Johnny Marr

by Richard Carman

  As Nirvana had been picked up in the wake of The Stone Roses’ hiatus, so the Roses’ natural successors Oasis filled the void left by the tragic demise of Nirvana. In August they released their most important album, Definitely Maybe, containing some of their best-loved tracks. Meanwhile, March 1994 saw the release of Morrissey’s Vauxhall And I. Following the success of his collaboration with Mick Ronson, he reached the top of the UK album charts with a collection co-written with Boz Boorer and Alain Whyte, who had also appeared on Your Arsenal. Lyrically, the album was probably Morrissey’s strongest since his days with The Smiths, prompting Select magazine to suggest that if he continued at this pace “you won’t want The Smiths back.” Praise indeed.

  It was at this point that Britpop really took hold of the mainstream, with Blur’s ‘Girls & Boys’ grabbing the attention of everyone between the ages of fifteen and thirty. Parklife was to follow, and a generation was affected/infected. A whole raft of new English bands became more visible. Shed Seven, Menswear, Sleeper, Supergrass – many of them focused around The Good Mixer, a pub in Camden Town, London, where Morrissey would also occasionally be seen. The Britpop scene had a distinct debt to The Smiths, though they were only one of any number of influences, from Ray Davis and The Small Faces onwards. Blur’s Damon Albarn spoke extensively of how offensive he found the increasing influence of poor American design and culture in late Eighties and Nineties Britain. It was a time when – for better or worse – it began to be cool to think British again. Arch, angular, guitar-driven pop – Britpop as a phenomenon produced some great bands, some very dodgy ones, and some great headlines. Blur’s first major tour of the UK, supported by Sleeper, was a revelation. As these kids grew up over the next couple of years, it proved to be so. In May 1994, the leader of the Labour Party, John Smith, died suddenly. He was to be replaced in the role by Tony Blair. It was almost as though, after fifteen years of hurt, the youth of Britain was beginning to realise that there was life beyond the endless years of Conservative hegemony.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE HEALING PROCESS

  By early 1995 Raise The Pressure, the new Electronic album, was well under way. It was a more ambitious work than Electronic – the tracks that emerged included more dance music than Johnny’s trademark guitar, but ‘Forbidden City’, which Marr cited as one of his favourite Electronic tracks, and ‘For You’ featured his guitar more. The emotional ‘Out Of My League’ was another of Johnny’s favourites. At the same time, Oasis released ‘Some Might Say’, their first number one single in the summer, and when NME set the band up head to head against Blur with its ‘British Heavyweight Championship’ front cover, they were guaranteed headlines in both the music and the general press; indeed, the story of who would get the coveted number one single slot when the two bands released their singles on the same day became an item on the prime BBC news show that evening.

  Meanwhile, Morrissey’s career took a turn for the worse on the release of Southpaw Grammar, of which one reviewer unkindly noted that there was no reason why anyone who already owned something by Morrissey “should ever want to hear this record.” For Morrissey and Johnny, however, there was far worse ahead, as the former members of The Smiths prepared with their respective lawyers for a court case that would bring them all back into the headlines.

  1996 proved a miserable year for the four members of ‘the best British band since The Beatles’ as Mike Joyce’s claim over royalties came to court. The case consisted of the fact that – while song-writing royalties to Morrissey and Johnny were not in question – he had received an unfair percentage of the band’s performance royalties. Going right back to the original contract with Rough Trade, on which only the names of Morrissey and Johnny had appeared, making them, legally, the only actual members of The Smiths, Mike argued that the 10% share of income that he and Andy Rourke had received was unfair in comparison with the remaining 40% each share enjoyed by Johnny and Morrissey.

  Alongside equally famed cases such as George Michael’s against Sony, Lol Tolhurst’s against The Cure, or Prince’s against Warner Bros, the case of The Smiths has gone down as one of the most dramatic and bitter in rock legal history. The press had a field day – it had been a long time since the British press had had a chance to take a pop against Morrissey in particular, and, regardless of the rights or wrongs of the case, it was largely the singer who unfairly took the brunt of the bad press. Andy Rourke had previously accepted a settlement with his former band-mates over the issue, but for Joyce it was clearly a matter to take further. While The Manchester Evening News noted that “the four band members barely acknowledged each others’ presence throughout the court hearing”, the esteemed local newspaper also observed a notable description of Johnny by his representative in court. Robert Englehart QC described Marr as “a very decent, honest person – scrupulously fair – who was not going to cheat his friends.” The press estimated the outcome in favour of Joyce to be somewhere nearing £1 million pounds, a huge sum of money if that was accurate, and consequently the bitterness between band members was long-lasting.

  Of the two song-writers, only Johnny was in court to hear the judge’s decision, described by The Times as “looking shocked, pale and refusing to comment” as he left the courtroom. Described by the judge as an “engaging personality” and a “reasonable character”, the affair clearly affected Johnny significantly. Despite his losing the case, Marr came out of the debacle with generally positive press. But not only were his former band-mates at odds with him, in Andy – who had given evidence during the case himself – he was in court with a near life-long friend. Morrissey was to appeal against the judge’s decision made in favour of Joyce, though he was to lose that appeal, while Johnny accepted and settled the amounts proscribed by the judge. Years later the acrimony was still evident between Morrissey and Mike, though Johnny has kept a low profile on the subject. The British press gleefully attacked Morrissey, quoting and mis-quoting the judge’s words ad infinitum. Ten years on, Johnny and Andy prepared to take the stage together again for the first time since the demise of the band, and Marr hinted at the agony that the case had caused him: “Andy and I go way back before The Smiths,” he told journalist Pete Paphides on the subject of their appearance in the high court. “Our friendship was bigger than that.”

  With the case behind him, Johnny – and indeed Morrissey – got back to work, though for Johnny it was a relatively quiet time. The release of Raise The Pressure kept Electronic’s stock high, a collection of breezy-but-melancholic dance tracks and slower pop numbers featuring some of Johnny’s loveliest guitar work for a long time.

  ‘Forbidden City’ had an air of the Pet Shop Boys in its graceful melody, but is pure Sumner in the lyric, while Johnny’s acoustic strumming has a fantastic crispness and lightness to it. The discrete electric accents that he puts into the track, and the stretching, yearning solo make ‘Forbidden City’ one of Electronic’s best tracks, and a beautiful album opener. ‘For You’ maintains the tone of guitar-driven pop, with Johnny again carrying Sumner’s vocal perfectly. The orchestral clouds that open the next track give way to the metronomic keyboards of ‘Dark Angel’, the first song on the album not co-written with Kraftwerk’s Karl Bartos, and a lovely blend of the optimistic and the melancholic.

  ‘One Day’ is powered by Marr’s guitars again – pulsating acoustic, howls of feedback and rich, atmospheric chords that lead into one of Johnny’s best, aggressive riffs on the album, though the verse is highly melodic. More glacial, orchestral keyboards introduced ‘Until The End Of Time’, another song with a Pet Shop Boy feel to it – refined, restrained dance music with an air of distraction. ‘Second Nature’ was a more reflective track, bringing the pace of the album down. ‘If You’ve Got Love’ pumped the energy up a level again. Johnny was particularly happy with ‘Out Of My League’, a song that combines the pace of ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ with the melodic transparency of the kind of carefree early Seventies pop of which Johnny has al
ways been a fan. ‘Interlude’ was a short piece combining the claustrophobia of David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs with the textured, pastoral feel of Tomita. Brooding electronica defined ‘Freefall’, while ‘Visit Me’ was another gentle piece in which keyboard and Johnny’s acoustic guitar complement Sumner’s assured vocal perfectly. ‘How Long’ and ‘Time Can Tell’ closed the album, the latter gently strummed by Johnny around cool, jazzy chords.

  Raising The Pressure was a mature piece, the sound of writers and musicians at ease with one another and the music they created. Despite the heightened energy of many of the tracks, it was a reflective album, removed from the frenetic force that had defined Bernard and Johnny’s previous outing.

  Early in the New Year, ‘Second Nature’ was released as a single. Johnny then worked with another old friend from Manchester, Mike Pickering. Formerly A&R man at Factory Records, Pickering had been responsible for bringing both James and The Happy Mondays into the Factory stable, and latterly Guru Josh and Black Box to Deconstruction, to where he moved after Factory. Then, fronted by Heather Small, and including former Orange Juice keyboardist Paul Heard and Pickering, M-People had had a club-land hit with ‘How Can I Love You More?’ in 1991. It was the album Elegant Slumming in 1993 that launched the hits ‘Moving On Up’ and ‘One Night in Heaven’ on the world.

  By the time Fresco was released in the autumn of 1997, the band were on something of a slide, with critical reaction to the previous two albums being luke warm. The new album was another rich collection of highly polished pop soul tracks, on two of which Johnny appeared. ‘Believe It’ was a funky dance number based around a repeated riff, and ‘Rhythm And Blues’ a mid-paced number featuring Johnny’s echoing, wah-wah solo. Both tracks were, once again, a diversion from Johnny’s more familiar work, and were also – like so many of his diversions – steps into soul and dance.

  At the same time, Morrissey’s critical standing was re-adjusted by the release of Maladjusted, after the under-whelming Southpaw Grammar. The album, according to Uncut, “confounded the obituary writers.” Morrissey and Marr could still cut it, however far apart.

  * * *

  In November, one of Johnny’s chance meetings while in the USA led to the genesis of his first truly solo work some years later. In an elevator in New York he “bumped into” a young guy. “We started talking, and we hit it off,” explained Johnny much later. When he discovered that the guy was a musician, the pair arranged to meet up and play back at Johnny’s house when they were back in the UK. At first, remembered Marr, “I wasn’t even aware that he was a musician.” Of course the young man was Zak Starkey, son of Ringo and drummer to the stars. Starkey’s career went back to the early Eighties, although technically of course, being the son of a Beatle, it had in all likelihood started at birth. Sean and Julian Lennon, Danni Harrison, and Sir Paul’s son James McCartney have all followed their dads into the business. By 1985, Zak was working with Roger Daltrey on his album Under A Raging Moon, with former Moody Blue and member of Wings Denny Laine on Hometown Girls, and was soon established not only as a touring member of The Who but also in his old man’s All Starr band.

  “He’d go off with The Who, and then I’d get back and be writing with Beth Orton,” said Marr. “And he’d be doing some more Who stuff… We got to a point where we really liked the songs, and wanted to turn this into a band.” The pair had a natural affinity, and by 1998 it was Starkey who was discussing in interviews the ongoing work with Johnny that eventually led to Johnny Marr’s new band, The Healers. Johnny spoke of how he had been auditioning drummers who were so nervous that they couldn’t hold their sticks properly, but that when he met Starkey the adulation was the other way round. Remembering what Marc Bolan and T. Rex had meant to the teenage Johnny, he laughed when he told the tale. “It was when he said he’d been on the set of Born To Boogie (the T. Rex movie directed by Ringo Starr)… I just thought, ‘Oh my God!’”

  1997 also saw eighteen years of Conservative drudgery come to an end. It was a heady few months: England beat Italy at football, the United Kingdom won the Eurovision song contest with – for a change – a proper band (Katrina And The Waves), and New Labour ousted the greying Tories under the banner of ‘Cool Britannia’. Tony Blair’s publicity machine recognised the new wave of optimism amongst the youth of the country, and – with the generation of acid housers and E-droppers who had gathered at Spike Island to witness The Stone Roses back in 1990 now all eligible to vote – Blair brought rock music on board to establish his own rock ’n’ roll yoof credentials. In truth, the move was both a genuine inclusive gesture from Blair – he was after all the first British Prime Minister to play the electric guitar, having fronted his own band at university – but it was also a demeaning and cynical ploy to promote a political agenda. The sight of Noel Gallagher, suited and booted at 10 Downing Street, troubled some, but not Noel, who had happily supported New Labour and used the previous years’ Brit Awards as an opportunity to tell the nation who to vote for. Since Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit had appeared on the front of posh style mag Vanity Fair, both the Gallagher brothers and Cool Britannia had become high profile across the British media. By the release of Oasis’s ‘difficult third album’, the band were established as both the darlings and anti-heroes of a nation reeling from the death of Diana Spencer, the former wife of The Prince of Wales. Be Here Now sold more than three quarters of a million copies on its first day of release, but the album received a critical mauling.

  Soon though there was turmoil within the Oasis camp itself. While Alan White had replaced original drummer Tony McCarroll in 1995, the year 1998 saw the departure of both Paul McGuigan and guitarist Paul Arthurs. The never-ending story of the Gallagher Brothers’ band took another turn. ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs was a popular member of the band with fans, and his replacement would have to both fit in with the remaining members and appeal to the fan base. Who better?

  Johnny denies that he was ever officially asked to join Oasis. That doesn’t mean to say that behind locked doors and between friends the matter wasn’t discussed. Of course, Johnny would play with them in the future, and tour with them with The Healers. For now Oasis was not for him, and the gig was taken on by Gem Archer of Heavy Stereo. Johnny is regularly linked with bands when their guitarist jumps ship – he was later to be associated with Blur, as a replacement for outgoing guitarist Graham Coxon, but of course this was even less likely to happen than his joining Oasis.

  One of Johnny’s production projects was released in September, when Marion’s album The Program was released. The connection that brought Johnny in as producer on the second album by the Macclesfield-based Britpop band came via Joe Moss, who was managing Marion and invited Johnny down to the studio. The album was a follow-up to their first release This World And Body, for a band that had built up a strong live following around the country, including having played support roles for both Morrissey and Radiohead. “I wasn’t particularly looking to produce a group,” said Johnny. “They invited me down to a rehearsal. Before we knew it, six hours had gone by and we’d worked on pretty much the whole album.” As so often in Johnny’s career, it is the personal connection that leads to the collaboration. “It soon became obvious,” said Johnny, “that we were going to make a record.”

  While Marion’s career was not long-lasting, the album they produced with him was well-received, and still sounds good nearly a decade on – unsurprisingly somewhere halfway between The Smiths and The Healers. Johnny’s input was very similar to what he had injected into Billy Bragg’s work: embellishment, re-writing, playing on the tracks and, in this case producing the band too. Marr also co-wrote ‘Is That So?’ and the single ‘Miyako Hideaway’. As with Bragg, Sumner or Talking Heads, if Johnny heard elements in the songs that he felt could be developed further, the band themselves were open to his ideas. “They had a steaming chorus,” Johnny said of the ‘Miyako Hideaway’. “And I came up with a middle-eight and developed the verses a little.”

  Marion
singer Jaime Harding watched Johnny at work on the tracks, and, like Billy Bragg, he too felt that there was a magical touch in what Marr brought to the party. Most of all, whatever Marr did, or added, or wiped, he never lost the feel of Marion themselves, never subjugated the band to his own ideas. “Johnny’s input [on the album] was as big as anybody’s, and he changed quite a lot of the music under the voice,” explains Harding. “He made it richer and gave it a different feel, but… it’s a Marion sound.”

  Unfortunately, although the album was a very powerful piece of work – the sound of an established band making big strides – The Program did not progress Marion into the big league. By the spring of the following year the band was in tatters, but several years on they still have a strong following. Guitarist Phil Cunningham went on to join New Order and – completing the circle as so many times has happened in Johnny’s career – play with Electronic.

  * * *

  The death of Linda McCartney in 1998 had moved many people for whom Sir Paul and The Beatles had formed a backdrop to their life. While the turmoil that was The Beatles’ closing years had entertained and dumbfounded most observers, Linda had forever been at Paul’s side in the aftermath, and – as a member of Wings – become a pop star of sorts in her own right. Linda had also been dearly loved for her stand on behalf of vegetarianism and animal rights. Thus it was a congregation formed from many churches that mourned her death.