Set the Boy Free

by Johnny Marr

  ‘How was Paris?’ he said.

  ‘Good, good,’ I replied. ‘Talking Heads are cool.’

  Back in the UK, everyone was having a field day ramping up the drama of The Smiths’ split and I felt like Public Enemy No. 1. It had already turned into a saga, and everyone seemed to want it to run and run. Every day brought new carnage raining down and I didn’t know what to expect next. The story was being milked for all it was worth by the media. My every move was portrayed as proof that I was the ambitious heel who hated The Smiths and was desecrating the grave of the golden goose by playing with Talking Heads and Bryan Ferry, when really I was just accepting amazing invitations from great people and really wanted to play.

  The other Smiths got together as a band under Morrissey’s name. I thought it made perfect sense, but the media depicted it as a symbolic statement against me by the others and used it to further dramatise the saga. I retreated into music. I wrote some new songs for Kirsty, and I snuck out onstage unannounced in Brixton one night with A Certain Ratio to play the Haçienda classic ‘Shack Up’. I was at Kirsty’s one afternoon when I got a phone call. It was Paul McCartney’s manager asking me if I wanted to get together with Paul to play. I didn’t have to think twice, and within a few minutes a fax was sent to me with a list of old rock ’n’ roll songs that Paul wanted me to learn.

  I knew Eddie Cochran’s ‘Twenty Flight Rock’, and ‘Long Tall Sally’ by Little Richard, and there were a few Buddy Holly songs and Elvis Presley songs too. The following week I went to the rehearsal space out of town, where a couple of musicians whose names I recognised from rock albums were already there: Henry Spinetti on drums, and Charlie Whitney from Family on guitar. I was much younger than everyone and nervous as hell. I knew the songs from Joe playing them in Crazy Face, but I’d never actually played them myself before. I was just going to have to wing it. Paul and Linda came in, and it was a moment for me and probably an occupational hazard for them. Like everyone else on the planet I was thrilled to meet a Beatle, but I was also a fan of Linda. She was someone I’d liked since I was a kid. I admired her commitment to vegetarianism, and because we thought of her as a role model The Smiths had asked her to do something with us on The Queen Is Dead. Now here I was with her and Paul and we were about to play. They were both friendly and easy to be around, and Paul asked me about working with Talking Heads while he got his sound together. Being in the presence of a Beatle, as anyone who has ever done it will tell you, can make you feel a curious mixture of wild anticipation and mild anxiety. Add to that the fact that I was playing with one of the Beatles at twenty-four years old, and you’re halfway to recognising the situation I found myself in.

  The first thing that I noticed about Paul McCartney was how much attitude he has as soon as he picks up his bass. You can see his total command of the instrument. I heard it too, and at deafening volume, as he stood looking at his amp and went BWOOOMFV! with one note. It was the best bass sound I’d ever heard, and the loudest. We kicked into ‘Twenty Flight Rock’, which I’d managed to work out the night before, and it took every bit of resolve I had not to shout, ‘Holy fuck! That’s Paul McCartney, singing right there in front of my face! Does everybody else realise that that is Paul McCartney … standing right there in front of my face?’ Luckily I held it together enough not to do that, and just tried to make my playing sound as authentic and fifties rock ’n’ roll as possible. At one point Paul asked me if I knew ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, and I tried to keep a straight face as I said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ Then he asked me matter-of-factly if I fancied singing the harmony. A voice in my head started screaming, ‘You mean John Lennon’s part? I’M …GOING … TO BE SINGING … JOHN LENNON’S PART?’ But I just nodded and said, ‘OK … I’ll give it a go.’ The next thing I know, me and Paul McCartney are facing each other, singing, ‘I saw her standing there.’ I couldn’t really believe it was happening, but I made the most of it. I got brave and suggested ‘Things We Said Today’. He counted it off and away we went. I thought it sounded very good.

  My experience of playing with legendary musicians is that without exception playing is really what it’s all about. There’s not much sitting around talking and doing nothing. I played with Paul McCartney all day. When we eventually took a break, we sat together and Paul and Linda asked me about what was going on with me. Linda was a nice person, funny and engaging, and genuinely interested in what I was doing. She asked about The Smiths splitting up, and I was honest and told her that it was hard as everywhere I went people didn’t seem to want to let me get away from it. She listened intently and Paul was nodding. The subject changed to general musician’s talk, and sometimes Paul would interject with a ‘yeah, The Beatles had that in Japan’ or ‘that happened to us once’, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, which to him it was, as he was just talking with another musician. It was nice hanging out with them, and then it struck me that I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get perspective and insight from a man who actually knew my situation. A man who had been defined by his relationship with his songwriting partner and whose band’s break-up had hung over his every move, regardless of his immense personal and professional journey. If anyone could hip me up to some wisdom and insight, it would be this man in front of me. So after recounting the basic details of recent events, I held my breath and waited for Paul McCartney to enlighten me. He paused, I waited, and then he paused again and said, ‘That’s bands for ya.’ That was it, the sum total of his evaluation: ‘That’s bands for ya.’ Over the years I’ve found myself in a similar situation when a fellow musician is recounting his tale of woe and the predicament with his band. I’ve thought of different things to say, but in the end the best thing to say really is: ‘That’s bands for ya.’ I got that from Paul McCartney, and he knows a thing or two about bands.

  Talk of the Town

  LIKE EVERYONE I’D been a fan of The Pretenders for years. When their debut album came out in 1980, James Honeyman-Scott instantly became one of my favourite guitar players. They had a style that was modern and it genuinely rocked, and with her words and vocals Chrissie Hynde had the sound and attitude of a truly great singer fronting a great band. One day Ken Friedman called me. I hadn’t seen him since before the end of The Smiths – he wasn’t around when the band broke up, having taken time out to get over his experience by trekking up the Himalayas. I guess managing The Smiths can do that to a man. I was glad to hear from him, and he was calling to say that Robbie McIntosh had left The Pretenders before the end of their tour and Chrissie wanted to know if I’d like to join them for some shows. It was a big ask to learn their set at short notice, but it was an exciting prospect and also a chance for me to escape all the drama that was surrounding the break-up of The Smiths and the claustrophobia I was feeling in England. I told them I’d do it, and I went over to meet Chrissie at her house in Maida Vale.

  She opened the door, looking exactly how I expected and wearing a T-shirt that said, ‘I Learned the Guitar in Three Minutes’. We talked for a while about Iggy Pop and Mitch Ryder, and she suggested we go out to the Marquee to see a band that was playing. When we got to the club and walked in, I instinctively felt that Chrissie was someone I could be friends with. We only stayed for a few minutes and then left to walk around the streets of Soho and talk. Chrissie was someone I could understand. Her attitude towards being in a band was positive and poetic. She’d had huge success, but she viewed fame and her career as almost a side issue compared to the real business of plugging in and playing. She was funny and had interesting opinions about a lot of things, and from the first night we met she gave me plenty to think about.

  The tour was starting on the West Coast of America, and the first show was in a week. We were opening for U2 on their now famous Joshua Tree tour, which was being documented for the film Rattle and Hum. I had four days to learn The Pretenders’ set, and their office sent me over VHS tapes of two concerts to study. I spent the next two days and nights learning the songs, and
then went into a rehearsal to meet the rest of the band and the crew. Everyone was friendly, but I knew they were wondering if we would be able to pull off the task at hand and be good enough to walk out in front of 70,000 people. I put on my guitar and looked down at the set list. Chrissie asked me what I wanted to play, and I chose the song ‘Kid’ as I’d known it from my teens and had always played it in guitar shops. We started playing and it sounded good straight away. We knew it was going to work. My role in the band was not only as lead guitarist, though. There are a lot of backing vocals on Pretenders songs, which I had to sing with the bass player, Malcolm Foster. We ran through all the parts meticulously and played some more, and from then on I was singing back-up with Chrissie Hynde. Significant turns can happen in life within minutes, and that was one of mine. Chrissie said it sounded good and I could do it, which was good enough for me and would be good enough for anybody, and that was the start of me singing again.

  We flew out to join U2 on the tour. My first show was at the Oakland Coliseum in California. I’d never seen that many people before, let alone played in front of them, and the gap for the cameras at the front of the stage was as big as some of the venues I’d played in with The Smiths. I walked out with bits of sticky tape stuck to the back of my guitar with the chords to the songs written on them, and I thought I’d better up the money in my back pocket to a $20 bill. We played great songs, it was a blast, and I was sky high and miles away from the past.

  Being on tour with U2 was eye-opening. I’d never been exposed to ambition on that scale before, and it was interesting to watch a band connect with such vast crowds every night. I’d always respected the Edge and regarded him as a great guitar player and someone you recognised the first second you heard him. He made a point of coming into my dressing room to say hello every night, and it was nice to have someone around to talk guitars with. A totally new thing for me was having children around on a tour, and it made a big difference. Usually bands and touring are very male-oriented affairs, and you definitely don’t see much of children. Chrissie had her two daughters, Natalie and Yasmin, on the dates, and as well as having adorable little people around it brought a sense of perspective and normality to everything, which I wasn’t used to on the road. I’d be playing with two little kids at the side of the stage one minute, and then walk out to an ocean of people the next. It was a lovely thing and it kept the enormity of it all from getting too much.

  The Pretenders were liked by everyone who was into rock music. Customs officials would ask me what I did for a living and what band I was in, and when I said ‘The Pretenders’ I’d be welcomed with a smile. A lot of very famous people also loved the band, and I was introduced to some interesting fans. Jack Nicholson hung out with us on both nights of our LA shows and Chrissie introduced me to Bob Dylan. One night she told me she’d invited a friend to come out with us to dinner, and I was sitting around when the doorbell rang. I went to see who it was, and Bruce Springsteen was standing outside. Me, Angie and Chrissie squeezed into his Volkswagen Beetle and he drove us to dinner, where he and I spent most of the night talking about sixties garage bands. He was great company and he shared with me his philosophy that every concert ticket sold is an individual contract with a fan, which was a real privilege to hear and a philosophy that I’ve never forgotten. I played some more shows with The Pretenders, going to South America for the first time and playing stadium concerts that were even bigger than the ones with U2. Chrissie and I then went to Jamaica for a Bob Marley tribute concert. I liked Jamaica and took to the local customs with aplomb, operating on the ‘when in Rome’ principle and ‘it would be rude not to’, partaking with Grace Jones and the rest of the Wailers until I was so laid-back I wondered how Bob Marley even managed to write the words ‘Get Up, Stand Up’, let alone do either of those things.

  Back in London, Chrissie got involved in working with the animal rights organisation PETA. It was an education to see the reality and the scale of animal cruelty happening in the world. Being introduced to people so committed to a cause and witnessing their selfless dedication strengthened my own commitment to vegetarianism and taught me the value of taking action and standing up for your beliefs, no matter what. It was good for me to be confronted by issues more serious than what was going on in my own life. I’d been emotionally bruised by what had happened with The Smiths, and teaming up with Chrissie helped me enormously. She’d experienced the very real challenges of dealing with the death of two of her bandmates, Jimmy Scott and Pete Farndon, and her attitude helped me put my situation into better perspective. It also made me think that there might be some truth in the idea that the right people can show up in your life at the right time.

  I stayed in London for a while, and The Pretenders went into the studio with Nick Lowe to record two songs for a film. We cut the Burt Bacharach song ‘The Windows of the World’ and The Stooges’ song ‘1969’ for a single. It turned out to be a perfect document of how The Pretenders sounded with me in the band. After we’d got the touring done, the question of whether I was going to stay in the band permanently came up. We’d hoped to make a record at some point, and worked on a song in the studio, but The Pretenders were in need of a break from it all. The band had been touring and recording for a few years when Robbie left, and I had come into a situation that felt like the end of a chapter, when my life was all about starting a new one.

  The New Thing

  BACK IN MANCHESTER, things were starting to get wild. Everyone was having a different experience when they went out to the Haçienda. The place was still half-empty, even on the weekends, but one or two of my friends were telling me about the amazing times they’d had as Mike Pickering was playing a new kind of music from Chicago and they’d been going all night on a new drug called ‘E’. Something significant was definitely happening: a new attitude swept through the city and everyone was in it together.

  Togetherness wasn’t an entirely unknown concept in town, because, after all, we’d all been going to gigs and clubs together for years. It was just that now everybody was aware of the togetherness, and appreciated it. Dancing together, in a club together, in new fashions together, in the city together. An awful lot of people were getting into it, which was amazing and no bad thing – Manchester needed it, musically, culturally and sociologically. There were obvious parallels with the peace and love movement of the hippies in the sixties, and not only because of the presence of a love drug and people dancing with their hands in the air. Joe had always said that if the hippy movement hadn’t happened in Britain, the culture of booze and aggression that was taking over at the time would’ve made it impossible to go out at night in Manchester, such was the amount of violence you would encounter on the streets and in clubs, where people were starting to carry chains and knives.

  At the start of the new scene in Manchester, no one knew it was a ‘movement’. It wasn’t called ‘rave’ or ‘acid house’ yet. It was just a brand-new thing to get into, and it meant a radical change was going to happen because anything that didn’t fit in suddenly seemed irrelevant and past its sell-by date, which meant a lot of the rock music that was around and the fashions too. It permeated everything, from the clubs to the streets, creating a full-blown culture that you either embraced and explored, or had to try very hard to imagine wasn’t happening. People changed their clothes, bands changed their sound, graphic designers changed their direction, and druggies and boozers changed their poison. Dance music culture and E was the new thing, and there is no denying that it made a lot of people who weren’t very happy much happier and some people who weren’t very nice suddenly much nicer.

  Angie and I were spending most of our time on the motorway, driving with the roadies back and forth from Manchester to London, where I was recording a lot with Kirsty. I’d be in the studio for a few days, and then we’d jump in the car when the session was done at whatever time of night to make it back to the Haçienda, which was suddenly starting to get busier and more loved up until it began to feel
like the centre of the new musical universe. The Haçienda had always been identified with the digital world in my mind because of the sound of the electro records that echoed around it when it first opened and because of Peter Saville’s visual aesthetic that accompanied it. I liked technology, especially when it was used to create pop music, back from Roxy Music’s synths and Sylvester’s ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’ to The Smiths’ ‘How Soon Is Now?’. I’d been into new music machines ever since the Emulator had shown me a way to get to the future.

  I met up with Bernard Sumner after a New Order and Echo and the Bunnymen show in San Francisco – I’d gone to California to meet with the producers of a Dennis Hopper film called Colors, who’d asked me to play on the soundtrack. I’d last seen Bernard when The Smiths and New Order played the Festival of the Tenth Summer in Manchester, and we took off after the San Francisco show to catch up. Like me, Bernard knew all about the ups and downs of being in a successful band from Manchester, and he’d had more than a little dramatic history of his own. New Order had been recording and touring for a long time without taking a break, even after Joy Division. They’d gone through the death of Ian Curtis, and succeeded in resurrecting themselves as a new entity before going on to build the Haçienda. Bernard had come to a point in his life when he wanted to do something different, outside of the group format, and in me he saw someone who was a free agent.

  We picked up where we’d left off, and Bernard asked me if I’d be interested in writing some songs, which sounded like a good idea. We’d worked together once before when we’d done Mike Pickering’s record for Factory, and although The Smiths and New Order had different approaches to making music, we shared a similar sensibility, having come from the same place. New Order had more touring to do, so we arranged to get together when we were back in Manchester.