Johnny Marr (24 page)

‘Something To Shout About’ slows the pace again, acoustic strumming and lovely finger-picking on electric guitar. Johnny’s vocal is one of the most affecting on the album, high in register and sincere amongst a wash of backing vocals. ‘Sympathy for The Devil’-style percussion introduces the last track of the
album, ‘Bangin’ On’, with Johnny’s chords hard and fast, Starkey’s percussion heavy and tough.

While Johnny could probably have signed with any number of labels, he was keen that – in an echo of The Smiths first contract with Rough Trade –he did so on his own terms and not be ‘managed’ by people who didn’t understand him. “Some of the people I would meet with had this look in their eye, like ‘Shit – this guy’s an anarchist,’” he said. The last thing Marr wanted was to have to make a video in which he had to “walk around Barcelona in a white suit with a model.” Instead, he signed with the indie co-op label iMusic, led by old friend Marc Geiger, retaining control over the music rather than surrender to the whim of a major traditional label. Old habits die hard, and the parallels with the original deal Rough Trade are obvious. “I was pretty much in the same situation with The Smiths,” recounted Johnny. “We were invited down to record companies, sitting under posters of people I couldn’t relate to.”

While setting up a deal that reflected his priorities in the early days of The Smiths, Johnny also cleaned up another element of his past when he reunited with early Smiths manager Joe Moss who became his manager once again. The pair go back a long way, before The Smiths, and it was Joe who first encouraged Johnny to realise that there was more than local bands and gigging around south Manchester ahead of him. The synergy of Johnny, band, label and management was complete.

Should Johnny Marr have waited so long before releasing what
is effectively his debut solo album? Some have noted that if Johnny had released
something
under his own name early in his post-Smiths career, and perhaps put out half a dozen albums over the years, then his solo career might have followed a trajectory similar to Morrissey’s and the critical surprise that greeted
Boomslang
have been avoided. The problem for
Boomslang
was that Johnny had no solo credentials for fans to compare it to: while Morrissey’s next album might be a masterpiece, or it may disappoint, at least people had an
idea
of where he would be coming from. With
Boomslang
, nobody quite knew what to expect from Johnny Marr, and so it either met with the listeners expectations or disappointed them – there was little middle ground.

But such expectations missed the point of Johnny’s career in its entirety. From working with Morrissey, through The The, Electronic and occasional one-offs with the likes of Kirsty MacColl, Billy Bragg or Beth Orton, all of Johnny’s work has been about cooperation and collaboration. Whether forming a band with Andy Rourke or shacking up with Modest Mouse, whether lighting up a spliff at the desk in The Hacienda or joining The Pretenders on tour, music for Johnny has been constantly evolving ‘community,’ a social activity based around music. One of the key elements to Johnny’s music over the years has been that it has always been the child of creative comradeship. If Morrissey’s lyrics spoke to a body of people lonely within themselves and looking for a voice that mirrored their own relationships and agendas, Johnny’s music did exactly the same, because it was born out of the very emotional correspondence that Morrissey’s lyrics were. A Johnny Marr solo album was never going to be Johnny alone with a finely-picked acoustic, nor was it going to be simply a step on from The Smiths,
as though the intervening years had never happened. It was always going to be a collaborative effort of some kind, again a snapshot of where he was on the journey at the time.

So, of course, while the world waited for Johnny to present an album all about The Smiths and his relationship with Morrissey, he couldn’t win. We were post-Mondays, post-Oasis, post-Roses. If the album had been filled with Smiths-like grooves then Marr would have inevitably been accused of sitting back and resting on former glories. If he had made an experimental album of tape loops and guitar clicks he would have been guilty of excessive self-regard. If he sounded anything like the bands who owed him so much debt themselves then again he would be chastised. Whichever way he turned there would be an enormous raft of fans ready to be disappointed, and just as many (more enlightened ones) ready to simply go and find out where Johnny was at.

In fact, the album rocks. Sonically varied, confident, laid back but punching its weight, it is an assured piece of work from some heavyweight talents. Given that this was generally perceived as his first solo outing, could listeners expect any revelations?
Were
any of the songs about Morrissey, The Smiths, or the time in Johnny’s life that still meant so much to his fans? Johnny put the record straight on this one with aplomb. “None of my songs are about Morrissey,” he said. “I think that would be a bit showbiz, a bit cheesy. A bit corny. Singing about someone I used to work with sixteen years ago in a cryptic fashion so that people could decode it? That would be a bit cheesy!”

Billy Bragg was a big fan of
Boomslang
. “I thought it was great,” he said, when interviewed for this book. “I thought it was great of him to finally do what he wanted to do – his own project.
If you are constantly working a lot with side-men it can be hard.” Grant Showbiz also feels that to some degree
Boomslang
was Johnny coming home. To have lived through the exhilarating career of The Smiths at such a ridiculously young age and still to be contributing so many years later was a remarkable achievement. “I sort of looked at Johnny’s life and thought, ‘it’s been fantastic, and he’s been so lucky,’” says Grant. “But I don’t know how I would have taken to being king of the world at twenty one, then had the rest of your life to go on [to].” Simply getting to
Boomslang
intact, and with such a creditable body of work behind him
apart
from The Smiths was remarkable. What was pleasing was that Johnny simply decided to follow his own nose on the project. With friends like Bernard Sumner telling him that he should have the confidence to just sound like himself (“What the fuck is wrong with sounding like you?” Sumner had asked him), Johnny had come to the same conclusion. “I had to tell myself, ‘Come on Johnny, make the assumption that your audience wants you to sound like you,’” he told one interviewer.

According to Bragg, it was evident that the album was a personal labour of love. “He put a lot of himself in that record I think,” he said, and – in response to the critics who unfavourably compared the album to Oasis – noted that such a comparison was “bitterly unfair”, given the support that Johnny had given to the Gallaghers himself. Johnny pointed out that if listeners thought he was influenced by Oasis, they should go check out the rock family tree. “I’m
not
influenced by Oasis,” he said. “The Smiths were very, very influenced by the
White Album
, so – years later – [Noel’s] obviously heard the
White Album
a few times!” The message is clear – if we sound similar it’s because we are coming from the same
places, not because one of us copies the other. Billy has suffered a similar backlash at times himself. “The point is that the public get a fixed idea of you in their heads… it’s like me with my politics: if I don’t make those kind of records people aren’t interested.” Bragg sees a classic opportunity to knock someone down being taken by the press, who had – in the main – supported Marr since the demise of The Smiths. “There is an element of… they’ve lauded you all that time, they want to give you a going over now,” he says. “A lot of us have had to put up with that sort of mentality.”

In the wake of
Boomslang’s
release, Johnny ceaselessly fielded the endless questions about The Smiths and why – after so many years – he suddenly wanted to be a singer. With the tour over, there was more production work to finish off, as Johnny handled the second Haven album,
All For A Reason
. The record was released in March 2004. Marr once again brought the best out of the four-piece, playing the role of producer again but adding harmonica and backing vocals too. Since
Between The Senses
, although it was tiring for the band to be constantly asked about The Smiths, they had found a supplementary audience that came to them because of Johnny’s history. “In America,” said vocalist Gary Briggs, “a quarter of our audiences were curious Smiths fans. You’ve got to respect that, so we’ll answer as many Smiths questions as [are] put to us!” In some respects that probably made it easier for Johnny Marr.

I
n October 2004, the world was rocked by the sudden death of John Peel. To say ‘the world was rocked’ is no exaggeration – Peel’s death touched everyone who had ever heard of him, from mega-star bands who had received a leg up from him, to bedsit radio junkies who had listened to him under the duvet for decades. The BBC and the record industry in general went into justifiable overdrive in trying to pay tribute to a remarkable man, whose input into the pop music of the last thirty and more years was perhaps the greatest single contribution to the genre.

Johnny was understandably distraught at the news, Peel having been
the
early champion of The Smiths. He summarised his feelings at the loss thus: “John Peel was very important to The Smiths, particularly in the early days. He was the first person to play our single, and we would often try out new songs when we
did sessions for his show. He knew what was going on, and went out of his way to promote good music, and the underdog.” Johnny added one more modest observation. “He was a nice guy too!”

While the world mourned John Peel, Johnny, who was appearing with the brothers Neil and Tim Finn, honoured the late DJ with an impromptu version of his favourite song at a couple of gigs, notably in Liverpool. Having already kicked the audience’s backside with ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’, Johnny introduced the classic Gerry and The Pacemakers’ ‘Ferry Across The Mersey’ in tribute to Peel. “A few people in the audience started shouting ‘Teenage Kicks’ (famously Peel’s favourite song)” remembered Marr. “I just went into it. Never played it before in my life! It was a good moment.”

By 2005, Zak Starkey had joined Oasis for their tour, an arrangement that Johnny appeared totally cool with. David Tolan had joined on drums, and Iwan Gronow of Haven was playing the bass. Johnny was back in his home studio, making demos for new Healers material alone. Some of the songs would appear in forthcoming gigs over the next couple of years, but at the point that this book went to press, no follow-up to
Boomslang
has appeared or been publicly scheduled. Early in the summer, Johnny played with a number of his teenage heroes at the Meltdown festival in London, this year (each season has a different curator who chooses themes and performers to appear) curated by Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye. Johnny was on the bill with Beth Orton, Bert Jansch and others, including fellow-Mancunian Roy Harper. The year 2005 was one of the most memorable of recent seasons, when American and British folk artists stole the show but where perhaps the guitar was the major star.

Bert Jansch played a beautiful solo set, and was joined on stage by Beth Orton, whose gorgeous, modest voice blended perfectly with Bert’s faultless playing. Johnny came on after Beth and, locked together as though there was only one guitar on stage, the seated pair played acoustic versions of ‘Pretty Saro’ and ‘Pretty Polly’ like old guys who had played together for years. The Healers replaced Jansch when he left the stage, and the band leapt into ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’. After Neil Finn had sung
a cappella,
Johnny returned with Tony Shanahan to join him on ‘Throw Your Arms Around Me’ and sang a verse of ‘Lay Me Down’ with the all-star line-up for a finale.

While Johnny was busy working, The Smiths continued to be a part of the present as much as the past. While Smiths conventions have become
de rigeur
on both sides of the Atlantic, in April of 2005, Manchester Metropolitan University and the city’s Institute of Popular culture ran an academic conference with The Smiths as the subject of the two day brain-fest. The supposed purpose of the event was to redress the lack of ‘serious examinations’ of the band over the years. ‘Why Pamper Life’s Complexities?: A Symposium On The Smiths’ was opened by author Dave Haslam, and included seminars with titles like ‘Architecture Through Music: Experiencing Manchester and Expressing Manchester’ and ‘When In Hulme Do As The Humans Do: Remapping Manchester and The Smiths Using Psychogeographics’, the latter chaired by the redoubtable CP Lee. The event was rounded off with a gig by The Smyths tribute band and an exhibition of Stephen Wright’s photos at Salford Lads Club. It was nice to know that a band dedicated to the memory of Morrissey, Marr, Rourke and Joyce could still, nearly twenty years on, turn the toe of a psychogeographicisist.

In December, Johnny appeared on another collaboration, this time providing guitar and harmonica to
Fictions
, the new album from Anglo-French chanteuse Jane Birkin. His contributions were amongst others on a variety of songs both original and covers, provided by Rufus Wainwright, Beth Gibbons, Neil Hannon, Kate Bush and others. Rumours started to appear towards the end of the year that, while the band were booked onto the bill for a charity concert in Manchester, The Smiths would be reforming for the event. While these were pretty quickly scotched, the line that at least Andy and Johnny would play together was not.

By 2006, even the most ardent of rock ’n’ roll rumour mongers had realised that the ‘Beatles To Reform’ stories were unlikely to have any credence. Despite the deaths of both Keith Moon and John Entwistle, however, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend would still appear billed as The Who. It was no surprise then, that the Eighties band least likely to reform was still under pressure to do just that. While any remaining wounds between Johnny and Andy Rourke seemed healed, the various relationships between the four members were simply not active enough for a reunion to take place. Johnny wouldn’t confirm the amounts on the table, but it was rumoured that they were offered $5 million to play the Coachella festival in the USA. “I was offered twice as much for us to play in New York,” he confirmed. “And Hyde Park. And God knows where else.” It was nice to know that money at least would not be the deciding factor in whether The Smiths ever did reform.

Just as the Linda McCartney tribute concert had involved agendas bigger than simple issues of pop music, it was for similar reasons that Johnny played a gig in Manchester in January of 2006 that warmed the hearts of Smiths fans everywhere and did give them
a little taste of what a reunion might have offered. Manchester’s MEN Arena was the venue for the Manchester Versus Cancer Concert. The bands that appeared were booked by Andy Rourke. He drew on the great and the good of the Manchester music scene and beyond over twenty and more years, bringing in New Order, Badly Drawn Boy, Shaun Ryder and Bez from The Happy Mondays, Doves, Elbow, 808 State and more. One of the acts booked to appear was, of course, Johnny Marr And The Healers. Johnny was introduced by Damon Gough, aka Badly Drawn Boy. The first song that the band launched into was ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’, and the audience joined Johnny and the band in singing every word of the classic Smiths song. The Healers premiered two new songs, slated to appear on the next album, and reprised ‘Down On The Corner’ from
Boomslang
. When Johnny spoke to the crowd, he confirmed his support for the cause for which they were all there, before introducing “someone I first played in school with in 1978,” and followed that up with “tonight seems like a good time to play together again.” Andy came on stage to join the band, who hit into the opening bars of ‘How Soon Is Now?’, and the crowd went beserk.

“It was beautiful really,” said Johnny after the show. Before packing his gear and moving on to the after-show party, Johnny and Bernard Sumner joined Doves on stage and played through the Lou Reed classic ‘Vicious’, from
Tranformer
, and the Motown standard, ‘There’s a Ghost In My House.’ In three songs he had covered his love of Seventies glam, Sixties soul and reprised The Smiths – from a fan’s point of view, not a bad night’s work. While New Order limited their set to a Joy Division-only collection of songs, there was a Live Aid-style
crowd on stage for the closing number, as Johnny rejoined Hook, Sumner, Rourke, Ryder and Bez, with the Doves, for a rousing finale of ‘Wrote For Luck’.

Still contributing wherever he can, Johnny also appeared on Lisa Germano’s first album since
Lullaby For Liquid Pig
, his appearances on
In The Maybe World
receiving critical acclaim once again.

Throughout 2006 Morrissey was in evidence everywhere. His latest album,
Ringleader Of The Tormentors
was rightly praised by reviewers worldwide as perhaps his strongest collection of songs since The Smiths. One thing was for sure, while Johnny continued to experiment and develop his work, Morrissey showed no signs of slowing down either. It was a fantastic, trenchant, savage album. Morrissey continued to develop as a writer and as a vocalist, and finally seemed to receive the independently earned plaudits he deserved. Over the course of 2006, Morrissey presented himself with decorum and grace. One would guess he would hate to be described as an ‘elder statesman of rock,’ but he appeared with great dignity, a stylish, mature man with a more-than-stylish talent. Brushing off questions about Smiths reformations and court cases with ease, it seemed that we had got the original Morrissey back amongst us – witty, urbane, articulate and entertaining, but serious about his work.

Summer 2006 saw the twentieth anniversary of the release of
The Queen Is Dead
, widely seen as the most important Smiths’ release. The music press had a field day. One of the most entertaining spectacles was the visit to the UK of Sweet And Tender Hooligans, the California-based Smiths tribute band. The Hooligans career was, by 2006, far more long-lived than that of the band they recreate on stage: formed in 1992, the
original line-up performed their own material and threw Smiths songs into the set as crowd pleasers. They were soon exclusively playing Smiths songs, appearing at conventions, and attracting the attention of members of the band themselves. Their act is convincing and – oddly – moving. Jose Maldonado almost seems inhabited by Morrissey, as he throws the singer’s shapes and tugs at his ever-loosening shirt in a perfect recreation of the master. Visually, it is sometimes easy to forget that it is not Morrissey behind the mic at all, though off stage only the haircut would perhaps betray Jose’s chosen profession. David Collett, on guitar, doesn’t look like Johnny Marr, and neither does Karey DeLeon on second guitar, but between them they emulate Johnny’s sound with precision.

The band played a short UK tour, culminating with a gig in Manchester on the anniversary of the very day of
The Queen Is Dead
’s original release. The Hooligans’ set consisted of the entire album, track by track, followed by a selection of Smiths and Morrissey solo numbers. The audience reception was ecstatic – ‘Cemetry Gates’, ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ and ‘Panic’ were the biggest audience pleasers. Dancing started shyly towards the back of the hall, and by the end of the gig Smiths fans ranging in age from twenty to fifty were at the front of the stage, waving wildly and singing along to every song. Suitably, there was an affectionate stage invasion, and Jose tugged back at the outstretched hands, visibly moved by the reception in the home town of
The Queen Is Dead
on its anniversary. It is clear that, while The Smiths are no longer with us as a performing entity, they are treasured with a remarkable affection by a broad population of fans old and new. “For me,”
says Maldonado, “it’s like when I was seven-years-old and put on my Superman cloak. I could fly. Today I put on my Morrissey cloak…”