When I meet the legendary guitarist Johnny Marr for lunch, in the midst of the whirlwind promotional tour for his memoir Set the Boy Free, I quickly realise that the founder of The Smiths is not merely an avowed vegetarian (chili rice bowl with tofu for protein on top, if you must know), but that he's a teetotaler as well, ordering the very un-rock-and-roll green tea with a cranberry and seltzer chaser.
"My lifestyle choice wasn't really a reaction to anything," Marr, at 53 still sharp-witted and as hyperkinetic as ever, tells me. "I saw an opportunity to go forward differently because I started to see the rock and roll lifestyle for a guy in his middle age as being really corny. I identified it as being old fashioned and something that would hold me back. I mean, let's put it this way, if I had thought that drinking and taking drugs would make me a more interesting musician, I'd be doing it right now. But as a lot of people learn, it became a law of diminishing returns."
For fans of The Smiths, Marr's book will serve as a foil to former frontman Morrissey's 2013 memoir, Autobiography. But as any fan of modern rock will know, Marr's career has consisted of much more than the group he founded, and Set the Boy Free is a trip down memory lane featuring the all-star cast that Marr has rubbed shoulders with as a guitarslinger for hire, and it will likely serve as a guidebook to anyone who's ever dreamed about picking up the guitar and trying their hand at making music for a living because, at it's heart, Set the Boy Free is written by a music fan for music fans.
ESQ: The thing I got from the book, and what I guess I've always known about you, is that you're as much a fan of music as much as anything else, and that you've always collected music. But have you read a lot of rock biographies and memoirs?
Johnny Marr: When I was on the road in the early days with The Smiths, I used to read a lot about the Stones. And I remember reading a great book about James Brown. They gave me real insight and were often fascinating, but really it was just to get me a bit of a culture before heading back into the studio.
Discovering the Stones' first manager Andrew Loog Oldham when you were starting out was a revelation for you, it seems. It gave you a focus for your ambitions, as though the way he did things was a road map for doing what you wanted to do when there really was none, certainly not growing up in early 1980s Manchester.
Well, it was even before he wrote his, so it was just bits and pieces that I took from really rare interviews in the library. The thing I realised, as well, was that my heroes are all fans. I think it's an interesting thing when young musicians arrive seemingly fully formed, most of them anyway, as experts. They might be inexperienced in the studio, and they might be inexperienced in business, but when Bob Marley was making Catch a Fire, he knew that the harmony should sound like the Impressions. And he knew the way the stereo image should be panned in the mix. So this was a young kid, seemingly inexperienced, but he was an expert.
It's partly fandom, but it's also great to always think like a fan. When I talk in the book about meeting Bruce Springsteen, and he told me about his philosophy that every ticket is a contract with a fan, right there I knew that he had an understanding of what it is to be a fan, because he is a fan himself. And if you give Paul McCartney the opportunity, he'll talk all day long about Buddy Holly. So I think that people who are really driven and want to be great… It's partly genetic, but it's partly from coming from a place of obsession. And that obsession is what makes them an expert.
There are kids out there discovering The Smiths, or you through any of the other things you've done, because you've played with a lot of people. Was that part of your motivation for writing the book, that there might to be a kid out there and this will be his or her road map?
It wasn't at all, but halfway through the book, my agent said, "This is like a handbook." I think that's partly because it's so idealistic. But that's just my personality. So in that regard, it is a little like a handbook. And it's a really nice thing that it could be that.
Let's talk about when you first went to America, with The Smiths, and played at Danceteria. That was a pretty legendary New York nightclub at the time.
It was the very first time I'd been in America. Over the years I've heard that Madonna performed that night, too, but I'm not sure about that so I didn't write it in the book. I didn't want rumor to turn into fact. Anyway, it was New Year's Eve 1983. I stuck around all night listening to the DJ, and I really loved it. I was into it because my flatmate was a DJ, and I got to hear everything first and really loved that sort of club music. It inspired me. But I knew that the band I wanted to form was going to be a guitar band, and that came from going to [Manchester's infamous nightclub] the Hacienda. It was this vast, completely fucking vacant structure with about 11 or 12 people in it, usually, or maybe 25 on a Wednesday night. It was a really interesting mix of what was coming over from New York and also what was going to be the indie movement in the U.K. You'd hear dance music, but you'd also hear "Homosapien" by Pete Shelley, with that great 12-string acoustic. That's a really good hybrid of a record. So that made a big impression. And the other thing that was happening for me was that all this electro stuff going on. It was certainly something that I could see putting the band I had in mind into.
No one was really doing what you had in mind. Didn't you have any doubts?
I had an insane optimism, but crucially I also had three people who believed in me: Joe Moss, who looked like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, who became our manager; my girlfriend Angie, who's super, super smart and who believed in me; and when I met Morrissey, he believed in me. Without those three people, I would never have been able to tap into my optimism and my hyperactive drive. I had three very, very cool people saying, "You can do it. You can do it. You can do it." You can never do anything yourself. You always have to have good people around you.
You joke about your reputation for being hyperactive.
I believed that hyperactivity is a very reductive term, so I wore that kind of attitude a little like a badge. And I was acutely aware that I was young and I was little and I was hyper but, you know, I was just like this little rock and roll star. And that was really before I even got paid!
There's certainly something magical about the way it all happened. Having people who believed in you was certainly key. There are a lot of people who are talented but just never, for one reason or another, make it. But there is also a little bit of magic to the fact that you were able to find your way to the loading dock at Rough Trade and meet the man who would sign you to the label, and there was magic in the way that you connected with Morrissey—and that you saw it as Morrissey and Marr, in brackets, from the get go. And then, even in the first couple of songs you wrote together, it was as though you instantly recognized something special about him.
Well, first off, I've always believed that I've had a lot of luck. But I also know that you have to make your own luck. You can't just sit around in a bar talking about it, or sit around, watching television, dreaming about it.
Well, a lot of people would not have wanted to collaborate with Morrissey. He's an unusual guy, and you were young—young guys are pretty unforgiving. But you didn't see him as odd, or see the things another young person might see and not like about him.
I didn't really care about any of that. I just wanted a singer. We had a really, really strong friendship, right away. Let me put it this way: You don't just manufacture luck. If you're just sitting around fucking talking about it, it won't happen. I did actually have to go and find out Morrissey's address. I had to go back to the projects, and I had to knock on the door of strangers to get his address. And to get to that address, I had to get on a fucking bus, and ride for forever.
I knew it was ballsy. But I had this spirit of rock and roll in me. It was this sort of rock and roll idealism, but I was by no means naive. I did plenty of walking around the streets at night kicking cans with nowhere to go. That happened a lot. And that kind of desperation can dampen your spirit, and I had to fight against it all the time. So I kept the juice going on a natural optimism. When my friends were shooting each other up, I had to just buck up and be on my own. That was tough. That was year zero, you know? That was pretty bleak. So, you know, I was putting my faith in magic. But I'd been through plenty that I knew what bleak was. I'd watched my dad everyday digging fucking holes in the road, and my mates with no jobs. And the only thing I had going for me was my guitar and positivity and my girlfriend.
Let's talk about your guitar playing. I was surprised to learn how important Iggy and the Stooges, and especially James Williamson, were to you. They come up a lot in the book, especially in your formative years.
They're great. Iggy pops up throughout the book. I don't know him but we've met a few times. He thinks very quickly. His mind's really sharp. It was surprising to realize, as you just pointed out, what a big role in my life Iggy's played. Raw Power… I got it because my mate told me that a song I was writing at the time sounded like "Gimme Danger." And that cover!
It did the same thing for me, and then I took it home, and I expected one thing, because of the Bowie connection, but when I put it on it wasn't anything like what I expected. It was really jagged and crazy and short, and I was blown away.
Jagged. That's a good word for it. "Penetration," to me, it's as good as James Brown. "I Need Somebody"? It's amazing. When I first heard "I Need Somebody", it was fall outside. When I got back from the record store, it was about 5:30, 6 o'clock at night. I had this street light outside my window; this orange light that was seeping through into this really gloomy little room. And I would look out over the buildings where I lived—what you call projects in America—and the only redeeming feature of the landscape was that there was nothing obscuring the skyline, because there were no high-rises. So there I was, with no one around, and this orange light coming through the window, and I played Raw Power for the first time. And when "I Need Somebody" came on it spoke to me in a way that was melancholy, sexy, and had resignation in it. I had already decided by a few cuts into the album that this was rock and roll salvation. That's very corny, I know, but I used to devour things like that, and just get high on rebellion. But it was like I had been given this secret knowledge. I knew then that the only way to get out the situation I was in was to get good.
So your style really grew out of that moment, almost.
Yeah. It was definitely a reaction against mid-'70s rock machismo.
Any Smiths fan reading this would kill me if I didn't ask about your meeting a few years ago with Morrissey.
I get it. What was great about writing about it was that, I think by accident, in just telling how it was, I almost demystify it. Because there it is, just two old friends sat in a pub. Very ho-hum.
But to any fan, that story is apocryphal. It's, "Oh my God, where are we headed?" But actually, we're not headed anywhere, and it turns out it is just two old friends catching up.
That's what I mean about demystifying it. I understand how people might see it, but I never went to that meeting with Morrissey with any intention or even notion that we were going to be talking about the band coming back together. But I was intrigued. And it was a really, really interesting conversation, and I was really, really pleased that we connected, and we did what we always did: We talked about what records we liked. There he was, talking all about Shocking Blue, who are a Dutch band, and I couldn't get him off that subject! And then I was talking all about Portland, Oregon—because that was a big subject for me at that time—and all the other bands I was into at the time.
Well, that was always the basis of the relationship.
Right. That's the thing we'd always had in common. Our personalities are still so different, though, so I guess nothing's changed. But it's one of the things people want to know about because it's an interesting story and for me to write my life story and not put that in the book would really just be fuckin' weird. And I'm glad to actually share it with people.
For me the story feels like a period, but to other people it probably feels like "dot dot dot." I guess that's the difference: It's what people take away from it. To me it feels as though, even while you're telling it, you don't want to go backwards.
Yeah, that's right. Musicians understand that. Sometimes fans don't. So I can understand to the outside world—to fans—that really what they would want to have next is for us to start sitting in meetings with a bunch of business people for about five months planning albums and tours, but that's just not going to happen.
