1989 05 27 Johnny Marr, NME

WHAT IS JOHNNY MARR PLAYING AT?

Since THE SMITHS split in 1987, MORRISSEY has gone on to bigger if not necessarily better things, while JOHNNY MARR has been living the ‘have guitar will travel’ lifestyle, playing with everyone from TALKING HEADS to KIRSTY MacCOLL. Now with his ‘official’ membership of THE THE it looks like the guitar hero of the ’80s is back. But has he left it too late and are all those Smiths fans really still waiting? LEN BROWN sifts through the evidence.

IT WAS two years ago last Friday (May 19) since The Smiths first cracked. On almost exactly the sixth anniversary of their first encounter (May 18, 1981) - when Johnny Marr rang Morrissey’s bell - the most original and most prolific songwriting partnership since Lennon & McCartney last saw each other.

Since then, Morrissey’s lyrical output has hardly diminished; from ‘Suedehead’ and the rapidly created ‘Viva Hate’ through to ‘The Last Of The Famous International Playboys’ and ‘Interesting Drug’, the Mozzer’s rarely been off these pages or out of the limelight.

In comparison, until recently, Johnny Marr has kept a low profile. True, he can now be heard on the new The The and Kirsty MacColl LPs, and has been credited with guitarwork by Talking Heads, Bryan Ferry, and The Pretenders. But, while accepting Marr’s the greatest, most innovative guitarman of his generation (obviously the brilliance of The Smiths was founded on the strength of his compositions) during two years in the wilderness barely a handful of new tunes have reached vinyl. What is Johnny Marr playing at?

“I’ve already recorded some stuff and it's gone well. If the rest of it goes as well there's every chance I'll be forming a permanent group, though obviously it's too early to be certain about that. But I definitely want to have some live dates set up by the New Year at the latest."

(Johnny Marr, on the official Smiths split, 8.8.87)

After many attempts at securing an audience with “the man who killed The Smiths” NME still gets the stock rebuttal from Marr’s management (Ignition now, following his break with Ken Friedman): “Johnny will be talking to the press when he’s ready, when he’s got something of his own material to promote.”

Fair enough, but for how much longer do craving Smiths fans - oh those skinny boys and pallid girls - have to wait to get delicious fresh lungfuls of Johnny Marr’s guitar? What has happened to the man who, on the post-Smiths-split South Bank Show, described himself as being “very into the songwriting ethic”?

Looking back through NME’s pages since May ’87 you get the impression Johnny Marr’s worked with every Tom, Dick and Harold in Rockville, including bizarrely touted liaisons with the likes of Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Bobby Womack, The Adult Net, Morrissey monthly, and Elvis Costello (apparently on a cover version of ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ in a band called The Hungry Years!).

Despite these rumours (and many more), prior to his current burst of activity on The The’s ‘Mindbomb’ (he co-wrote ‘Gravitate To Me' with Matt Johnson) and Kirsty MacColl’s ‘Kite’ (he contributed ‘The End Of A Perfect Day’ and the excellent ‘You And Me Baby’), there’s been bugger all Marr music this side of Bryan Ferry’s grim ‘Right Stuff’ reworking of the ‘Bigmouth’ B-side ‘Money Changes Everything'.

Which begs the question: how much did the rise and demise of The Smiths take out of Johnny Marr? Back then, even at his most prolific, Marr found time to work outside the band; playing guitar on Quando Quango’s ‘Atom Rock’, producing The Impossible Dreamers’ ‘August Avenue', gracing Billy Bragg’s ‘Talking With The Taxman About Poetry’, and, especially, ‘Walk Away Renee’. Immediately post-Smiths he worked on Talking Heads’ ‘Naked’ creation, contributing guitar on four tracks, and flitted to New York for the soundtrack of Dennis Hopper’s tame Colors movie.

But largely, looking from the outside, it seems as if since The Smiths Johnny Marr’s been content to just collaborate and contribute guitar to projects devised by his heroes.

“After working with Morrissey I could never even consider being involved with anyone I wasn’t totally 100 per cent impressed and inspired by,” Marr told NME in May 1985. So as well as MacColl, and Matt Johnson’s The The and Talking Heads and Bryan Ferry, Marr’s clearly been impressed and inspired by Simple Minds and The Pretenders.

After months of rumours to the effect that, late ’87, Marr had joined The Pretenders and, according to Morrissey in February '88, was co-writing their album, nothing original has appeared nor is likely to appear in the near future from the Chrissie and Johnny combination. Only the Bacharach/David ‘Windows Of The World’ 45 (with its Iggy cover flipside, also from the movie 1969) has been released and, according to The Pretenders’ record company WEA, “Johnny Marr was never really a Pretender although he did tour with them in Brazil and Los Angeles”.

Having already worked with Kirsty MacColl - on The Smiths' Twinkle cover of ‘Golden Lights’ and Talking Heads’ ‘Naked’ - it somehow seemed inevitable that Marr would get involved with Simple Minds too. (MacColl’s spouse Steve Lillywhite, following work on the Minds’ ‘Once Upon A Time’, produced The Smiths’ ‘Ask’.)

“I met Johnny through Chrissie and his involvement with The Pretenders,” says Jim Kerr. “He and Charlie Burchill our guitar player really hit it off. He said to me, ‘I’d love to be involved’, and that’s how it came about. I asked him to be our special guest.” Thus Marr, with new-look Wildean floppy barnet (very Manchester, very Happy Mondays) played along with Simple Minds at the Nelson Mandela birthday bash at Wembley in June ’88.

And there’s been a sense of continuity and consistency in terms of the man’s musical associations, from The Pretenders through to MacColl’s ‘Kite’ and The The’s ‘Mindbomb’. On the former he’s featured alongside Simple Minds’ Mel Gaynor, former Pretender Robbie McIntosh and The The drummer David Palmer. While the connection with The The goes back much further: “I’ve known Matt longer than I’ve known Morrissey”, Marr told Manchester’s Debris magazine last month in a too-rare interview, “and I nearly joined The The before The Smiths were formed.”

THE ONLY GREAT GUITARISTS ARE DEAD GUITARISTS!

“I wanted to be in the position I’m in now, exactly,” Marr told NME in February 1984. “ I knew as soon as I started playing guitar I’d never be a frontman, and all the people I’ve ever looked up to were musician’s musicians. I wasn’t doing the Tom Petty bit either!”

Back in late ’86, hacks like me were filling these pages with barbed attacks on Johnny Marr’s “nun-eating rock-monster” Smiths. What with the addition of Gannon’s guitar, rumours of Rourke’s chemistry trip, Nick Kent’s revelation of Marr’s “potential alcoholism” during The Smiths self-destructive American tour, not forgetting his rock ’n’ roll car crash which forced the cancellation of their Artists Against Apartheid gig.

Obviously, with benefit of hindsight, the increasing pressures put on Marr by the press (guilty, m’lord) and by The Smiths’ remarkable success began to tell. Having stated in May ’85 that “the traditional incurable rock ’n’ roller never interested me remotely” and, proclaimed on The South Bank Show that “on the face of it we wanted to ditch everything that people superficially think is rock ’n’ roll, leather trousers, long hair and drugs.. .’’, superficially Marr almost seemed to be moving towards the stereotype.

Reflecting on his decision to quit The Smiths he told Debris that “I was ill and away from home and I’ve no idea what would have happened to me musically ...” and added “ I ally myself more with modern musicians. I don’t see myself as one in a long line of guitar greats. And also what freaked people out was the fact that I was betraying the most perfect pop group of the '80s.. .They wanted me to die, they wanted to see me die in some rock ’n’ roll graveyard.”

Given that was the way The Smiths seemed to be heading, it’s remarkably positive Johnny Marr hasn’t gone to the traditional end of the rock ’n’ roll road; that he hasn’t ended up like Brian Jones, Duane Allman, Jimi Hendrix or, particularly, James Honeyman-Scott, The Pretender who died of cocaine and heroin addiction in June ’82. From the very beginning Marr’s guitar style and image were likened to The Pretenders: “In the car we await Johnny Marr, whose appearance suggests an impish Jim Honeyman-Scott,” Barney Hoskyns, NME (February 1984).

NEED MARR’S GUITARS

“Johnny is an incredibly sharp kiddie, he’s one of the last great guitar heroes and he’s been asked to do sessions for Keith Richard: Ronnie Wood, all the old hags.” (Nick Kent, South Bank Show, November ’87).

We should be grateful for small mercies. Marr may have sidled up to Bryan Ferry but he’s yet to rub shoulders too-closely with Mr Death Warmed Up, Keith Richards. Instead of ligging and gigging, in summer ’89 we’re beginning to hear again the positive side of Johnny Marr.

Always the most politically active of The Smiths - Red Wedge, GLC Festival For Jobs, Artists Against Apartheid - his official membership of The The will give him an even greater outlet for his commitments. “It’s a serious project and there are serious plans to tour later this year,” claims his management. Plus Kirsty MacColl, describing his influence on ‘Kite’, said, "he was really encouraging, saying ‘why aren’t you doing anything, get up off your arse’. He’s a very energetic person to be around.”

As these projects at last come to vinyl fruition, there’s serious talk of Johnny Marr working with Cog Sinister artiste, hairdressing DJ and long-time Smiths confidant Andrew Berry at his home studio, plus solid confirmed rumours of Marr collaborating with Barney Sumner of New Order and even Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys. However, Marr’s management are reluctant to confirm this or to indicate whether this could really be construed as “his own material”.

“Barney is working with Johnny Marr in the Lake District and getting some stuff together with The Pet Shop Boys,” according to Peter Hook of New Order. While Barney himself has admitted, “Johnny’s playing guitar on it. We’ve done about seven backing tracks without any vocals. What’s going to happen is he'll write a couple and I’ll write a couple and maybe four we’ll write together.”

So what's all the mystery about? And when will Johnny Marr be ready to tell his side of the story? Above all, what’s important is that at last he’s making his own music again, albeit for a variety of associates, rather than just garnering “additional guitar” credits here and there.

Listening back, through the brilliant opening shards of guitar on ‘Hand In Glove’ and This Charming Man’ to ‘Panic’ and ‘There Is A Light...’ and ‘Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before’, there was always a remarkable quality and consistency and distinctive style to Johnny Marr’s compositions, an originality that has been sorely missed these last 18 months.

“I feel like I’ve got a duty to do all that the groups from the '60s and 70s promised before they f—ed up on drugs,” said Matt Johnson recently. “It's like me and Johnny were saying the other day. We've been around the block a few times and we’ve got it out of our systems.”