Johnny Marr

by Richard Carman

  Although the target of Morrissey’s latest single ‘We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful’ was never identified, Johnny’s former partner described the “vicious sense of competition in Manchester” when asked what the song was about. Described in NME as “by far and away the ex-Smith’s worst single”, Morrissey was happy to reference the “jealous, vile creatures” around the Manchester music scene in promoting it. In particular, Morrissey despised the response to success that his city’s brethren heaped upon anyone who actually made it. “In Manchester,” he said to Q magazine, “you are accepted as long as you are scrambling and on your knees. But if you have any success, or are independent… they hate you.” No longer on his knees, both Johnny and Morrissey were now happily successful and independent.

  One of Morrissey’s best solo albums, Your Arsenal, appeared in the mid-summer. Morrissey fused a big glam rock with a rockabilly roll on the album that was produced by Bowie sideman Mick Ronson, a wonderful blend of the old and the new, and – in the closing months of Ronson’s life (he was to succumb to cancer in 1993) – a fitting piece by which to remember one of the most influential guitarists of the Seventies. Equally fittingly, there was no irony but maybe a quiet sense of achievement when Ronson’s former employer David Bowie later covered one of the album’s best tracks, ‘I Know It’s Going to Happen Someday.’ The best Christmas presents for the festive season in 1992 were undoubtedly the two Smiths ‘greatest hits’ albums released in August and November respectively. While of course they were more than simply ‘hits’ albums, Best I and Best II did exactly what it said on the jacket, compiling some of the most memorable Smiths tracks together.

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  Throughout Johnny’s career, personal relationships have come to define some of his most long-lasting professional relationships. It took years from their first getting to know one another for Marr and Matt Johnson to finally work together, and Electronic took a similarly long time to ferment. In Noel Gallagher, a fan became a friend. More than a decade earlier, the young Gallagher had lapped up the Smiths, alongside The Beatles, T. Rex and Slade. Gallagher hailed from the same streets down which the teenage Johnny had ridden his bicycle and yelled the songs of Marc Bolan. He was working for Oldham’s Inspiral Carpets, one of the bands that had been ‘most likely to,’ alongside the Charlatans, Mondays, James and Roses. As a guitar tech for Clint Boon’s band, Gallagher travelled extensively, learning the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle and watching from within how a proper band operated. The potential of his younger brother Liam, singing in a local band called Rain, soon became evident and, with Noel’s guitar and songs on board, Oasis was ready to take on the world.

  In May they played a now legendary gig in Glasgow and were spotted by the founder of Creation Records, Alan McGee. The five songs they played changed the pop world forever, as McGee fell hook, line and sinker for the Manchester miscreants, offering them a contract on the spot, from which they conquered the world. Although it was some time after the gig that the band actually signed with Creation, in the meantime a copy of their demo had fallen into Johnny’s hands, and he was (excusing the pun) instrumental in helping them establish themselves. “I used to go to The Hacienda on a Saturday night,” remembered Noel. He would regularly bump into the same guy there and chat to him. “I told him I was in a band and he said, ‘Give us a tape, I’ll give it to our kid.’” Every time Noel saw the guy, he would say the same thing – “give us a tape.” “And then I saw him just after we had the offer from Creation… and he says ‘How’s the band going?’” Noel remembers having a copy of the new The The album in his hand, and the guy saying “Fucking hell – you’ll definitely have to get a tape to our kid.” The guy was Ian Marr. “And then it clicked,” says Gallagher, “…Johnny Marr!”

  “I gets him a tape,” Noel remembered. “And two hours later I had Johnny Marr on the phone. I fucking freaked out.” Johnny thought the tape was fantastic. “We went out for a drink that night,” said Gallagher, “and he came along and brought his manager, Marcus Russell.”

  Noel Gallagher’s story illustrates beautifully the way Johnny would happily oil any wheels that he thought ought to be turning more easily within the business. Russell, of course, went on to be Oasis’s manager and to oversee their major successes. While there might have appeared much musical water between Oasis and The Smiths (swaggering loudmouths versus sauntering bibliophiles), in fact the bands had much in common, not least their Irish catholic upbringing in the southern suburbs of Manchester. Johnny immediately took to the duo. “When I first met Noel,” Johnny was to say years later, “he took so long tuning up between songs that I had to lend him a guitar. He fell in love with it – and I didn’t have the heart to ask for it back!” Over the forthcoming months, that guitar would be the one on which Gallagher wrote some of the biggest rock anthems of the decade, including ‘Live Forever’. Quick to get to the point, when asked about that, Johnny jokes, “If that’s the case, then I reckon he owes me a couple of million in royalties!”

  Within the year, Oasis were headline news. In their famed spat with Blur, it became clear why it was that Oasis – while they had sold fewer records than Blur at the time – went on to be a much bigger phenomenon in the long term. While the development of ‘lad culture’ – and magazines such as Loaded and FHM embraced unreconstructed maleness amongst the under-thirties – Britpop as a whole struggled to manage its sense of irony. Were Blur being ironic? Was Jarvis? Were Sleeper? While the message of Britpop was open to misinterpretation, Oasis suffered from no irony. Compared to the art school graduates of many of the London bands, Oasis brought the swagger and the fun back into rock ’n’ roll.

  One of the most obvious comparisons with The Smiths – apart from the Gallagher brothers’ style bearing a passing visual resemblance to Marr’s (down, perhaps, to them sharing a hairdresser in Manchester) – was that however much they attracted column inches for all the wrong (ie. non-musical) reasons, their reputation was backed up by some of the best rock ’n’ roll of their era. Because their music was so good, their antics elsewhere could carry the day. However much the UK press tried to knock Morrissey off his pedestal, as long as The Smiths made the best music around they would always succeed. Ditto Oasis – their swaggering confidence recalled The Faces, their boogie was heavy with the pop influence of Slade, The Beatles and Dr Feelgood. And in Johnny Marr they had a champion who knew the ropes. Marr has remained close to both the brothers. The relentless glare of publicity that the Gallaghers have endured over the years has been more punishing even than that which shone on The Smiths; Johnny understands that it isn’t easy being a Gallagher, just as it wasn’t easy being a Smith.

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  Over the course of 1993, Johnny would work with K-Klass, make some demos with Ian McCulloch, record with Nelee Hooper and, of course, watch the release of that The The material, while much of the year belonged to Electronic. For starters though, 1993 saw The The release Dusk, a dark, city-night album, perhaps Matt Johnson’s most personal piece of work. ‘Love Is Stronger Than Death’ was one particular favourite of Marr, a difficult song for Johnson, concerning as it does the death of Eugene Johnson, one which captured the writer’s intention perfectly. Rather than indulging in melancholy, the song is remarkably positive and optimistic, Johnson’s vocal at once tender and strong, the lyric intense but couched in images of blue skies, springtime, beating hearts and smiles. The acoustic guitar is Matt, but Johnny created his own harmonica part, and its wistful and haunting tone perfectly sets off the swelling Hammond organ of DC Collard. After the swaggering anarchy of the opening track this is a soulful, moving piece.

  The R&B harmonica that Johnny plays to introduce ‘Dogs Of Lust’ is as distinctive as any of his rootsy guitar on the album, the song bathed in a rawness that Jack White would seek out a decade later. DC Collard’s honky tonk piano triplets establish ‘This Is The Night’ in a similar way, though the music is a very different proposition. As the drama of the track develops, Johnny’
s electric guitar soars over the rich melody, setting it in a warm but disturbing light.

  ‘Slow Emotional Replay’ typified the album’s central issue, the disparity between the perceived and the perceiver, the internal and the external forces at work on the writer. Johnny featured on backing vocals on this, probably the most accessible track on the record, his introductory harp playing casting a glance back over his own shoulder to the days of ‘Hand In Glove’. Johnny’s harp playing is interesting in that he doesn’t cradle the harp deep in his fists and try to pump out bluesy, Dr Feelgood-style notes, but plays the instrument melodically, picking out the lines as cleanly as he does on the guitar.

  Tim Pope’s video for the track took Johnny and Matt to New York to film among a bewildering cast of porn stars, psychic cab drivers and drunks. The basic premise of the film was “to go right up to all these weird street characters we had been told about, stick a microphone in their faces and ask them, ‘What is wrong with the world?’” Quentin Crisp, the notably camp ‘Englishman In New York’ appeared in the film, as did a character known as Danny The Wonderpony who, naked, wore a saddle and gave rides around New York on his back. The whole surreal experience was emotionally draining for Johnny. Apart from anything else, he was aware that it was the end of a process of working with Johnson, at least for the time being. In New York, Marr didn’t sleep for three days. The entire process brought Johnny to tears – “It was one of the most unbelievable experiences I have ever been through.” Pope dragged them around snuff movie sets and introduced them to some extreme characters. “We went into this one innocuous-looking building,” says Marr. “He told me I was going to need my guitar to mime. I walked in, and I was on live porn TV, being interviewed by this guy.” The various characters that peopled the film were supposed to be down-and-outs and losers of every colour, but they came up with the most moving observations on life, or displayed emotional extremes that came out of the blue. Interviewing a ‘very down’ Irish guy, and asking him – as with the others – about what he thought was wrong with the world, Johnny remembers that “in front of our faces he just broke up, this massive guy. He completely broke down over the course of three minutes… it was like turning a key in him, and he cried.” “Fucking horrible” was how Johnny summed up the moment.

  While ‘Slow Emotional Replay’ brought some weird moments, the rest of the album was no less emotionally complex. ‘Helpline Operator’ was the result of hours of ‘research’ spent on the phone to The Samaritans (“I’m a method song-writer,” Matt told Guitar Magazine). ‘Sodium Light Baby’ perfectly captured Johnson’s visions of New York, a city where he had worked extensively to date and to which he moved permanently after the Dusk project was completed. The central riff, bouncing across the cool rhythm tracks, was Johnny’s, a rare occasion of being given his head in the composition process in which it was usually Matt’s lines that the musicians on the album played. Taped sounds, flugel horns, French horns and ‘unknown’ female voices added to Matt’s piano on ‘Lung Shadows’, while he and Johnny shared guitar duties. One of the most haunting pieces that Marr had ever worked on, a beautifully painted sonic picture touched with delayed guitar notes and muted brass, the piece sounded like a cross between Miles Davies and Music For Films-era Brian Eno.

  The same tone opened up ‘Bluer than Midnight’, a track on which Johnny did not appear. Starring Matt Johnson as John Lennon, ‘Lonely Planet’ closes the album, with discrete guitar lines from both Johnson and Marr throughout. Dusk is a fantastic album, born of the time in which it was produced, but years later nothing about the record has dated: it could have been released as easily in 2003 as 1993, and a decade after that it will probably sound as fresh again.

  As he had with Mind Bomb, Matt toured the album extensively – with The Cranberries in support as noted, but this time Johnny stayed at home. The birth of his and Angela’s first child, a little boy, gave him domestic responsibilities and a reason to stay put. His professional reasons were also more complex than that though – there were Johnny’s other babies to look after too, as he preferred the confines of the studio to those of the tour bus.

  His place in Johnson’s The The touring band was taken by Keith Joyner, and The The entered a new period in its ever-changing story sans Marr. “It wasn’t the right time for me to go away,” Johnny told Select magazine, reflecting on how much he had enjoyed the first The The tour, his first (The Pretenders aside) since the last Smiths tour. Although it resulted in only two full-length albums, Johnny’s creativity with The The almost matched his high intensity Smiths period. It is clear that the experiences differed greatly. If The Smiths had been an incredibly close-knit unit of relatively new friends, with Matt Johnson, Johnny extended a long-lasting friendship into a working relationship of which he was never less than immensely proud. Johnson’s writing is very different to Morrissey’s but the two writers share an increasingly rare intensity and commitment to the veracity of their output. The significant difference for Johnny, of course, was that Johnson was not simply a lyricist, but a composer of immense skill, with a courage and indefatigability as rare as his ability with the pen. “Johnny and myself didn’t really write as much as we should have done together,” said Johnson in 1999, and it was clear that perhaps The The missed an opportunity for more collaboration.

  One of the reasons why Johnny enjoyed The The so much was because Johnson brought finished compositions to the studio, often directing his fellow musicians in exactly what to play, thus Marr was spared some of the immense responsibility and pressure that being the musical mind of The Smiths incurred. In The The, he could simply be a band member, albeit the one with probably the most input after Matt himself. “People assume that my role in The The was to pop down to the studios and do the odd harmonica part and be in the videos, but I was in a group twenty-four hours a day for three years.” This band was clearly a labour of love.

  Johnny and Matt Johnson remain in close and constant touch today, emailing and phoning regularly, and Matt has described his friend as “one of my favourite people.” Both believe that they will work together again; indeed Johnny has stated that – rather than the ever-requested Smiths reunion – he would be far more interested in working within The The again than he would with ‘his other band.’ After the release of Dusk, it seemed that more work would come from the pair, but it hasn’t happened yet. While The Smiths was an incandescent experience that offered Johnny an education and the step into the limelight that he had dreamed of as a teenager, The The was far closer to the band that the seventeen-year-old Marr had imagined being a part of. And – if less high in profile than his work with Morrissey, Rourke and Joyce – the two albums that The The released with Marr on board remain amongst his most significant material to date.

  While Oasis were racking up the column inches in the ‘rough and ready’ department, the ‘fey and wasted’ pages of the tabloids and music press belonged to another bunch of Smiths-influenced darlings. Mike Joyce apparently tried out for the drum position in Suede, and Morrissey was so taken with ‘My Insatiable One’ that it eventually made it into his live set. A decade later guitarist Bernard Butler would work with Johnny on the Bert Jansch album Crimson Moon. Suede and The Smiths had much in common. Their eponymous first album featured rocking guitar, homoerotic lyrics and a sexually uncertain image on the cover – familiar territory for Smiths fans. Singer Brett Anderson clearly bore profound influences of Morrissey and Bowie, and knew how to get the media’s attention. What drew a huge number of fans to the band was the relationship between Anderson and Butler, who seemed to have re-invented the Morrissey/Marr axis for a new generation. Bernard’s obvious debt to Johnny’s glam-heavy guitar style was evident across the album and its follow-up Dog Man Star, but by the time the world woke up to Suede, Butler had left the band. At the time, and early in their career, Suede seemed a Smiths-lite stop gap for Morrissey and Marr fans who would soon bore of their retro posturing. In fact, they made some great records, their influences more
glam than glum, and both Anderson and Butler have more than lasted the distance. In their own sweet way, they have also done something that Morrissey and Marr have never done. In 2004 the pair reconvened as The Tears – proving that there’s always hope!

  By the end of 1993, Electronic were gearing up for their next album. It wouldn’t see the light of day until 1996, during which time Bernard’s ‘other band’ would release both Republic, a number one album, and a Best Of… compilation, another top five hit. But the pairing of Sumner and Marr worked constantly on the Electronic project too.

  If Johnny’s work rate in The Smiths had been prodigious, there was no sign of him letting up now, as he ran from one project to another without pausing for breath. Admitting to spending up to sixteen hours a day in the studio, Marr was still refining his writing, still swimming with intent rather than simply going with the flow. Working closely with Bernard Sumner, Johnny was always trying to be a better guitarist, still looking for the chords and the melody of a better song. As the pair began to discuss the project in interviews, likely co-workers such as Karl Bartos, formerly of Kraftwerk, and Chic’s Nile Rodgers were name-checked. Rodgers was one of Johnny’s own long-time guitar heroes, and although the best years of Chic were long behind, he was in constant demand after his work on David Bowie’s Let’s Dance album had stormed the world a decade earlier. If you were into innovative pop with a creative bite and a commercial edge, then Johnny Marr was interested in what you were doing.