Johnny Marr (11 page)

Sea-sickness was rife on the journey over from Holyhead, and Johnny was briefly hospitalised on arrival, but he was soon reunited with the rest of the band at their Dublin hotel. After the last gig in Belfast, the band played their final live date of the year in Paris. The set list was pretty much as in Ireland, including the
Meat Is Murder
songs, but ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ – which had opened a number of the Irish concerts – was dropped.

The pop year came to an end with Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, the biggest of all charity singles, as pop egos were apparently ‘left at the door’ in the recording of the best-selling seven-inch of all time. The Smiths were not involved. For Johnny, the end of the year brought reflection. 1984 was one hell of a year for the twenty-one year old. Back in the previous December, he had had two singles and a handful of gigs to look back on in the previous year. Now, there had been three more hit singles, two successful albums, tours that would have made Keith Richards think twice about getting out of bed, a partnership with Sandie Shaw, collaborations with like-minded peers, the continuation of his relationship, despite interruption, with girlfriend Angie, and a move to London. Johnny Marr had the world at his feet.

Weeks into the new year, a Valentine’s card to the world,
Meat Is Murder
was finally released to an ecstatic reception. Doubling the Smiths’ visibility, the band appeared on
Top Of The Pops
the same night, presenting the new single ‘How Soon Is Now?’ to the world on February 14. The band (almost) swept the board in the
NME
Reader’s Poll. As well as being voted the ‘Best Group’, Johnny was voted ‘Best Instrumentalist’ and he and Morrissey took the gong for ‘Best Songwriter’, while Morrissey was runner-up as ‘Best Vocalist’.

The new album declared a more sophisticated Marr sound, broader in scope, from Fifties-influenced rockabilly to spaced-out funk. The opening track ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ was written on an acoustic guitar in open D tuning, its expressive chords influenced by Joni Mitchell’s innovative tunings. Johnny jigsawed
various unfinished pieces into the final song, the guitar parts – played largely on Martins and Rickenbackers – planned with military precision. It remains one of his personal favourites, dating so far back that it was almost three years from the initial concept to the finished vocal track. ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ was another track on the receiving end of tabloid attention in the UK, with Morrissey’s scathing and specific lyrics about ‘Manchester schools’ inspiring interviews with the current headmaster of his
alma mater
.

The band had already tried out ‘Rusholme Ruffians’ a number of times since September. If the London media thought they had The Smiths by the scruff of the neck, here was another song to nail the band firmly in Manchester, Rusholme lying a mile to the south of the city centre. The song, introduced by the sound of a fairground ride, was a beautiful homage by Morrissey to “the last night of the fair”, and by Johnny to Elvis Presley’s ‘(Marie’s The Name) His Latest Flame’, into which the band would regularly segue in live performances. Marr’s lightness of touch on the song’s two-chord lick is delightful, but Andy particularly lit up the track with one of his ‘hum this too’ bass lines.

‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’ kept the pace of the album up, one of Johnny’s most brisk and sprightly tracks, the blend of acoustic and electric guitars and bass as sharp as a nettle sting. The track was mooted as the next Smiths single, but was supplanted by ‘How Soon Is Now?’ ‘What She Said’ combined punishing riffs from Marr with Joyce’s part-glam, part-metal drums into a savage piece, while ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’ took the foot off the accelerator for a slow waltz around the ballroom. Johnny coloured the track with several layers of treated guitars that howl alongside Morrissey’s emotional fade out, only to fade back in after the
vocal has drifted away. The arrangement was superb, Morrissey’s performance one of his very best in the canon of Smiths releases, and Johnny’s guitar a delight. The track was one of Marr’s favourite Smiths tracks, and Morrissey’s vocals one of his favourites too.

‘Nowhere Fast’, another song commercial enough to have been released as a single, was actually only released as a live version on the B-side of the twelve inch issue of ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore.’ Introduced with a Sun-classic bit of rockabilly, the upbeat nature of the song, and Morrissey’s ‘on the beat’ vocal were an irresistible blend. Morrissey develops a number of themes in the lyric that re-appear often within The Smiths’ canon. With the relative chart stalling of some of the recent singles, it seemed a shame that the song wasn’t used more productively. ‘Well I Wonder’ ran like a pedigree horse tightly reined in by its rider, a beautifully arranged, discretely played song loaded with understated emotion, literally washed clean at the close by the sounds of a shower of rain from a soundtrack album. The song was imbued with a simplicity and spirit that defined the best of the band. It’s interesting to note that while Johnny had berated other bands for trying to innovate too much in the wake of Byrne and Eno’s
My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts
, many Smiths songs were enlivened by dubbed-in sound effects and pre-recorded samples. The difference is that where Byrne and Eno used the insertion of sound sources to establish themes and develop observational criteria, The Smiths used them more like watercolour washes dropped into or over a completed song, thereby adding grace or atmosphere. ‘Well I Wonder’ was one lovely example of this process at work.

‘Barbarism Begins At Home’ had been a staple of the live Smiths since way back in December 1993, an astonishingly long time
for such a track to have lain un-used [it was released as a limited promo disc in January, flagging up the ‘new’ sound of the band]. If heads were turned by the funk workout, anyone who knew Andy’s background or Johnny’s penchant for stomping disco should not have been surprised. Live, the song was often an extended wig-out for the band, and used to stamp an immediate authority as a set-opener on wild and expectant audiences.

The album’s final, and most controversial track was ‘Meat Is Murder’ itself. This song defined Morrissey’s stance at the time: trenchant, passionate and uncompromising. The sound picture of Johnny’s reversed guitar and dubbed effects captured the spinning blades of the slaughterhouse and the plaintive cries of heavily-reverbed cattle introduced the slow, desolate pace of the song. As on ‘Suffer Little Children’, the death of the beautiful creatures of the song are hauntingly painted by Morrissey’s lyric and delivery in a musical landscape bleaker than anything else in The Smiths’ repertoire.

The critics loved the album, finding a density and panache in Johnny’s writing and a new outward-looking Morrissey, less introspective and addressing issues broader in perspective than on
The Smiths
. Danny Kelly, writing for
NME
noted Johnny’s “unnervingly evocative and beautiful” playing, while Bill Black wrote of Johnny’s “aural heartburn,” “screeching, preaching guitar” and “raucous rockouts” (he also, wonderfully, called The Smiths “Rough Trade’s very own Red Cross parcel”). “Johnny Marr’s music and production embraces Sun-era rock ’n’ roll, quasi-HM, folk and psychedelia” wrote Matt Snow, while Paul du Noyer observed “major league greatness” in Johnny’s work. It was a triumph all round, an album on which Johnny shone brightly
and was mirrored by the input of all the other band members. In particular Rourke’s bass contribution was fantastic. Morrissey’s performances, of course, were spectacular. A little over a fortnight after its release,
Meat Is Murder
became The Smiths’ first (and last) number one album. The Smiths had raised the stakes. By contrast, over time Johnny came to think of the album as the least successful Smiths album from an artistic point of view.

Before the tour to promote the album, personal pressures again intruded on Johnny’s role within the band. Andy had dabbled with drugs since high school, but by the time of
Meat Is Murder
, Andy’s use had become a serious issue both for Johnny and for the rest of the band. With an anti-drugs profile high on The Smiths’ public agenda, the matter had been kept hidden even from people within the inner circle of the band. In later interviews, and still displaying a loyalty to his writing and business partner ten years on that was quite moving, Johnny admitted that, to a degree, he found himself protecting and helping not only Andy but Morrissey too. Not because of any drug use on the singer’s part, but because if Rourke’s problems were made public, in all likelihood it would have been Morrissey who would have had to face the press. Yet while the needs of the band were one thing, Andy was also Johnny’s oldest friend, and the troubles that he endured hurt Marr too. Engagingly, Marr told Johnny Rogan in 1992 that while his thoughts were with Andy he also was worried about the effect that any scandal would have on his family as the band were becoming more and more successful. “It was the first time the family had something to be proud of,” Johnny told Rogan. “[And] no-one wanted to screw that up for Andy.”

As the pressures on Johnny increased, one of The Smith’s most
successful tours got under way in March, a series of dates that cemented the band’s reputation across the UK and which remains for many fans the perfect memory of the band, and of Johnny – by now deeply into a Keith Richards look. Rock ’n’ roll is littered with front-men who adopt a persona behind which they can both keep themselves sane and also hide. Bowie was one perfect example, and the educated, articulate and well-spoken Mick Jagger of the early Sixties stood quite to one side of the arrogant, preening cockerel of the Rolling Stones. But with guitarists it’s perhaps less common and with Johnny quite subtle. “I was guilty of that,” he said later on. “What was happening to me made it easy to confuse the public persona and the private one.” In a modest way, Johnny was – perhaps inadvertently as so many pop stars do – protecting himself from the hurt and constant intrusion from the outside.

Much of the hectic abandon of the previous year’s trawl around America seemed behind the band this time out. When they returned to Manchester’s elegant Palace Theatre in March, Rough Trade had released the new single ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’, backed with ‘What She Said’ from the new album. The record only reached 26 in chart, a disappointment both for Johnny and Morrissey who both loved it. Morrissey called it “the record of my life”, while claiming that “Rough Trade had no faith in it whatsoever… they didn’t service it or market it in any way.” As far as Johnny was concerned, the song was a culmination of the aspirations he had at the time, and he claimed in
Melody Maker
that, on the evidence of this track alone, if Elvis had had Rourke and Joyce in his band he would have been “even bigger!”

By early April, the tour wound to a halt at London’s Royal Albert Hall, a mighty venue for the increasingly gargantuan band. A few
more dates preceded Johnny’s third trip to the United States with The Smiths, under the watchful gaze of a new manager. Matthew Sztumph, already managing Madness, took the reins and attempted to manage the increasing complexity that was The Smiths on tour. Including their first visit to Canada in the schedule, the band was fantastic on the
Meat Is Murder
tour of America, who took to The Smiths big time, turning out in droves for the big dates and selling out almost everywhere.

On June 20, Johnny married the girl who had – the odd temporary separation notwithstanding – been at his side constantly throughout and before the momentous months since The Smiths broke big. While Angie was never ‘a Smith’ in the sense that Linda McCartney was ‘a Wing’, she had been amongst the band and there to support Johnny from the start. Several times over the years Johnny has implied that his experience of The Smiths was himself, Angie and Morrissey set against the world. Grant Showbiz agrees: “The key to Johnny is Angie,” he told me, remembering how the pair were inseparable. “Johnny had the dual power of Angie on one side and Morrissey on the other.” When things got tough for Johnny, he could lean either way and know that there was support: “Those two people, kind of saying ‘what you are doing is great, carry on,’ or ‘I know it’s hard, but you can do it.’” Like a three-sided pyramid, with Angie by his side, he ‘had the power.’ Showbiz is also quick to note that, should Morrissey ever become more distant in the relationship, Angie was always there, and so Johnny could cope because he always had somewhere to go.

Marr clearly considered his partner as crucial a part of his make-up as a musician and a band member as he considered her a part
of his life outside of music (although at the time it didn’t appear that Johnny actually had such a thing). He has said that had they been able, the pair would have married when they were sixteen, but it was at San Francisco’s Unitarian Church that – with Andy as a witness – they finally tied the knot, slotting the quiet ceremony between gigs in New York and Oakland.

By the time the tour came to a close at the end of June, everyone agreed that it had been a rousing success. Logistically it had been an improvement on previous tours, but musically Johnny was already wondering whether his ‘one man orchestra’ style of guitar could continue to work in a live context: the more overdubs in the studio, the more gaps in the sound on stage. Johnny was beginning to think that a second guitarist was needed in the band, to allow him the freedom to play the way he increasingly wanted to.

The eastern gigs of the US tour was supplemented by support from The Bard of Barking, Billy Bragg. “Johnny,” says Grant Showbiz, a friend of both men, “was very matey with Billy.” Their friendship was based upon “great chumminess.” Grant tells the entertaining story of how Billy came to join the travelling circus that was The Smiths on tour.

“We had this whole thing where we were using transvestites to open the show,” says Grant, who enjoys recounting the heady days of the early Eighties. “Although that was a really good idea in Morrissey’s head, actually when you get a transvestite lip-synching to Madonna, or whatever it is, and you’ve got a whole heap of American jocks who – for some unknown reason – really love The Smiths and don’t quite understand what’s going on
within
The Smiths… they’re just going to throw bottles at them. Thousands and thousands of people throwing bottles at the stage,” remembers
Grant, turned out to be “a really bad thing! So we were like, ‘we’ve gotta get rid of the transvestite – who can we get?’”