Johnny Marr (10 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By the early autumn the tank was being filled for the limo rides to Liverpool where the new Smiths album was to be recorded. John Porter was not involved with the album sessions this time. As far as Johnny was concerned, despite
Hatful Of Hollow
having been “banged out”, it was a fantastic record, and he decided to do the production job himself with the band. With Stephen Street firmly established as engineer, the band booked Amazon studios, hidden in the midst of one of Liverpool’s nastiest industrial estates, a fitting venue for Britain’s at-once most glamorous and most modest band to record. While the group was established in London, they had decided to move back north to record the album. “It was clear that we needed to come back to Manchester and get rained on,” Johnny said in retrospect. “It’s good for creativity.” The idea of a limo being The Smiths’ chosen mode of transport might have appeared somewhat at odds with their down-to-earth image, but in fact the ageing Mercedes was an ex-undertaker’s vehicle… much more fitting for the band’s profile. While the demands of publicity, tour requests, TV and radio continued to increase, there was an element of a siege mentality in the studio, strengthening the band’s resolve. Morrissey spoke publicly about the album’s progress as Christmas approached, enthusing that the songs were stronger than ever.

Meat Is Murder
was touted by Johnny at the time as The Smiths’
Revolver
– while the album hasn’t quite lived up to that reputation, it was to be one of their most influential releases. Not only did half the population of under twenty-year olds appear to take up Morrissey’s plea for vegetarianism in the wake of
Meat Is Murder
, but so did The Smiths. In later interviews, Joyce and Rourke have spoken about how much Morrissey’s influence was felt throughout
the band on the subject, who were often torn between the need for a good fish and chip supper and an ideological premise that they all supported. Johnny, of course, remains a vegetarian – in fact, with a largely vegan diet – to this day.

Musically, the sessions that comprised
Meat Is Murder
produced a complex piece of work, in a little under two months. Slated for release the following February, the band wasted no time, and Johnny and Morrissey were at the peak of their game in terms of writing. However, the pressure was on in terms of managing the band and without close friend Moss at the helm and with the world clamouring ever more for interviews, tours, sessions, radio, TV etc, all this fell squarely on the shoulders of Morrissey and Marr. It was, simply put, exhausting. It is eternally to Morrissey’s credit that, within such an environment, he also managed to make his role as the band’s main spokesperson appear so easy. For Johnny, who would avoid interviews like the plague if he possibly could, it was hard enough, but Morrissey was appearing in every magazine, newspaper and music weekly in the land. The pressures “strengthened our resolve,” Johnny told
Select
. “We were driven. Morrissey and I would never sleep… It was just me, Morrissey and Angie… all the time.”

One track not on the original album but included on the remastered editions later (and, indeed, included on the original US release) did not emerge from the Liverpool sessions. ‘How Soon Is Now?’ has become, of course, another of the most notable Smiths tracks, covered and sampled across the years a number of times by other acts, most notably – and entertainingly perhaps – by Russian ‘lesbian combo’ Tatu. The song was written in February and recorded with John Porter in July at Jam studios in Finsbury
Park. It was one of Johnny and Porter’s all-nighter sessions, with the pair locked together in the studio over the small hours of a Saturday night. John Porter tells of how the tape was posted through Morrissey’s letter box on the way home, and how the singer turned up at the studio the following day with the incredible lyrics complete. The track was nailed in no more than a couple of takes.

Everyone around the band recognised something special in ‘How Soon Is Now?’, but a decision was made at Rough Trade to only release it as the B-side of the twelve-inch version of ‘William, It Was Really Nothing.’ It was the wrong decision, and by the time the track was released as an A-side in its own right early in 1985, the song had been released so many times that it did well to reach a lowly number 24 in the chart. The argument has been put forward that Marr was ‘guilty’ of being too prolific, almost that there were simply
too many
potential A-side singles knocking around in this golden period of writing, but that sounds a bit like Manchester City supporters complaining that their team had won the Premiership by scoring too many goals. The failure to capitalise on ‘How Soon Is Now?’ earlier was perhaps a tactical flop that may have cost the band the major international hit they deserved. While there had been four single releases in the year from May 1983 to May 1984, it was six months before ‘How Soon Is Now?’ came out as an A-side. Touring would occupy the band when they were not in the studio, of course, but it was a surprising hiatus. The experience was disappointing for all concerned. “That’s where it all, sadly, started to fall apart,” said Porter. In fact ‘How Soon Is Now?’ proved to be Porter’s only appearance on the album, and he did not work with the band again for some considerable time.
Meat Is Murder
was credited for its production to ‘The Smiths’, and was ‘engineered’ by Stephen Street.

Trying to keep the customers satisfied, in November Rough Trade released the aforementioned
Hatful Of Hollow
. The band’s second official album release, the mid-price compilation (a sticker signalled that the maximum recommended retail price should be £3.99) enjoyed full-on design criteria and a fantastic selection of tracks culled from a variety of B-side sources, and including the superb sessions for the BBC. One track, ‘This Night Has Opened My Eyes’, was available for the first time on vinyl, and the band chose the Peel-session version over a studio track recorded at the same time as ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’. The blue sleeve featured a shot of an uncredited Cocteau model, not Joe Orton as it has often been said, with the band’s name proudly emblazoned in large-face type to pull casual listeners in from across the biggest record store. The album boasted a gatefold sleeve and a proper laminated card inner sleeve bearing the lyrics of each song. If Rough Trade had arguably stumbled on ‘How Soon Is Now?’ then – under Morrissey’s art-directing eye – they made up for it in spades with this unusual package.
Hatful of Hollow
drew in thousands of new listeners to The Smiths, who had maybe read about the band, heard a couple of tracks on the radio, and were curious to see what this new phenomenon consisted of. The album allowed instant easy access to the information required, and
Hatful Of Hollow
probably did more in the early years to broaden the band’s fan base than any other release. It remains a benchmark for many Smiths fans. Marr was unsure about the album before its release. While he knew how good many of the recordings were, and had the fondest memories of all the BBC sessions, the project
was an unusual strategy for a band already planning their next studio album. But it worked.

The opening track was the resplendent single ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’, the whole band sounding wonderful. Johnny’s picking over meaty acoustic strumming, Mike Joyce’s drums high in the mix and Rourke’s punching bass providing a superb harmony to the guitar parts. The album was the door opener to thousands of new Smiths fans. Between Morrissey’s impassioned voice and Johnny’s fabulous arrangement there couldn’t have been a listener in the land who didn’t want to know more about this entertaining, enigmatic and enthusing four-piece. For the established fans who had studiously taped the Radio One sessions on their crackling cassette recorders, the release was a vindication of the quality of those sessions. After the familiar single came a track from the May 1983 Peel session, ‘What Difference Does It Make?’ Again, the track has an irresistible drive and panache, both in the band’s performance and in Morrissey’s vocal. Mike’s lilting beat and punishing fills complement the guitar and bass parts perfectly as Morrissey’s vocal sails off into the stratosphere. It was a significantly different version to that released as a single, more compact and with a far more prominent ‘live’ feel, and for many fans this version remains the beloved one.

‘These Things Take Time’ had a similar feel – a rough diamond with all its facets evident to the jeweller’s eye before the stone is cut. The track was lifted from the BBC session of July 1983 recorded for David Jensen’s radio show, and again Joyce and Marr drive the track along with immense style and urgency. Sequenced into an album format, the pace at which each superb track followed the previous one was astonishing: these songs felt as though they had
forever been destined to appear in such a format. More jaunty, and maintaining the fabulous pace of the album so far, ‘This Charming Man’ – from the September 1983 Peel session – is a highlight of the album, a permanent testament to the song’s first appearance on tape. The now-familiar opening chords of ‘How Soon Is Now?’ drift in with Johnny’s open-tuned Epiphone presenting one of rock’s most simple and immediately identifiable riffs, slowing the pace of the album down. By now the casual listener was hooked and the committed fan entranced. While the melody and lyric suggest a downbeat, sober wistfulness, the emotional tug of the track comes from it being musically in a major key but lyrically in a minor one. Joyce’s drums have some of the mechanical urgency of early Joy Division, while Rourke’s bass complements the ‘Faux Diddley’ guitar line. The jigsawing of the guitar parts together was a remarkable and inventive bit of studio trickery, as each burst of vibrato from the Fender amps was recorded individually, and track after track built up one at a time.

‘Handsome Devil’ was another lift from May’s Peel session. Redolent of the earlier Troy Tate version, but laced with an urgency and poison in Morrissey’s delivery, Johnny preferred this version, all three instrumentalists lashing out on the track. ‘Hand In Glove’ was blistering, ‘Still Ill’’s punchy harmonica intro and exquisite guitar provided the perfect foil for Morrissey’s vocal, and ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ opened up side two with as much carefree abandon as The Smiths could muster. ‘This Night Has Opened My Eyes’ was claustrophobic and dark, while ‘You’ve Got everything Now’ and ‘Accept Yourself’ were abrasive and perfectly enunciated.

The album came to a close through lovely versions of ‘Girl
Afraid’, a gorgeous version of ‘Back To The Old House’, ‘Reel Around The Fountain’ and the poignant ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’. Johnny’s heart-wrenching mandolin finish to the song, included at the suggestion of John Porter, was one of his most distinctive pieces to date, and it drifts off the end of the album with one clear message: ‘watch this space.’

Released on November 24 in the UK, the gatefold sleeve showed a relaxed but serious side to the band, a shot taken backstage at Glastonbury. Morrissey wore his hearing aid, spectacles and boldly-striped shirt, a near-smile of irony on his lips. Looking drained and staring directly into the camera, Mike Joyce sits with a cigarette burning through his finger-tips. Andy Rourke is in mid bass-line, and – half-hidden in the background – Johnny is strapped up to his guitar too, his right hand poised mid-pick over the strings. Grainy, insular, involved – the picture of The Smiths at work. Reviewers in general loved the album. Adrian Thrills noted Marr’s considerable contribution, referencing his “multi-tracked barrage”, the “splendour in simplicity” and the “magnificence… of misery.” Thrills referred to Marr as “one of the era’s truly great instrumentalists” – this in effect only months into their career. For
Sounds
, Bill Black wrote of the “economy and excitement” of the package, and for many listeners the album not only filled the gap between
bona fide
studio albums, but cemented all that was wonderful about the band both in the studio and live – the fired-up musical attack, the lyrical splendour, the professionalism and the naivety combined. A taste of honey mixed with a spoonful of some harder medicine to ward off the winter ills of November 1984. The album spent almost a year in the UK charts, peaking at
number seven – a considerable achievement for a compilation record from a band who had still to prove themselves.

The Irish concerts which immediately followed the album’s release saw a set comprised of established favourites, to which the audiences sang along valiantly, and new songs destined for the next all-new studio album. Replacing Cilla’s Beatles’ song ‘Love Of The Loved’ as the introductory music for the gigs, the band took the stage to the strains of Prokoviev’s ‘March Of The Capulets’ from
Romeo And Juliet
, a brash and dramatic change of tone that the band retained for much of the rest of its career as a live act. With the single ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ still in the hearts of the fans, the band’s profile was high, and the reception from the audiences was without exception fantastic. The new tracks that the band played went down as well as the established favourites. ‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’, ‘What She Said’, ‘Nowhere Fast’, ‘Barbarism Begins At Home’– which was originally introduced as ‘Fascism Begins At Home’ – and ‘Rusholme Ruffians’ all got an outing. ‘Barbarism Begins At Home’ was to become a favoured set-opener, sometimes extending to a work-out of more than fifteen minutes as the band blitzed audience after audience. On occasion Johnny would throw lines from The Beatles’ ‘Day Tripper’ into his own riffs. Reports from the concerts recall Morrissey admonishing latter-day punks for spitting at the band from the audience with the words “If you don’t like us…
leave
!”