By 1982 they had moved to Manchester, combining synths and saxophone to forge electro dance tracks way ahead of their time. Signed to Factory, Quando Quango included Mike Pickering alongside the bass of Barry Johnson, late of chart successes Sweet Sensation (and later of Aswad), A Certain Ratio’s Simon Topping, and an ever-changing list of contributors. They were produced by the extra-curricular Bernard Sumner of New Order, and it was via Quando Quango that Johnny first got to know Sumner, with whom, of course, he would come to be inextricably linked for a decade. The band had had significant success in the USA already – a market far more ready for their sound – with their single ‘Love Tempo.’ By the time Johnny was involved, playing guitar on both tracks from their 1984 single, his reputation as a Smith was established and the connection turned a few heads. The King Of The Indie Guitar liking dance music – that wasn’t on.

  Johnny has spoken entertainingly of how he fell in love with dance music at the same time as he learned to be a red-hot guitar player. Back in the day, Johnny would hang out in his bedroom with his guitar-playing mates, “skinning up and being serious,” as he described it to Guitar Magazine. “My sister would be in the next bedroom listening to dance music,” Johnny continued. “Getting ready to go out with her friends. And they just sounded like they were having a better time… They’d say to me ‘What are you listening to this miserable crap for?’” At that point Johnny turned to Chic, The Fatback Band and War, and fell in love with dance music for life.

  Johnny also joined in with future bedsit king and queen Everything But The Girl on their single ‘Native Land’, a pairing more likely to be approved of by Smiths fans. Rather than adding Smiths-style guitar crash to the record however, Johnny actually appeared on harmonica – a role that he would adopt on several collaborations over the years to come. Although he did not appear on the follow-up album Love Not Money, it was noted in several circles just how much influence The Smiths had on that collection of songs.

  The appearance at Glastonbury was followed by a much-needed break. Grant Showbiz remembers the hectic schedule, and notes that – especially without Moss’s input – the band flew by the seat of their pants much of the time. At Jam Studios in London, The Smiths reconvened for the taping of their next single, ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’, again with John Porter twiddling the knobs. ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want’, ‘Nowhere Fast’ (held for the release of the next album) and ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ were composed one after the other very quickly in Johnny’s Earl’s Court apartment, the former a perfect example of a song almost spilling out of Marr despite himself. In the creative meltdown after finishing ‘William…’ came ‘How Soon Is Now?’, almost as an afterthought. “Because you are relaxed,” explained Johnny to Martin Roach, “you carry on noodling, and that way you write another good track immediately afterwards.” He described ‘Please Please Please…’ as a “Del
Shannon song. After about a minute and a half of writing it,” Johnny recalls, “[it] had a Del Shannon feel, so I continued to write that with my mother in mind, because she listened to so much of [that music].”

  Johnny was clearly on a creative roll in the spring and summer of 1984, and could have expected the success of ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ to have been followed by even higher chart placings. Despite the ongoing confusion surrounding the band’s affairs, the quality of his writing – and Morrissey’s – was undiminished. But ‘William…’ only reached number seventeen in the UK singles chart, a crushing disappointment to be followed by an extended period without a major chart hit. The single illustrates the increasing complexity of Johnny’s work with Porter, as guitars were overdubbed one after another. It is one of The Smiths’ most exuberant tracks, played at a breakneck speed that even Johnny himself later marvelled at. The capo on the fingerboard allowed Johnny to take the dazzling chord progressions out of the standard fingering and to really kick out. It is a wonderful record that should have been a top five hit.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A BAND TO DIE FOR

  In August, Morrissey moved back to the affluent suburbs of Cheshire, south of Manchester and near to the city’s international airport, a well-heeled domicile for a gentleman of increasing means. Peel sessions were broadcast in August, showcasing some of the tracks to be heard on the next Smiths’ album, and in September ‘Native Land’ was released by Everything But The Girl. It was intended that the band would tour the USA in October, with rafts of new material to be gigged and recorded too.

  Many of the songs were ‘premiered’ during the short mini-tour of the south-west and south Wales, with gigs in Gloucester, Cardiff and Swansea. These gigs were scheduled as warm-up dates for the US tour, but instead, with the release of compilation album Hatful Of Hollow imminent (more of which later), The Smiths held off until November, where they played a series of dates in Ireland.