Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin RichmondJohnny Marr is an acclaimed British guitarist who’s played with a ton of bands including, most famously, The Smiths. Marr started playing guitar as a young teenager growing up in Manchester. When he turned 15 he dropped out of school and moved to London to join the band Sister Ray.
A couple years later he would help form The Smiths with Morrissey, Mike Joyce, and Marr’s friend and bassist, Andy Rourke. After The Smiths broke up in 1987, Marr went on to collaborate with an array of different musicians and play in bands like The Pretenders, The The, and Modest Mouse. In the early aughts, Marr started releasing solo material, and he’s on the brink of releasing a new album of his greatest hits.
On today’s episode Justin Richmond talks to Johnny Marr about his exciting work scoring movies with Pharrell and Hans Zimmer. Marr also recalls the terror he felt performing live in front of stadiums full of fans with The Pretenders on U2’s Joshua Tree tour. And he talks about the time he bought a Fender Stratocaster while hanging out with Oasis’ Noel Gallager. That Strat has nine pickups and it eventually led to him writing one the best songs of his solo career.
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Johnny Marr songs HERE.
Pushkin. Johnny Marr is maybe the last in a line of acclaimed British guitarists. He's played with tons of bands, including most famously, The Smiths. Mar started playing guitar as a young teenager growing up in Manchester. When he turned fifteen, he dropped out of school and moved to London to join the band Sister Ray. A couple of years later, he wound up helping to form The Smiths with Morrissey, Mike Joyce and Mars's friend and bassist Andy Rourke. Then, after The Smiths broke up in eighty seven, he went on to collaborate with an array of different musicians and playing bands like The Pretenders, The The and even later Modest Mouse. In the early adds, Mars started releasing solo material, and he's on the brink of releasing a new album full of the best songs from his solo career. On today's episode, I talked to Johnny Marr about his exciting work in the studio with Farrell and on Zimmer. Mar also recalls the terror he felt performing live in front of massive stadiums full of fans with The Pretenders on YouTube's Joshua Tree Tour He also talks about the time he bought a Fender Stratocaster with Noel Gallagher from Oasis that Stratt had nine pickups and eventually led him to write one of the best songs of his solo career. This is broken record liner notes for the Digital Age. I'm justin Ritchman. Here's my conversation with Johnny Marr. It seems like a really sort of whirlwind time in your life. It must be like a lot of things that are connected to you.
Now, do you know what I've been really looking at in hand on her and maybe accept for I don't know, a period in my I guess mid thirties or something where, you know, for a couple of years I was sort of like doing other things. But I feel like I've been busy for like forty years or something. I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but I'm always I'm kind of busy because I'm a workaholic. Well, actually it's a bad way of putting it. I'm really passionate about what I do. I've been doing the same things as intensely as I do now.
I've been doing that since I was fifteen.
I left school at fifteen to join a pro band with adults at fifteen and then really ever since nineteen eighty two, when I've made my first record with the Smiths, I just feel like I've never really stopped, you know, so I've been obviously I feel very very grateful to be to do that. But yeah, I mean, I suppose the last big thing I did was the Bond movie with an Zimmer. But and this year, really we've got a best of coming out. I was on tour with the Killers last year and right now I'm just rehearsing to go out and.
Do some more stuff.
Really, you know, I've not done a solo or best of yet before that's about.
To come out now, And that was that was to do with the record coming in.
The management just kind of went, hey, look, we know that you're going to be expect them to go in and make another LP, make another album. Well you've only just done a double album last year, so just hold your horses and let's just it's been ten years since you've had this solo band, and let's just put it all on the best of and if you if you think it's a good listen, let's do it.
Do you like it? Have you have you sequenced it and listened.
Yeah, yeah, you know.
I know this might sound a little odd to say, but being given the assignment to put a best of out when it wasn't driven by me, when it comes from someone else, and going oh, okay, right, let me look at that, and then getting it all mastered and listening to it, you know, because I had to listen to the test pressings. Right, So the test presents coming, and you know, I've been doing this since I was a kid, Right, test presents come.
I'm always excited about.
That, like, oh, great white labels, and you put it on the turntable and you have to sit and you have to listen for any little pops or anything.
You know.
I said to the band guys last night I got the test presence of them. You know, it's a pretty good album, man, it's a good listen, you know, because I don't take anything for granted, you know, justin so.
So please with it.
It's great. I'd be excited to check that out because I've sort of been over the last year just curating, oddly enough, just different playlists of things that you're involved in, like I don't know, just randomly resequencing Smith's records just for fun or like, yeah, I made a playlist of stuff that was just stuff that you've played on but weren't like bands that you were actually a part of.
Ye.
And then your last record, the Fever Dreams one through four, I mean, just came out. It was like a wealth of great material. You know.
Thanks.
I'm glad that that I've done all of that stuff. I mean obviously, but I did a couple of tracks with Beck, and then I did maybe four or five tracks with John Fishanty, and then I popped up on records with all these different really cool musicians. Yeah, yeah, but perchance, Yeah, And that was so well. As I was doing it, I was thinking, wow, man, this is oh I love this music, and what a cool thing, you know. So so like when John vi Shanity, he invited me over to when he was working on the Imperium and it was like, I've got these tracks, take your pick, and he played me a track and I was like, oh, I think I can do something on that band and played me another track. Oh, I've got an idea for that bank And then you know, a couple of days later you kind of go, well, that was a nice experience. So I think what I'm saying is none of it's planned. It's all this kind of I'm going to say it a journey. I've been a musician and being very, very fortunate that people who were doing cool things have invited me to do cool things with them.
You know, it's never been planned.
Is it something about you, like you yourself as a person, or about your plane, or a bit of both that allows you to fit in with so many different kinds of people.
Well, I guess so, But I think musicians are very welcoming and inclusive types of people. It might be a bit cheesy, but I have a certain kind of pride in that, not my personal coming about myself, but my you know, brothers and sisters of music. You know they because let's put it this way, I've been around.
I don't whether you've ever.
Been in a room with several actors or in a taxi with several comedians, but often there's a bit of a competitive vibe. I know it's a generalization, right. I know a bunch of great actors, and I know a bunch of some great comedians, right, But I've noticed that musicians are very You get a couple of musicians together, and you go, hey, did you have you ever heard this thing that came out in nineteen eighty six?
Oh man, you're gonna love.
It, or I really really like this thing, or oh man, did you know that he played the drums on this record in nineteen sixty five, And there's always this sharing kind of think, Well, I'm really typical like that as a as a musician, I suppose I'm very enthusiastic.
If I hear something that I'm into.
And the people that I've mentioned may Pet Shop Boys as well. You know, we had a little bit of a tradition for a while there where they would always get me to do the B sides of their singles. They were like, well, okay, we've got this this electro pop and the B side. Usually it'd be like this, the B side is slightly experimental, and it'd be interesting to put a guitar on it, which in Pet Shop Boys land is being experimental, which and then and they go, okay, well, Johnny'll do it. And I'm the guy for that because I love them, and so I've got to be on more Pet Shop Boys records than any other musician. I pop up and do all the ones where they go listen, We've got this guitar song. You know, I'm very proud of that. So to answer your question, it's a partly to do with my personality being very, very typical kind of musician. That means I will stay in the studio either listening to stories or telling stories till really till three am or whatever it used to be seven am.
But these days are a little bit more moderate.
And the other thing is, I guess the second thing you mentioned, I like to play guitar that I think is appropriate to whatever the song is. So if all that's required is, like recently on No Gallagher stuff, for instance, I'm not going in there going right okay by bar eight, you really need to know that I'm on it.
I just kind of go, what's the song? And I sort of.
Think in that regard, I'm not really beyond thinking like a session musician.
I don't have to really be this big deal on it, you know what I mean.
It's the thing I really enjoy about your playing in your career is there is this bit of you that almost approaches music the way like a jazz musician did in the fifties or sixties, like Herbie Hancock can put out, you know, peer in Islands, and then also just go play on like a great Lee Morgan record, and he puts as much of his heart and soul into that side man work quote unquote, you can tell as he seem to have done his own records. You know.
Yeah, I mean that's an absolute honor because I think that sort of feels about right. I think when you were talking then, I was thinking paradoxically, people who say they don't like jazz or people who don't like jazz, I think it's about just people blowing. But to me, one of the best things about jazz musicians is to be a good jazz musician, you have to listen.
Yeah, you have to listen to what everybody else is doing.
It's a conversation and you know you can do that in indie rock again, come back to say, the most recent thing that I've done with somebody else with no Gallagher stuff. I want to make the record really good, you know. So there's bits where you lay out, and then there's bits when you play just textual stuff, and then there's bits where you come in with the riff. And ultimately it's his record and his vision, and he trusts me to do because he knows that I'm all about the big picture and not about me just stepping all over it other times.
Though, you know, I did a record with.
The Australian project Avalanches a few years ago with me and MGMs were on there. Yeah, me and MGMT did a song with them, and that was that was really cool because they had this idea for this riff and I said, okay, well what about if I just develop it? And then what I did was sort of featured and that kind of floated through the track.
So it's whatever's appropriate. Really.
I remember when I was learning, maybe twelve thirteen something, so I sort of have been in the mid seventies just.
For punk broke out.
Back then, there wasn't you know, you wouldn't be able to go in Barnes and Noble or Waterstones in England and see like shelves and shelves of books about anybody.
You know. I'm sure Justin Bieber has got a whole wall for but whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah, but back then that wasn't a thing, right, So I would read the music press and I would go into the library and if a book did appear about whoever it was, I didn't if it caught my interest. I would read it or just stand in the bookstore and read it. There's only a few things around. I remember there's one about Pete Sounds, and there was a Miles Davis one, and.
There was led Zeppelin monster stuff.
But anyway, when you start off, if you're really obsessive, as I was, some bits of information really stick to you. And there was it was either Keith Richards or John Lennon, I think, was saying that the most important part of being a guitar player is being able to play rhythm. And to a twelve year old boy whose poles are all going, you know, trying to play all this shreddy stuff or whatever, when I read that information, I was kind of like, huh, it sounded really noble to me. And this thing of underpinning the band and having the groove down and all of that. And then obviously as time went on and I got into people like Keith Richards or or obviously Nol Rodgers and people like that, and you know, Jimmy Nolan who plays with James Brown and just any number of really great rhythm players. That's just one of the chapters that you need to have got through, you know, what I mean, it's just part of being a guitar player.
I think. I just think it's really cool to just like be appropriate to the song.
Yeah, is your phone just open? You just say, people just know you're ready to play all these.
Pretty Yeah, I know pretty much because it's been that way for years. I mean a lot, I know a lot of people. I mean, I'm always I'm never not available for Brian Ferry because I've been working with Brian now since nineteen eighties eighty seven, and Brian's always writing, and he's always he's always making tracks. He's always got tracks upon the go and he comes back to them and all this sort of stuff. So that's been an ongoing thing for years. But then since I guess twenty ten, Hands Zimmer. If Hands wants something doing, even if it's something on the on the choiet, just you know, you need a little bit of this or I'll do that.
What an incredible relationship, I mean, musical relationship you guys have built.
Yeah, he really taught me a lot. I think with Hands, he's he's got the soul of a rock musician. And if you go to his shows, which are now like three hours long, and it's some of the pieces that he's doing in this current show, which actually my son plays plays in that.
I've been I've been upgraded to the mar.
Version two two point zero, so my son plays in that. But there are some moments in that show that it makes Cashmere sound like a boy band. It's wow, amazingly orchestrated rock music.
At the heart of it is rock music.
And you know, with me and hands, you know, once we get talking about music and talking about melotrons and fair lights or late sixties strats or what you know, or Tangerine dream or whatever next thing, we look at our watch and it's you know, it's Quartpus three in the am, you know, and we just sit around his studios listening to music, playing music or talking about music. It's so that's what my pals are like. My friends are the same as me, you know, we're Yeah, it's it's what I dreamed of when I was a kid, you know.
For Shanty's same kind of character being around John Frushanti, the amount of guitar players he can reference in a given moment, and he feels like he's able to synthesize all of these disparate you know, he's almost like a computer to me, Like talk about AI, It's like, how is he pulling from all that at once? That's it's insane.
Well, it's well, there's a couple of things that come to mind when you say that. I think you're absolutely right about John and there's a few other people I know like that. I think people who are great, whoever they are. But in my field it's musicians. They are experts, absolute experts. And that might sound obvious, but there's this famous story about when Bob Marley first went into record and it was like some little four track and he was like sixteen or seventeen or something. I think it was with Cocksol or something. And if you hear enough about those stories, you hear you know what. He was kind of a pain in the ass because he would be like, the backing vocals are too loud, back in volks are too loud. Because he'd studied the Coasters, and he'd studied the Drifters, and he'd studied Curtis Mayfel and the Impressions, so he knew how the backing vocals on those. This is when he was a kid, right, But you could go right across in sports, I'm sure in business too, but people who are great are real experts. I guess it's not a surprise because it's your passion.
So become obcessive, You've become obsessive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you love.
It, that's right, you know.
And then the second thing you're talking about there, like with Johnny's and other people like that, are there's a lot of musicians like this. They take all of these different elements only to them make sense and then it comes out. But when you hear it, he goes, oh, yeah, it sounds like that. So for example, in my case, like for forty years, I didn't really do a lot of interviews in the early Smith's days, but when I was asked about guitar playing, when I had to really nail it down, I was like, well, now Rogers, Bert Jansch and James Williamson from the studios, Now that's yeah, but that's a pretty boat after anyone who's followed me for years and years knows that they're my like they're my tree.
I mean, obviously I love a lot, you know, I love what Roy Gallagher was doing. I love what you know.
John my Geeock from the band Cheese and Will Sergeant from the Bunny Men. I mean there's hundreds. I mean I could stay here just giving a list and lists of amazing guitar players. Obviously, but at first people would were like, huh, come again, what you like now Rogers I influenced the Smith's. But over time, now people know that some of these songs like that, I go, well, listen to the Boy, listen to the second verse in The Boy with the Thorn in his Side, and or there's a famous story about when I wrote Handy Glove. It just started out as a sheet riff, so point being that that made total sense to me. But you put it all through a funnel, comes in through your own mind, and then it comes out and people go, oh, yeah, it sounds like Johnny mar right. But to me, if I told you what I was thinking of when I was trying to come up with some of these, if you go.
What, I'm so glad that you mentioned James Williamson too, though, because as much as I love the Ashley on Brown Ashton and the Ashton Brothers, James Williamson man like some of those. I feel like some of that music with James gets discounted. That Kill City record. Yeah, Iggy is just one. I mean, I don't know, man, I go to that record all the time because it just blows me away.
Well, it's amazing because when I first met Noel Gallagher, he was a fairly he was young. No, it would have been about maybe twenty or something nineteen. I was pretty young myself, maybe twenty six, twenty seven, but the first time he came to my house, that was the record I gave it. Wasn't aware of it, But I don't know whether this is so what I got from James Willimson. I had thought I was playing when I was about fifteen, and it was something like and a friend of mine, Billy Duffiy, went on it being the call. He said to me, that sounds like gimme Danger, and I was like, what's that. I've never heard a gimme danger? And anyway, so a long story, but I tracked down raw Power. So when I heard that, I went, well, that sounds like the way I'm trying to play, so you know, the truth be told. I was a bit pissed that someone had already beat me to this, this new.
Song I was writing. So James is a massive influence on me.
Massive. When I heard that, I just kind of went, you're on the right path. You know you're doing the right thing. And then with say, just for an illustration, seeing as I don't always do this, but just guitar, I don't make can hear his probably? But the Smith's song Handing Glove, well that started off when I first started playing.
It, it went, which is me trying to be cheek.
It was my girlfriend said make it sound more like Iggy, so I did and I ended up sounding like that.
But that and that was the first Smith single.
But when we came out no One, I believe when I said I was now Rogers was a huge influence on me, you know. So you know that's what musicians are like though, aren't they? And I think maybe creative people as well. Sometimes you're trying to copy your heroes and your limitations kind of get I mean, I'm not the first person I said this, but your limitations just kind of put a stamp on what you can and can't do.
We're going to take a break and then come back with more of my interview with Johnny Marr. We're back with more from Johnny Marr. How much in terms of just raw skill do you feel like you've developed from let's say nineteen eighty to now.
Well, I took it really seriously. I started.
My parents to this day still really their music freaks. So I grew up in a house of Irish parents who treated music like it was a religion.
So if I like someone, they really really really like them.
And so I want to see my parents, who are in their eighties now, and my dad was showing me this country music podcast that he just got into and they're still didn't it to this day. My mother she's super into like watching new country singers and singer songwriters on YouTube.
So they were really young.
When I was a kid, So I was brought up around all these young Irish adults, your teenagers, really playing music. So to answer your question, what happened was I just got really obsessed with a guitar. I got my first proper one that I could play chords on when I was about eight or nine, and then I started just trying to play the records on the radio like a lot of people. So I started playing, you know, like getting my own little tunes together and stuff when I was about nine or ten, and then enrolling my friends to be these little bands, and I, you know, i'd write.
I'd do just like t Rex ripoffs.
Really, all my songs were just like t Rex copies. And then I just had a sort of natural knack to be out of place to kind of riffs.
But if i'd have.
Been the sort of person who was, you know, just in a copy of other people and not being a songwriter, you know, I probably would have been shredding away forever. But you know, it's not really my thing that really I wanted to sort of I went to have my own band with my own sound, you know, so.
The skill I have a master. I don't know what is answering your question.
But coming back to hanns Zimmer, what I did on Inception was pretty simple. But when it came to actually playing it on stage with an orchestra, like sixty pieces on stage with a choir and all of that stuff, I wouldn't have ever been able to do that when I was in my twenties. I wouldn't have been able to do it in my thirties either, really, and I might not have even come up with that really simple part.
I think when you get older, you.
Kind of know what you're about, and it's about what I came up with was kind of right for the movie, and I might not have ever been able to do that when I was young.
But I practice every day.
I go through periods where I just practice practice, and then I play absent mindedly when i'm you know, around the house.
And watching TV.
But I'm going through another phase now where I'll come in this little studio here and put the headphones on and and just play and play and try and get you know, try and get my chops. So maybe that's because I'm going out live or I don't know why, but that connects me to the kidd I was when I was eleven or twelve.
Honestly, it's got nothing to do with career.
There's got nothing to do with the Smith's, got nothing to do with like you know, Johnny Mara, or nothing to do with business or anything.
It's because that was my first love. When I was ten year eleven.
I used to peel off from when kids were playing football or we were whatever, we were climbing trees or whatever. Sometimes I would just go and disappear and I'd go into my room on my own and just play for a couple of hours, not even plugged in. And I make all these discoveries and moving chord shapes around. And you know what, man, I'm so grateful that I still want to do that. Yeah, for fun. It's like it's my hobby.
Yeah.
It's the dream for any guitar player to have a setup just like you have in Spiel to do that all day.
That's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, musician.
And you know whatever respective instrument is, like, that's the dream.
Yeah.
But then when it comes time to do an album sometimes I have to I know myself well enough that I have to think about the guitar in a different way. Man, if you give me an if you give me three more lifetimes, okay, I'd love to be John McLaughlin.
Yeah, ah, but.
I'm also quite happy.
But I'm also really happy having been the guitar player in Modest Mouse for a few years.
That's fine by me.
That was incredible work, man, incredible record.
That was because I was in a situation with amazing chemistry.
There was a.
Moment when we were in Mississippi and we were recording the recording. It's one of those times it was like maybe what the four o'clock in the afternoon, We've been trying to get the backing track down to some song on week three or whatever, and I was just stood there and then I just had a moment of present moment awareness, as you know, as it's called, where I just looked around and I went the chemistry in this room with these bunch of people is really really special. This particular bunch of people right now is not just a good vibe, but it's really unusual.
Because one we had two drummers in that band.
One drummer was his thing was like he might have been like, Okay, on this track, I hear pair Ubu, or I hear public image, public Image, or r I hear Stuart Copeland, So Joe plummerould be doing that. And then Jerey Mike Green, who passed away just only a few months ago, he was the other drummer, and he would have been going in his head, oh, this is like fellow cootie, or this is like a rave or so yeah, there are.
Two drummers like that. And then the player Eric Judy.
He was always writing these like little tunes on either accordion at that time, or he was teaching him Yeah, he was teaching himself the acordion, teach himself the flute. And he had some little riff that he'd be playing on the flute, and then he just go, oh, I'm just trying to do that on the base. So yeah, these really unusual, cool, almost dugby basslines. And then the other guy in the band, he's a real utility guy, and he might have been doing something on a pedal steel or his mind was somewhere else. And then Isaac's got his amazing multi layered lyrical agenda that you know is coming from all different places. And then I got my thing that I was like when I got out of bed that day or that week, I was going, this is what I want my this is what I want to bring to this outfit, whatever agenda I've got, and it all fit, it all just fitted together.
Did you have to think through how you might blend with this, because it seems like everyone felt like they had their thing and you're kind of getting put into it. Did it take your second to figure out, Okay, this is what I want to bring or was it kinda just luckily instantaneous.
No, No, I conceptualized it, which I don't mean to sound very dry or contrived, even though no, I really enjoyed going, what's my role here? How can I be really useful and bring something melodic, catchy technical. It was a little like Ocean six, and I happened to be the kind of British bomb disposal expert or the safe cracker.
I was like the safer Yeah. No, I really enjoyed that.
I thought, Okay, I can't just put my head down and go one, two, three, four and just play. I really really enjoyed devising all these parts, and on that record we were dead for anyone who's interested. Usually I'm doing all the stuff on the left and Isaac's doing the stuff on the right, and we this might be getting a bit too music. But when we were coming up with all those songs and those parts, we were in this attic in Portland, and sometimes Isaac and the way I started to think about it, it was like, you know, two racing car drivers that were on the same team, you know, like sometimes that McLaren and stuff the same team, and we're both going around this track and then sometimes it's like no after you, no after you, after you, And occasionally we literally physically crashed into each other because we were stood either back to back or next to each other in this kind of little space and it was really hot, and we're up there and we've been out there for hours, and sometimes we'd be a bit buzzed and I'm really we really listening to each other and I'm trying to Then I'll just jump up the octave and then he plays something and I'd go, I'll get down there, and literally we sometimes would bang into each other, and I thought that was really cool.
Wow, had you had that level of chemistry before, like that level of intense.
In a different way, yeah, in the but it was a different thing with all the bands that I've actually been a band member of, I think in a certain kind of intensity and a sort of belief in that even even without my guitar, and I think I bring a sort of belief in the mission because I think that's very useful in a band.
I mean, I'm all in. I think people realize that now.
It used to frustrate me when I was younger, when the Precious report it, because you know, when I was young, guys to be a little oh, it looks like I'm just bailing.
I'm leaving this band and I'm leaving that band.
But after all these years, now I think people realize that it's anyone who's interested.
It's probably the reverse.
You know, like when I if I join a band, I'm really in and my family and my family moved to Portland. Or when I was in the cribs, you know, I got in the van and I played all the shows, and you know, I don't I don't expect any other kind of separate treatment. I really get get in because it's the way I was when I was fifteen in bands.
It's no different that it's so cool.
Was it because of that level of chemistry that you realize I'm part of the band? Or was it already sort of decided you're sort of in for the ride at this point?
Now? Do you know what?
The very first night we got together, Isaac and I wrote that the song that with that single dashboard became the single. And then I woke up really jet like that about whatever four o'clock in the morning because I'd only got in from England the day before, and.
I woke up on a can of was like, where am I? Oh, I'm in a hotel in Portland.
Did we just write like a really cool cool song with this guy? In fact, we wrote two songs that night. We wrote another one called we've got everything. That was me and him, and then, frankly, because Maddy's Mouth had paid for this English guitar player to come over for ten days, they had to kind of get to rehearsal for noon because you know, they've paid for my flight. And it's kind of like a little bit like, all right, everybody, you know, you know the ringers here or whatever. We better get we better get here, right. But quite cleverly Isaac had done it so a couple of members would join. Each day we'd come, Me and the would feel each other out. So as the days went on, with each couple of people that arrived, and we would jam and get a new song, and jam and get a new song. Very quickly, I was just like, I like these guys, they like me. There's such a positive feeling. Everyone's so enthusiastic. Something's really happening here. And I formed a manager and I said, listen, I'm suppose to be flying back on Wednesday or whatever. I'm going to stay. I'm going to stay for a few weeks. And I fell in love with Portland the city. This was two thousand and five. So to answer your question, by the time you get that sort of brotherhood going in a band and you're all really excited, and also you're playing together these long hours, you know, six seven hours, and you've got a song and you want to fix it the next day, and you're working on this thing. It was that simple. It just would have been really weird to bail.
Yeah, ten days an out after building net.
Yeah, And then that turned into two weeks and then three weeks, and then we're all talking excitedly about, Oh man, are you're going to be greatful?
You did some gigs and I was like, wow.
And the key thing is I really start to i've done this with a few projects. I start to really care about the songs we're making. I really really care about them, even if I haven't written, like in the the you know, my relationship with Matt Johnson, I really believed in what he was doing and some songs, you know, we would make these backing tracks and he'd be like, you know, soul searching about the lyrics and this isn't right and that isn't right. And I felt like I was going through all of that with him, you know. And we did this album Dusking in ninety two. But that's what I mean about being all in. You know, people don't really know that about about me. You know, I'm twenty four to seven. If I'm in a band, how.
Does that translate to when you're when you're leading your own group.
It's very different with my own band because it's a different scenario. With my band, they're there, we've had we've been together now ten years, the same lineup. We all live in the same postcode pretty much, but we all, hey, look, we all live within ten miles of each other, which is kind of unusual for guys of our age. I've been in bands where people live in different cities, in different countries.
That was a very deliberate thing.
When I came back from Portland, I moved to Manchester, not because it's my hometown. I moved here because it's a really great place to run a group, and I knew these musicians and I wanted for us to all I wanted to be at a call a rehearsal for tomorrow night and we all be able to get there. Someone doesn't have to get on a train or a plane, right. So, But why it's different in my band is I write songs and then I bring them to the band and they learn them, and we learn them up and I kind of run it and that's the way they like it, you know.
I mean, we're really very much a group.
But all the torturous I guess, the torturous process where the singer, which is me in this case, is soul searching about lyrics and all that. My guys just lead me to it and they say, look, give me a call when you've got the thing done.
Man, the bastards. So in a way, I suppose.
In my experience my band when we first got together, the closest that i'd seen. It's a bit It's like I have a sort of Beck's band. We kind of when we started, we kind of went that's kind of the yardstick for the kind of music, like a British version of that really oh cool.
You know what I mean, Like when you go and see Beck.
It was like really tight and the tempos were usually the tempos were up, and the drummers drums were really snappy, and he was a leader. But they were also a band, you know, but you knew the guy was going to have a good band. I kind of decided with my band that that's a way I wanted is to be really a bit like Beck's band.
Well, what makes Manchester a great place to sort of run a band out of?
Well, what Seattle was to La in the nineties, Manchester is that to London, do you know what I mean? So where being a musician's a little easier in Manchester's now like well books like Seattle is very there's a lot of money in it. It's a second city, so so London. If you're a musician, okay, and you've got to get rehearsal, it takes you twice a length of time to get to rehearsal space as it does in Manchester. People are usually am I love London and there all the time, but musicians have to live quite a long way out of town because it's really expensive to have apartments there and all of this sort of stuff. Manchester is a little bit more, is a little more like Seattle. And you know, like Seattle, it had a big movement. It rains a lot like Seattle, so it's an indoor culture. There's a whole load of things, you know, just to historically make Manchester really great to run to run, well, there's a history here as well. So for me in my generation, I grew up knowing like, well, the Buzzcocks did it, okay, I mean yeah, Buzzcocks, I mean they were just like gods to my generation. Buzzcocks proved that you didn't have to live in the capital, that you could live in the provinces and make great, really cool music. Because before that it was just it was all about London, London, London. All these bands it was either London and La really London La. So you've got a heritage. And then so because Buzzcox did it, Smith's raided to do it, and the Fall and then because a New Order and Joy Division and because the Smiths and Joy Vision and New Order did it, then Happy Mondays and Stone Roses knew they could do it. And then because they could saw that, you know, they did it, then Oasis saw that they could do it, and so on. Youngsters know that you can be a Manchester band, you know. And so that goes back, that goes right back to the seventies now with Buzzcocks.
So having that in.
The air and knowing that it's a musical town is a good place to sort of grow up around when you're a fledging musician. But really it goes way back historically to like the eighteen sixties eighteen seventies when Manchester was literally the industrial capital of the world and the Industrial Revolution and all the immigrants came so from really everywhere, Eastern Europe and the Caribbean and West Indies and Ireland in my case, and all of this business. So there's it's a real melting pot Manchester of working class immigrants and they all brought their own cultures and their own need for entertainment. So a lot of comedians, Jewish comedians came out here. A lot of people came from Eastern Europe. In my case, you know, a lot of my family they moved over in the early sixties and they came over to work in construction and building.
The roads and all of this stuff.
The Irish and my parents went to all the Irish clubs and they would see all the show bands, and me and my sister would go sometimes to these places in the afternoon where my dad was a booker for these bands, and so we grew up around.
Your dad booked bands, Yeah he did, you.
Yeah, yeah, that was in the seventies. Me and my sister would be there.
We'd be giving like soda and just loads of those sugar, and I'd sit there and I'd watch these cabaret singers and they'd be their vocal their microphones would be going into a space echo or a tape echo Watkins copycat, and there'd be an organ player and a drummer and if I was looking at the big guitar player and they'd be playing all these kind of seventy songs and I thought that was amazing. I just watched these being my sister, watched these bands be like, holy shit, this is great. And sometimes I'd go, no, they're not too good, Dad, Now they're not too good. But just seeing the amplifiers and the electric guitars and all that, I would have been like nine or ten.
I thought that was magic. Yeah. Wow.
So your dad did construction and then somehow got into booking bead.
What was that, Well, that was to do with the Catholic That was to do with the Catholic Church because he was numb. So he's a working class Irish guys are saying he'd be laid pipes, he dug holes in the road and my dad, they're very proud of it. But to do with the Catholic Church, big Irish thing. They would have bands on on a Friday, a Friday and a Saturday night, and all these bands would go an audition in these bars or these pubs, usually on a Sunday afternoon. And all of these used to call themselves agents. But all these people who could say, hey, listen, come and play at my social club for fifty pounds, so they would go an audition for people like my dad, you.
Know, so amazing.
Yeah, yeah, I mean they weren't all that great, but to me it was magic.
There must have been an education onto itself, you know, in terms of how to be and on stage, and you know, one per.
One percent what it was was.
The big thing for me was that I when I watched these bands set up their equipment when I was about seven or eight at these parties. So this was a little early because we used to have these bands play at Christena it'd been out and reinforce the cultural stereotype. But there was a lot of Christenings and a lot of weddings, and my aunties and uncles I used to have these bands play. But when I saw these adults setting up their equipment, that was when it occurred to me that, oh, this is a job. Ah he's nearly always guys, these guys, and I see the same people, the same guys, and they'd be bringing their amplifiers and someone setting the drum kit. I'd be like, Oh, as an adult, you can do that. It's not just people on the television. Because on the television I just see these bands magically appear and looking great, you know, with the velvet suits on and all of this. And I'd actually see these men setting up their equipment and pulling these amplifiers and feeding back and testing, and.
I was like, where do I sign up for that? Wow, that looks like a great job.
Yeah, and your parents must have been thrilled as much as in the music as they are that you started thinking that way, right, Yeah, you know.
I think a lot of people can probably relate to this.
They were absolutely thrilled until at fifteen I decided or fourteen decided that I was gonna go for it and not go to school. So now that it's worked out and I've actually, you know, it's my day job, they're really really proud. Much more than the fact that I'm famous. They're just really proud that I'm a full time guitar player. Seriously, and if I ever make records where there's not enough guitar on it, I kind of get to hear about it.
And yeah, but you know, mount craft work. No, it's okay, I'm playing I'm playing synth on this one. So they proud of that.
But you know, like a lot of teenagers, you know, I went through kind of a pretty rebellious and rough patch. We went through a kind of a bit of a you know, typical sort of rebellious kind of They were worried that when I stopped going to school and was very obviously you know, taking drugs and spending all my time with these reprobates. But it was all really wrapped up with the music as well. It wasn't just hedonistic stuff.
I joined the band. Thing was I joined the band when I was fifteen, who have adults.
Who were very dubious, and my parents kind of said, well, it's either that or you have to get out.
So so I just left harm you know, but just got it.
Yeah, And that was a bit contentious, and you know, so I was a little wild fifteen sixteen.
But what was your sister thinking.
My sister was the mediator. She was the great mediator. She's only eleven months younger than me. We were very tight and still are, you know. But it's a funny one because yeah, they were proud of me being a musician. But I think when I actually was like, listen, I'm going to go for it, and I'm going to go to London and I'm gonna even though you know, I had no money whatsoever, and I'm going to join this band and these adults. So they were very obviously kind of dangerous characters. You know, they're pretty druggy. They sounded like a cross between Hawkwind and I guess the Stooges.
Of course, sister Ray. I think their tracks up on YouTube. It's got a song called suicide.
So because he'd made a rack, they sought me out at fifteen, right, and they were like coming being the band, and I'm pretty sure I said, listen, you are aware that I'm I am fifteen or fourteen even I think I didn't want it to be a freak show, and they were like, hey, listen, now, come on, come on, it'll be cool. So I used to go to their rehearsal a couple of times a week and it was the Red Light area, really kind of rough area in Manchester a couple of nights a week, and to subsidize that, I used to sell clothes and pals and working clothes shops. But anyway I left, I had to leave home. I had to leave home to do that because my parents didn't approve. And that was a little bit of a kind of a rough bit of a look back now, and it was a bit of a wild time for me.
But London and seventy seven at fourteen fifteen, yeah, must have been that must have been crazy.
Well, it was amazing because I went to the I went to the Marquee when I was fifteen to see a band called Pearl Harbor and the Explosions and they had the Stray Cats. Who else was in London at the time, the class she was still around. This is seventy eight, seventy nine, and I was really into this band called the only Ones.
You know, I sung Another Girl Another Planet. Yeah, So I fell.
In love with this band called the only Ones and I followed them around quite a bit and that involved, you know, sleeping on train stations. Me and Andy Rogue, who was my best palet at the time. I enlisted in the Smith, so we Yeah, I used to hang around close shops, and that was all to me. That was all part of the apprenticeship of being a musician because I heard loads of records. As I say, I saw Brian Setzer when I was I think fourteen, I saw Patty Smith when I was fourteen, I saw the Cramps, And to me, all of this stuff has made me what I am really seeing all those bands when I was really young.
What'd you think of Brian Setzer at the time.
I couldn't believe it. He was amazing.
And what were the Straight Cats doing over there?
They had a hit, They had a I think they were.
England was where they took off, and me and my pals were like, listen, there's this crazy guitar player.
It's rockabilly band. I saw them.
I think there was you know, maybe about thirty people in the audience in this whole lot held like eight hundred people.
So all of that stuff. You know, I saw Peru Boo, and I saw a whole load.
Of bands I didn't care for because we used to sneak into all the venues. So I look back on all of that and it can sound romantic, and I can make it sound romantic, and that's because it actually was. I had no problem with walking back from a venue from going to see some band, whether I liked him or not, walking back for miles with no train fair and it all feeling like it was part of an apprenticeship, you.
Know, yeah, yeah, all part of the mission.
Yeah.
How did you meet Andy Rourke?
We went to the same school and he was you know, it's like with guys in school. I saw a guy another guy with long hair, long scruffy hair, and we were either going to be friends or we were going to fight. We were either like in competition or we were comrades, and I think neither of us wanted to fight. You know. I I had a button as you kept in America at a badge that said that it was a Neil Young Tonight's tonight.
And he walked up.
To me and he went to night to night and he did this really amazing Neil Young impression, and I was just really impressed that he knew what tonight's tonight was.
You do that kind of thing when you were a kid, It's so important. I was like, yeah, wow. I mean I wasn't going to wear one that had harvest.
It had to be obviously, it had to be a really obscure badge, and he walked up to me and he just sang Tonight Tonight, and I thought, Wow, this guy's cool, and then we just became friends for life. You know.
It's beautiful. Yeah.
Did you see Neil on that Tonight's the Night tour in London?
No?
No, that was I was too young for that.
Yeah, you know the big amazing story about that, about Tonight's to Night that tour.
So he came over to England.
He played at the Scarlet, which I might be wrong about it might be the Rainbow, but anyway, John Lyden told me this. So he comes and the album hadn't been released yet, and it's also a real down heavy album, as you know, right. Anyway, he comes out and he's got scraggly beard and he's drinking loads of tequila and the stage and if you look on the inside of that record, the stage set is crazy. It's got platform boots hanging up and it's got like a it's got hub caps all over the stage and a fake palm tree. So he comes out and he starts playing this album no one's ever heard. So he plays Tonight's Tonight from start to finish. It's not even been released yet, and it's this real down alcohol kind of thing and he plays it and the audience is like, what the hell is this? And it's going down kind of badly. He goes off and he gets called back on for the encore and he says to the audience, now I'm going to play one that you've heard before, and he plays Tonight's Tonight again.
That happened.
I just saw Neil six nights ago. So it was just like, this guy does not give a fuck.
You know, I've never seen him play.
You've never seen Neil never, man, it's crazy, just for some reason or other, just never.
It's worth it. It's just I've never seen someone so single minded, so single minded, you know those I don't want.
To generalize too much, but I've met a few sixties musicians, which obviously you are very very fortunate, Just just a few a handful, and.
They, nearly to a man and woman, really care about playing. You know what I mean.
I might sound obvious, but the most important thing is if there's a guitar in the room, they will pick it up and they'll play Ronnie Woods like that. Donovan's like that, you know, Paul McCartney's really like that, you know, like those people hats off to him, and I think they're really Ironically, it's kind of come around where some of those older generation musicians they go out and they appear to do it because they're you know, whether it's your thing or not.
But you know, the Rod Stewarts and the Who's.
And the Jaggers and Springsteen's and all of those sort of people. Johnny Mitchell even now coming back. You know, it's nice to see that those people who could be just sat on their boats or sat under the palm trees or spending all the time with their architects and all of that, they appear to be out there doing it because maybe they know something that we don't, which is, you know, what they're really isn't anything better. Yeah, I've realized how super fortunate I am that I have people's ears. You know, there's an audience as people who are like interested in what I'm up to at the moment. That's such a motivations, you know. But I do like to think that might be bullshit. But it's easy for me to say but that if I didn't, I'd still be playing every day, practicing yeah, you know, just for the love of it, and just to try and get better, try and get better and better in some ways, you know, if that's all you've got to do all day, you get pretty good. But it's horses of course, is you know. I like what bands are. I like what indie rock for one. I don't like pump myself in a box too much, but I like the area of music that I work in. I still feel like that there are surprises in that area of music. Obviously, you and I we can talk about go off on these different tangents, talk about all kinds of different music, you know. But my mission, I think it almost kind of got doubled in a way.
When I got the solo band together.
I felt like I had this freedom to pull in all my influences that really goes back to people like Sparks. It's an interesting thing, I think, because what you love is such a subjective thing, obviously, and I think you get to a point in your life where you kind of go back to as an influence. You really do draw on those things that were your first loves. I love being in the modern world. I'm not partiking nostalgic person, but the area of music that I'm working in, guitar music, I guess melodic that I suppose, you know, I don't really use terms like art rock, but you know, I'm fine with being called an indie musician. It all sounds like to me. It's all what used to be called rock music. Anyway, for the longest time. I used to call myself a pop musician for the longer time, and still until I started really recognizing that pop music is something very very different now, and I think that's post rave and to do with the technology and all this sort of stuff. I'm not gonna make past judgment on it. But when I started out at eleven or twelve and studying these records t Rex, the Sweet Sparks that luckily for me, had amazing guitar playing on it. Who knows what in England we call glam rock. In America, glam rock was a different thing. Was a little bit to do with sunset and the hair bands and all that.
Oh yeah, yeah.
But in England glam rock was very definitely nineteen seventy two, seventy three, seventy four, Davy Bowie, you know, the gene Genie and all that stuff, which you know, you know, those forty fives were amazing education for me. And as I say, it's probably subjective because that was when this stuff really really hit me. But I still think that what I do is working within that area where it's for me. The best thing is that it's concise. It doesn't have to go on for seven or eight minutes unless I'm making a point, and there's guitar hooks in it, and the tempos are up, and yeah, it makes you, It gets a blood racing a little bit with some quite sort of interesting, clever, if possible lyrics that fit.
That's the part musician in you. That that's where that is located. And that's what probably i'd imagine, like probably how you fell in love with Chic in the seventies.
Yeah, yeah, Well I think with sik it was to do with the harmonic progressions a lot. I always say this, but with so much is made with now Rogers, everyone obviously thinks, even if they're not musicians, what they're thinking of is his right hand.
Well, what I'm really.
Fell in love with was his left hand. These beautiful McCoy tyner. The first time I ever met now Rogers, first question asked was do you really like McCoy tyner because the core progression's so beautiful, so pretty, so emotional, you know, I want your love and lost in music and oh man, So that's why I like that stuff particularly. It wasn't just a groove, it was those beautiful harmonic changes. So yeah, I'm a real melody freak, and I'll try and squeeze those hooks in too, excite in kind of punchy guitar music wherever I can, especially if it's my own stuff.
We're going to take another quick break and then come back with the rest of my conversation with Johnny Marr. We're back with the rest of my conversation with Johnny Marr. Where did the riff for Spirit, Power and Soul? Can you figure out how you arrived at that riff?
Yeah?
What I did was months before, when I was on the road. We had this third album called called The Comet. I started to think, the next single off the next album should be like an electro banger. I kind of did conceptualize it hand on heart. Now, Hey, I wish I could do that with every track, but the smith's used to do that. Sometimes we'd go because I was given a title, often not always, but sometimes say sometimes. I was given a title like Panic, and I was like, oh, what does that conjure up? Or meet his murder? And we meet his murder. I set myself the task of writing a horror score for animals because.
I had the title.
So I quite enjoy hey listen as I say. I wish I could do it more often. But I had the idea for Spirit, Power and Soul months before, and I went, oh, man, this band the next album, the first track on it would be really good if I can write an electro banger. So I started with a drum machine. I borrowed the drum machine off Steve Morris from New Order, which actually I've got to give it him back. And yeah, I thought, if I'm going to borrow, if I'm gonna borrow a drum machine, who better to borrow one off than Steve Great. So I got in a programming, even though I could have done it much quicker on the laptop, but that wasn't the point. I wanted to do the process, and I was kind of going, all right, we'll do something that's.
Like Cabaret vaultare.
So I had the beat anyway, I was playing along with that for like four days, and I wrote this song that wasn't very good, and then I had to just kind of scrap it and apply myself again. And I just wrote it and wrote it and wrote it and wrote it. I went in the studio from ten so five or six for five days and I would sing melody and melody and this is too clever.
This, it's to melodic.
This is I just knew what I wanted, but I knew what it would be when I found it. Hey, I'm talking a little bit like I've written a day in the life. I know it's but that's what I had to do.
It's a great song, man, it's a great.
Thank you very much. Well.
I appreciate that because I worked my ass off doing it. I just kept writing these vocal melodies that were too melodic, so it became a real craft. The interesting thing about that song is that sometimes I have ideas, and I've had these ideas from being a kid, where I have an idea for what would be a good song away from the guitar and away from the studio, and I have it in my mind, and then I set about trying to do it, and when it works out, it's fantastic.
It's a wild way to come to a song, like you're not even in the realm of music, you're away from it. Do you think that would be the worst song potentially that it's like this thing where you're like conceptualizing it before you even have the chance to you know.
Yeah, well, I'm really glad it worked out. But I was determined. And to be fair, I think when you're talking about skills, say, one of the skills that I've learned that I didn't have years ago was I learned this perseverance from Bernard Sumner from New Order. Working with Bernard for nine years in Electronic If he had an idea for a song and he believed in it, he would not let that thing go away. He would keep coming back to it until he was right. So that was a skill that I've learned along the way from somebody else. It was it wasn't to do with, you know, diatonic scales, what to do with, you know, music theory. Was to do with application process, and I've learned on that subject. It's been I could go through all the people I've worked with and tell you what I've learned from him. Now I think about it, I might be getting a little bit sentimental in my old age, but Isaac Brock, Pritty High and everyone, everyone, really I learned something from all of them.
You know what about from Chrissy.
Chrissy ay listen?
I played with the last week at Glastonbury, you know, and that was amazing rejoining playing those songs after thirty years, you know, because I haven't played them since nineteen eighty whatever. So Chrissy, well, I learned that there's a lot when you walk on stage, even though I don't want to embarrass it. She mightn't even realize this, but when you walk on stage as the front man, you give off the vibe to the rest of.
The band that no matter what happens, you've got this.
And I picked up because I was very young when I was working with Christy was twenty four and we were doing these we were playing sometimes we played to one hundred thousand people opening for you too, and certainly seventy thousand people most nights on the Joshua Tree tour.
And I'm telling you, I was terrified.
But when I walked behind her on stage, I was like, It's cool, she's got this.
I try and be that for my band.
Yeah, and also you know things like in rehearsal when you wear that one, two, three four, when you start singing, you sing like you're on stage. None of this like looking at your phone or looking up at the roof and or you know, being distracted when for those four minutes that you're singing.
You really are in it. Yeah. I learned a lot from Christy.
Yeah, she's quite dedicated as a in her as her role as front person.
In a natural way, in a natural way because a big part of her as well is that she's a punk rocker and she's not too referential the business of being in a band. She honors that she thinks being in a band is a special thing, and especially her relationship with a guitar player that goes right back to Jimmy Scott, who I was a big fan of when I was a kid, which you can really hear in my plane, you know.
Yeah, speaking of like, you know, you're sort of thinking of yourself as a pop musician in a weird way. On paper could look like a strange pairing, but I think having spoken to you now, it seems to make a ton of sense. You and Hans Zimmer and Pharrell getting together, yeah, about a decade ago to work on some of that Spider Man stuff.
Yeah.
You know. Well, I've got to say this is classic hands because Hans is a real lateral thinker. He really thinks outside of the box. And he genuinely told me this so many times now that I really think it's true. So when me and Pharrell first got in a room together and we wrote two songs on that that thing, just me and him, Hans loved telling this story that he was watching the guy who wrote literally, watching the guy who wrote Heaven Knows I'm Miserable now writing a song with the guy who wrote Happy.
He thought that was hilarious.
And so we got offered that movie, The Amazing Spider Man three, and he and I got together and he was like, well, what comes to mind what you're thinking. I don't really know the franchise very much, but I had this idea.
I saw the opening scene, so a real rough it.
And it was New York and it was like, there's a lot of action and everything, and I said, you know what it should it should be like the Who. I wasn't thinking classic rock, but I was just thinking it should be like won't get fooled again.
It should be like, if you're asking me as a.
Guitar player power chords, it's whoa this big kind of explosive thing. I never think in terms of metal. It's just not my bag. But yeah, if I think explosive, I think of like the Who or whatever. And he really liked that idea, and then from that he jumped then to like having a band in a room so straight away because Junkie Excel was he had a studio in the same building that we were in, and he was brilliant like, well listen, we'll get junky Excel on bass.
And then we had this idea about this explosive pop book.
Hands then was like, who's the most melodic thinking that you can think of? Who's like, who's amazing act coming up with melodies? And he just let's just ask for real, and I was like, well, I was like, well, this would be interesting. I mean, I'm not I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this at all. But when for All comes in the room, he's like, where's the tune? Let me write a tune.
He's amazing.
We were putting the song down. I don't I'm sure he won't mind me telling this story. I've been for a run in the morning and I had this idea that we needed a romantic song. We need like the love the love song in this And I just happened to be out running in the morning and I heard that this this tune in my head. I was like, oh, that would be good, so I'll get I was enthusiastic to get in the studio and put this tune down.
So I got in the studio.
Kind of early, and we're in this big room and I started laying this down and there's some of the musicians, a couple of string players piano, and Hans was playing piano, and fell wasn't there. And we started putting this running the chords down and I've got this tune and we're putting it down and we're recording it. And about the second time I get through this tune for our walks in and uh. We're halfway through the tune and he's kind of trying to be quiet and make a noise and he's got he picks the microphone up and when we finished doing this quick run through, we've got to start a third one for some technical reason, and he's asking Steve Lipson to stop the track. I want to sing, and Hans goes, can we just put the track down?
He goes, I want to.
Now, My point in telling this story is that most musicians know that is the opposite of what happens. What usually happens is you have a tune and you put the tune down and you have to wait for days for the singer to sing. For I was like, plug this in, plug this in, let me sing. It was brilliant, and he's in the control room. He's tapping on his phone all the time, tapping on his phone writing lyrics. So my experience with with with for Alpha on that movie was he was He's exactly what I thought.
He was. Just music just oozes out the guy. I love it. Yeah, So that was this funny thing.
But when when I've been asked a couple of times about collaboration, right, I use that that example of writing with Pharrell as an illustration as to what happens in the collaborative process, because on the face of it, what I say is it's like when you've got two musicians working together. On the face of it, look, I'm an indie rock musician from Manchester in the eighties and then Pharrell is a R and B, you know, hip hop pop musician from America. But I always say it's a bit like you're getting a rowbot and the two ears are rowing in the same direction, and the horizon is the speakers. I think the point is is that music and collaboration and when you're trying to create something with someone, even if you don't know them very well, it transcends your being from different backgrounds, completely transcends it. Yeah, music's amazing for that, and collaboration is amazing.
You're both trying to just come up with a really good middle eight.
And because of that, because people on the outside will go, oh, yeah, you have to check your egos at the door or well, I mean that's a given because people who are serious, they just want to make something great and it's not even a question of egos, you know.
I mean the people I've worked with, the.
Greats, you know they I'm sure they have an ego when they're getting out on stage, but when it comes down to work, they know, you know, you've got to put the hours in. Billie Eilish is like that, Atlicia Keys is like that, just real hard working, rolling the sleeves up and putting the hours in, you know.
A talking about greats who put in the work. What was it like observing or being a part of the Joshua Tree tour like seeing YouTube in that moment as a close.
If you were well, the amazing thing was I told Edge this actually that so when I joined that tour, because the pretender's been doing it for a while, and then the guitar player quit and then I joined on there. At that point, Bono was doing this thing where he's in front of whatever, seventy eighty thousand people and they've got this material that is just really sounding good in those stadiums. And don't forget that it was new music then where the Streets have No Name and I still haven't found what I'm looking for. They were new songs that people were just hearing on the radio right, So it was like, WHOA, this is a pretty good place to be.
I was stood out the side of the stage going wow, when you hear that, When you hear where.
The Streets have no Name, which I think they used to start with, you go what, I think this song's going to stick around for a while. And so there was a vibe and they come on and Bonn I was doing this thing where midway through the set or whatever, he would climb up on the pa and then he would climb on whatever, on some light in trust or whatever, and he was hanging down off doing that thing, and he'd be hanging down a fit and you know, and Chrissy said to me, go to look at that.
You know, it's kind of laughing about it. What does he think he's doing?
And I said to her, you know, chrisy, I saw him do that in front of about forty people in a little room in Manchester when they first came at Manchester in nineteen eighty.
I want to say, me and my pals went down.
We heard about him on the John Peel Show and I thought that's really cool because he was doing it back then, and also I guess the music, I think I started to see that.
Well. First off, you've got to have a real.
Got a lot of energy to be the head of you know, that kind of organization with like you know, fifteen trucks and such a big, big organization. You know, that takes a lot out of you during the day, forget even the shows.
Just being the.
Center of all of that operation, which you know, made me realize that I'm okay with being what I am, you know, but because you know, I don't like a lot of fuss, So.
I really admired that.
But how masterful it was that you the tunes have to be really if you listen to those, that kind of music, which I guess was part of what defined now stayed in music.
It's very simple, but it's in I.
Remember those those nights as been pretty there's a lot of motion in that music. Simple doesn't necessarily mean like vacuous. Yeah, I still haven't found what I'm looking for is such as and and the Singing Man.
So yeah, that was really that. That was very very cool.
And again you know the chemistry of a band, if ever, you know, you want to talk about chemistry, you know, look at those guys. They're kind of really archetypal. You know, the edges are really archetypal. He's rolling the and you know, he's kind of arty, and he's got imagination and he he sort of paints pictures and with his guitars that sound and all of that, and Adam really holds it down. And then Bono's a flamboyant on stage and off kind of concepts guy and and Larry's the guy who kind of really is he formed the whole thing and he's like the engine in a way. Yeah, so it comes back to that thing if you are what you play.
Yeah, when I think about the Edge, I also start to think about like Johnny Greenwood, Oh yeah, I mean he seems to me like you also, where it's like it's sort of just down to like like it doesn't matter how complicated it sounds. It's just like what fits this track, you know, and is adventurous.
Similarly, yeah, well, well, difference between me and Johnny though, is that he's been able to grow with the same musicians over a long period of time, you know what I mean, because again, they are another band, you know, with amazing chemistry.
You know, they've all beco who they are.
I mean, I know now that you know, they got to a place where they're all doing their own projects and everything. But Johnny's been in a place where he's been able to grow with Phil Selway playing behind him and with Tom next to him. The difference with me is that I've done that in different bands. I think that's a big difference between me and Johnny. You know, in a way if you like Johnny's, Johnny's family stayed together a long time, whereas my family was a very the family I was known for was very short lived, you know, in the Smiths, which is fine now. It happens with a lot more bands in than the ones that stay together for forty years.
I think like the Beatles too, the Beatles. The Beatles short lived, but a lot of packed a big punch in their time. And it's smith I mean, you look at the work you guys did in the short amount of time. It's like, damn, it's a lot of It's a lot of work.
Yeah.
Yeah, it felt like that, and I'm very extremely proud of it. But I think Johnny's as well as been supremely talented. I think he's been in a place where he can really he occupies his place in that band and has done for a long time now, and he's you know that band that they've all they've all sort of grown around each other, you know what I mean. You pick any album like kid A or that, you know, I'm easy at that period. I really like him Rainbows as well, and they've all kind of evolved together. So I think that's really that's really suited him as a musician. I think it always suited my personality to kind of flit around. Really, you know, it doesn't come as any surprise to me whatsoever that I've been in loads of different bands.
Going back to the beginning of our conversation. I love that it's something you've done, and I wish you I don't know. It's like, you know, if I had my brothers, my personal taste taking into consideration to have my brothers, I would have that happen more often. Like I love seeing different like going back to jazz, like I love It's like I love the fact that I can pull up and be like, oh, I want to hear, Oh I can hear Oscar Peterson play with with Check Baker on this one, or I can hear I want to hear Wayne Shorter play with you know, Jimmy Cabb instead of what you know, right, I just want to hear what the different combinations and formations sound like. And that's what's cool about and why I got into making lots playlists around news, because it's like just cool toy hear how someone sounds in different context with different people at different times. It's just fun.
Yeah, thanks.
Well, sometimes I think what I do is more heard in some situations than others. So in the other there was quite a lot of space for me to do my thing in especially on the Dusk album you can hear you can hear me quite a lot, and then other times, like with electronic, the guitar kind of got squeezed out. But that was my actually down to me because I was really kind of getting getting so in electronic pop and I just got really enthusiastic for that, and I guess, you know, I just sort of fell out of love with being a rock musician during that period. But that's okay because I was only twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven.
It's all part of.
It and I've done that now and if you know, but but where the guitar did feature in on electronics records likes feel every be and get the message, it was pretty interesting stuff. I kind of wish that I'd done more of it, and Bernard was always, to be fair of Bernard was always encouraging me to do more of it, but I wanted to learn about other aspects of record making there so it is or what it is and you know, and on the Cribs record that I made.
There's plenty of me on that stuff. I can hear a lot of that.
So I mean, I really feel like as a and I don't mean to sound glib or whatever, but I kind of think of as a British guitar player, I've kind of had the best job I could think of. I mean genuinely, you know, I understand sure because Dismiss are so revered and so loved over time and almost you know, times made the band almost even more kind of you know, valued or whatever the big narrative is. People are seeing, oh the band was so short lived, if only they could stay together.
For longer, and all of that.
But it makes sense to me that just speaking for my own life, that I've done all of this different stuff as a guitar player, it's entirely the person I was when that when I was fourteen fifteen, and I say that all the time, and it's it's a person that I kind of.
Dreamed of being. Really.
I mean, obviously, you know, life throws all kinds of curve balls without getting down you know too philosophical, nothing's doesn't turn out like a fairy tale. But professionally, man, I can't. Sometimes I think, Wow, I was Innder there. They were my favorite band at the time.
Yeah. Yeah, and you were with them and maybe you know, like maybe their best record, you know, like Dusk is like yeah, you know.
Dusk is a real good one. Yeah. It's just weird that it all turned out.
And then, you know, I was really when when I The short thing with Body's Mouth was that I went through a period where the late night is were I just wasn't really hearing that much in British guitar music that excited me, But I was hearing it in American guitar music.
I Built to Spill really liked. And there was a.
Band called the Lilies I really liked from out of Boston. I thought Lilies were great. And then and Elliott Smith. And what happened was I met Elliott.
And Elliott Smith. Oh yeah, I met Elliot a couple of times.
In the first time I met him, I was talking to him about these bands and he hit me up to Modest Mouse.
I didn't know what Modest Mouse was.
It was Elliot who told me about Maddy s Mouse and he said, well, listen, I have you had Modice Mouse. He said something like all roads lead to Modese Mouse. I was like, okay, so that's how I got into He took me on the Moon and Antarctica, and then six seven years later I ended up being a full time member of the band for like longer than people think.
I thought.
I joined the band two thousand and five and I left the band twenty ten think, and ended up moving to Portland. So that was all down to without Elliott. I wouldn't have known about that.
How did you mean Elliott?
I was in LA and mutual friend said he wanted to meet me, and we're a couple of mutual friends, and I think XO would just him out, and I thought that was great.
I just thought he was really good.
And then then I knew a couple of these musicians and he always had really nice The thing about him was the people I knew who worked with him were all really nice people. My friend Scott, he was his drummer for a while, so we had kind of we had a.
Sort of mutual sort of scene.
Really yeah, but I look back on all this and I think, Wow, I'm kind of glad.
I'm glad that things works out worked out amazingly. Before we go, man, do you have I see your guitars back there? Do you have your nine? You have a you have a book coming out called Mars Guitars that I'm excited to check out. Do you have your nine? Pickup guitar?
No one's ever asked me about that guitar. They probably won't again. Just it's in my actual studio because this is this is my house now. But it's an amazing sound.
It's a guitar.
You know, I don't drink anymore, but I wasn't actually drunk when I bought it. I may head, but it was back in the days when I was like drinking quite a lot. I was either drunk from the night before. But I went into a guitar shop with Nold gallagheries only. I think it was said maybe the might be when the very first day we met and I saw this thing, and I just was like my logic for buying that guitar. I was like, Okay, if Kraftwork played guitar, that's what they would play. Nola had only just met me, and I think he thought this guy is a crazy, crazy rock star.
That's a fair assessment.
But you know what, maybe it was about what it probably almost thirty years later. I had to wait to get a song out of it, but it was spirit, power and soul.
Ah so cool.
It came up with the riffs.
So hey, that's my that's that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it. Man.
I got a thousand and one questions for you. Man, Thank you so much. It's such a such a pleasure.
Hearkened to you all right, man, all the best. Thank you see here.
Thanks Johnny Mar for talking about his epic career. You can hear all of our favorite track featuring Mar, as well as some of his solo work on a playlist app Broken record podcast dot com. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Holliday, and Eric sam Our editor is Sophie Kran. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. My theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Rischman.
