Johnny Marr (26 page)

Over several years and between three to four hundred gigs with Modest Mouse and The Cribs, the project came to fruition. In celebration of 50 years of the Jaguar, in 2012 Fender announced the commercial release of the Johnny Marr Signature Fender Jaguar, a labour of love. Far from being simply the signature of a famous axe-wielder printed on the headstock, this was a genuine design job from Johnny. It was reviewed ecstatically from London to LA, and is something Marr can justifiably be proud of.

Johnny was equally enthusiastic about the Modest Mouse tour, telling interviewers around the world how much he loved playing with the band, and initially he was keen to get back into the studio and start working on new material. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the August 2009 release
No One’s First and You’re Next
, an EP of B-sides and unreleased tracks from their previous three albums, was the first activity from the band post-tour. At the same time they also released a completed version of the video for ‘King Rat’ that had been started by Heath Ledger. With a tour to promote
No One’s First
… it was time for Marr to move on. In the live band for the forthcoming tour he was replaced, in the friendliest of fashions, by Jim Fairchild, formerly of Grandaddy. Fairchild had been in the running to join Modest Mouse at the point Johnny had joined, and had played live with the band in their previous
touring incarnation. For Johnny it was a natural point to take another direction and for Modest Mouse to do likewise. “It was an amazing time in my life,” said Marr. “I might look casual, but I am very committed.”

New projects brought this period with Modest Mouse to a close, but it is clear that the relationship is not over. As recently as July 2015, as the band prepared to play Manchester’s Ritz once again, Brock told
City Life
that for Johnny Marr the door will always be open. “[He’s] one of the greatest people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and working with,” said Brock.

It’s clear that the feeling is mutual.

The Cribs could not come from a more different background to Modest Mouse. Indeed, the three Jarmans hail from West Yorkshire rather than the West Coast of America. Formed in 2001, they quickly became the darlings of a music press looking for indie bands to break the mainstream. As authentic indie as could be, their eponymous debut album,
The Cribs
, led to tours throughout 2004 and 2005 across Europe, Asia and the US, building a loyal fanbase. By 2006’s
The New Fellas
, their second album produced by Orange Juice’s Edwyn Collins, they were troubling the lower echelons of the charts on a regular basis. With Alex Kapranos producing, and signed to Warner in the US, 2007’s
Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever
established the band as a regular on the main stages of major festivals.

The history of pop is littered with great three-piece bands, and with bands made up of multiple siblings. While there may not be
too many fansites dedicated to The Nolans, family-based bands like The Beach Boys, The Jacksons or Sly and the Family Stone have proved that bands of brothers (and sisters) can prosper, albeit until family disagreements become as great as musical ones. Twins Gary, Ryan and brother Ross Jarman hail from Wakefield, a hop, skip and a 50-mile jump over the Pennine hills from Manchester. While it’s not one of Britain’s most prosperous cities, it’s far enough away from London and the beautiful south for the Jarmans to have been more inspired by the Pacific North West than what was happening in NW1. It was this that first endeared the band to Marr: “I was really knocked out by their song, ‘The Scenesters’,” he told
Pitchfork
. “For the longest time, when I was asked what bands I like, it was The Cribs.”

The life of an ex-pat often throws fellow countrymen together when least expected. Portland is a magnet for creatives, and one Englishman who had moved there from the north of England in 2006 was Gary Jarman. Raised on grunge and Riot Grrrl, he found himself amongst the kind of artists who had informed his politics and ethics in the first place, and settled well in the city. Inevitably, musicians will find one another, and Marr and Jarman met at a barbecue. Johnny told Luke Turner of
The Quietus
how, while confident they weren’t “little Englanders”, they did “go out for afternoon tea” a few times. The pair immediately got on, and before long were meeting socially, playing guitar together, and, perhaps inevitably, talking about writing songs together.

Naturally, the Jarmans were big Smiths fans, and there were similarities between the way Johnny came to join their band and how he had first involved himself with Modest Mouse. While The Cribs did not formally approach Marr with an offer to work
with them, it’s clear that with both bands the relationship was one of developing friendships before committing to anything formal or permanent. But Johnny liked their uncompromising stance, their independence, and the fact that “they could have been on Rough Trade.” One of the things The Cribs hadn’t done was to take on the mantle of American-ness, despite spending large amounts of time there, something that US bands themselves admired, so when they started to put a few creative ideas together as a foursome, it worked.

By February 2008 it was announced that Marr was not just a collaborator, but a fully paid-up member of The Cribs. He remained a fully paid-up member of Modest Mouse too, but found sufficient time over the course of the next year to develop with the Yorkshire band the songs that would become their fourth album,
Ignore The Ignorant
. There was no “Johnny Marr and The Cribs big agenda,” he told music writer Gary Graff, but the seasoning he brought to the band’s mix was immediate. As with Isaac Brock, playing off another guitar was what really worked, both for Ryan and for Marr. They assiduously avoided the “one guy strums, the other does the fiddly bits” two-guitar routine, and clearly both play better as a result. Wherever they worked – whether California, Oregon, Stockport or Johnny’s own studio in Manchester, the sessions were productive, and each member of the band contributed to the writing process, rather than anyone bringing “finished” songs to the sessions.

Before the album was released, Johnny continued to receive offers and unexpected plaudits. In the autumn of 2008 he joined the “Electric Proms” season of concerts in London for the BBC, playing alongside Mali duo Amadou & Mariam. The
event, produced by Damon Albarn, showcased the blind couple’s fabulous energy as part of a seven-hour gig. “I recognise a guitar dude when I hear one – and he’s one,” is how Johnny describes guitarist Amadou Bagayoko. “He’s very into his riffs.” Johnny knew the band from tour bus tapes with Modest Mouse, but first got head-down with Bagayoko over unplugged guitars in a London hotel room. There’s a way of getting into a jam with a player you have never met before, he explained, finding the space between you and the other guy, letting the music find its own way. But Amadou, Johnny told the
Guardian
, wanted him “to blow like Jimi Hendrix” within twenty seconds. The repeating, cyclical riffs of African music are an ideal pasture for the former guitarist with The Smiths to wander over, to such an extent that Johnny thought he heard distinctly Smithsian echoes in the track – “We’re cut from a similar cloth,” says Johnny. “I’ll leave it at that!”

In November Johnny was invited by Salford University, a mile or so from the centre of Manchester, to work with their Department of Media, Music and Performance as a visiting professor of music. As in almost every circumstance where Johnny takes on a new role outside of his comfort zone, one of the first things that appealed to him was the warm personal environment, the friendly atmosphere around the department, the students and the staff. “It’s exciting to think that someone I come across might become a producer, or start a record label,” he said.

But Marr was not the first Mancunian muso to join the staff at Salford. One of the best live acts, and one of the most entertaining bands of the seventies and eighties in Manchester, was the Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias, and their leader (if ever a job title could have existed in The Albertos), Chris “CP” Lee, was a senior lecturer at the
university. John Robb, formerly of The Membranes, and latterly a writer, journalist and pundit-for-hire, was likewise. Professor Marr’s inaugural lecture was on the subject of “the outsider” in popular music.

Johnny established in his lecture that the premise of there being an “inside” to the British music industry, that glitzy world of endless limos, success-driven svengalis, money and glamour, was all a myth. That image, said Marr, “is Simon Cowell’s house, and I am not even sure that exists.” The music industry, whether in the UK or in the US, never created anything, he said. It has brought innovators to the fore, helped make great records and great events, but the work, the creation and innovation, has come from outsiders. Johnny cited Buzzcocks as his first lesson in this factor, launched on a Xerox Polaroid of “four freezing-cold, skinny poor boys from Manchester.” Bob Marley, Kurt Cobain, Joy Division, The Beatles and The Stones were all outsiders, he said, each of them having a leg up from someone else who was an outsider too.

Interestingly, given the background of his own manager, Joe Moss, who also managed The Smiths, so many of the “svengalis” who took these outsiders and made them successful were shopkeepers, not record industry executives. Brian Epstein, Malcolm McLaren, Andrew Oldham and Joe Moss all ran shops. Epstein didn’t invent John Lennon any more than McLaren invented John Lydon, but they knew how to give their bands a route into commerciality, and only then did “the industry” pick them up.

For the outsider, Marr explained, it’s almost more important to be defined by what you are
against
rather than what you are for. In his thirty-year campaign to prove to the world that Manchester was culturally superior to London, Factory boss Tony Wilson, himself a journalist prior to becoming a record label boss, was a
perfect example. Motown and Def Jam were two more. Tellingly, Johnny pointed to the fact that these lessons taught him early on that no high-flying record exec was ever going to “discover” The Smiths. Rough Trade was also originally a record shop, owned by Geoff Travis to promote records from outside of the mainstream. With their own shop manager in Joe Moss, with Morrissey perhaps the greatest “outsider” in contemporary pop, and with Johnny – who had packed up school to put everything into his passion for pop and electric guitars – The Smiths had been the perfect outsiders.

Summing up almost his entire career to date, Marr pointed out that, if you are on the outside, and you know that you are probably not going to make a difference, who do you make music, art or literature for? “For your friends,” he said. For him it was “for the other three guys [in the band], because they were my best friends.” It’s a motif running throughout his work: friendship, loyalty, enthusiasm and a firmly entrenched work ethic. But, as he pointed out, make sure your friends have good taste!

As a “visiting professor” it was Johnny’s role to run workshops and seminars to give the lucky students a real picture of what lay ahead of them in the creative industries. In recognition of his “outstanding achievements in a music career spanning four decades”, in the summer of 2012 Marr was awarded an honorary doctorate by the university. Amongst other recipients of honorary degrees awarded by the university to those in the creative arts have been the mighty voice of Salford, poet John Cooper Clarke, cellist Jacqueline du Pré, composer Sir Harrison Birtwistle and actor Sir Albert Finney, all, in their own way, outsiders. Wearing the traditional brightly coloured cap and gown (“it’s not a gown, it’s a cape,” he tweeted), the newly
minted Dr Marr beamed for photographs. “This Charming Grad,” as the University themselves put it.

As if becoming an academic wasn’t enough, Christmas 2008 saw Johnny and his family once again decamp to New Zealand at the invitation of Neil Finn. Finn’s original Seven World’s Collide project of the early noughties had been a successful and pleasing exercise for Marr, who had been able to give test-flights to some of his as-yet unpublished Healers material, while playing alongside some fine contemporary musicians. Towards the end of 2008 Finn called the contributors together for a new studio album, to be titled
The Sun Came Out
, in aid of Oxfam, who had approached the songwriter just at the time he was thinking of reconvening “the seven-worlders”. Most of the original players came back, joined by newcomers such as KT Tunstall, Wilco and Bic Runga.

Sessions were held at Finn’s own Roundhead Studios in Auckland, and Neil teased participation out of willing contributors by reminding them of the benefits of Christmas spent in the South Pacific, with kids and family members welcome. Johnny contributed a number of new songs and co-writes to the project, collaborating with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy on ‘Too Blue’ and with Ed O’Brien of Radiohead on ‘Learn To Crawl’, also involving Finn and his son Liam. ‘Run In The Dust’ and ‘Red Wine Bottle’ were Marr’s other writing contributions, and for the live shows in the New Year he reprised some old favourites. Johnny took the lead vocal for ‘Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want’, while Finn led on ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’, after asking the audience for a whip-round to get Johnny to play.

Reconvened in Los Angeles, the first song The Cribs had written with Marr became the opener on the album. ‘We Were Aborted’ is about lad-mag culture from the least laddish of the current crop of indie bands. From the first B-minor to G chord change, it’s clear this isn’t Modest Mouse, but immediately feels like it’s out of Johnny’s Buzzcocks or Patti Smith collection. The album, released in September 2009, was preceded by ‘Cheat On Me’ as a single at the end of August, and was a top ten album in the UK. It was clearly a Cribs album, but it is equally an album that Johnny Marr fans would love too, and that’s quite an achievement, testimony to the respect which each party held for the other.

It wasn’t universally loved, but it was pretty universally well-received, and some reviewers thought it their best album yet. If it lacked a little of the grit of previous Cribs’ releases, it was essential nevertheless. With retrospect, it sounds even better today, and if there’s a bit of venom and hiss missing, it has gained a little pop sophistication that did the Cribs no harm. Marr certainly hadn’t trampled over a group half his age and turned them into “Johnny Marr’s band” rather worked with them to develop something new, lit up some new rooms for the Wakefield trinity to wander through. Along the way, a lot of Smiths and Marr fans would have found a new band to love, and a lot of young fans of The Cribs would have been signposted to Johnny’s previous work.