Johnny Marr (19 page)

Electronic
made it to the number two slot in the UK album
charts – like so many of Johnny’s albums over the years, not
quite
getting to number one. It was, as Johnny might have said at the time, a fantastic piece of vinyl.

S
essions and demos for the next The The album had begun as far back as summer of the previous year, but through 1992 they increased in intensity and gradually the album
Dusk
began to take shape. The record was to prove at odds with what was happening elsewhere in music. As the tide of influence wavered between the UK and America, attention turned to an American band called Nirvana. 1992 was the year that Nirvana took off, their album
Nevermind
released in the autumn. With the attendant so-called grunge movement introducing bands such as Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins to UK audiences, the gap left by the under-employed Stone Roses was filled. Nirvana – and indeed Pearl Jam and the Pumpkins – were worthwhile bands, but much of the grunge phenomenon was dire. There was clearly a gap in the market, and – quietly – the phenomenon that came to be known
as Britpop gradually crept from the net-curtained bedrooms of London and elsewhere to take over from Nirvana after the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994.

In the meantime,
Dusk
was Johnny’s second extended work-out with The The and Matt Johnson. While elements of the writing process had started during the
Mind Bomb
tour, the album was recorded live in Johnson’s own home studio in East London; the
Mind Bomb
four-piece band reconvened and recorded live, while the process was captured by film-maker Tim Pope. Writing on tour helped Johnson pare down the values that he engaged with the songs – cleaner, clearer. “I became more sensitive to the idea of dynamics,” he told one interviewer at the time and the songs written for
Dusk
became more and more concise. Still reeling from the death of his brother, Johnson found the entire process difficult, sometimes losing the studio control that he had managed so clearly on previous albums. The influence of darker blues powers such as Robert Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf were immediately to hand, and Matt described the entire process of making the album as “intensely personal.” That isn’t to say that the album itself lacked control: in fact
Dusk
’s reigning-in of personal nightmares and visions has made it one of The The’s most loved and affecting albums. The leap from the universal themes of
Mind Bomb
to the diary-like pages of
Dusk
was not a sales-orientated calculation, but the appeal to the audience was reflected in the fact that the collection of songs ultimately made it to number two in the album charts.

Much of the album was composed on acoustic guitar, with a drum machine fleshing out the basic demos. The massed ranks of contributors that enlightened
Mind Bomb
was reduced to a more stable central core of players – and the album has a much more
rootsy, R&B feel to it – there was still room for a brass section on some tracks and guest artists such as Danny Thompson were brought in again where required. Musically the project was less of a ‘band’ than on
Mind Bomb
, the songs more finished as they came to the studio, but the sessions themselves were still intense, with blood red projections and incense burning around the basement studio. The band nicknamed it the ‘psychic sauna,’ the heat in the studio deliberately intense. Johnson arranged huge heaters, turned up full, to raise the studio temperature, and this was easily matched by the emotional heat. Johnny – established as the most contributing member of the band besides Johnson himself – remembered turning up at the sessions bright and breezy in his new open-topped Italian sports car, only to step down into the cellars and join the almost religious intensity of the recording studio.

The atmosphere appealed to Johnny immensely, the studio vibe creating a weird but very creative atmosphere. “He got these very intense, interesting dynamics, that captured your attention completely,” says Johnny. “Too many bands are just record collectors, and four guys in a room with a big record collection each doesn’t mean you can come up with the goods.” But while the atmosphere was intense, it wasn’t glum. “I can’t work if I am down” says Johnny. “I get things done by being genuinely positive – and using that [kind of] energy.”

Generous to a fault, Johnny also encouraged Johnson to play and develop more of his own guitar parts, and Johnson spoke of how one of Johnny’s greatest contributions to the album was the encouragement he gave. “He understands what I am trying to do and he believes in it,” Matt told Michael Leonard, adding neatly that his own role remained rather one of a “benevolent dictator.”

Engaged in the success of these The The sessions, Johnny turned down the opportunity of producing one of the best-selling albums of the era. A Smiths-like frenzy had whipped up around Irish band The Cranberries following the release of their first EP in 1991, and by the following year they had signed to Island for a six-album deal. Sessions for the first album had foundered, and Johnny remembers being asked if he was interested. In fact, Stephen Street took the band to Windmill Studios in Dublin and produced the phenomenally successful
Everybody Else is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?
It took a while for the album to take off, but there was a neat symmetry to the route that the record took before it hit the top of the album charts. Snubbed by the fickle UK market, the band took off on a six-week tour of the USA in support of another British band in the summer of 1993, and found a rabid audience on the US college circuit. The Cranberries picked up plaudits everywhere and the album began to sell and sell, finally reaching the number one slot in the UK more than a year after its release. The band who gave their Stateside support slot to The Cranberries in the summer of 1993 was The The… without Johnny Marr.

Although the target of Morrissey’s latest single ‘We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful’ was never identified, Johnny’s former partner described the “vicious sense of competition in Manchester” when asked what the song was about. Described in
NME
as “by far and away the ex-Smith’s worst single”, Morrissey was happy to reference the “jealous, vile creatures” around the Manchester music scene in promoting it. In particular, Morrissey despised the response to success that his city’s brethren heaped upon anyone who actually made it. “In Manchester,” he said to
Q
magazine, “you are accepted as long as you are scrambling and on
your knees. But if you have any success, or are independent… they hate you.” No longer on his knees, both Johnny and Morrissey were now happily successful
and
independent.

One of Morrissey’s best solo albums,
Your Arsenal
, appeared in the mid-summer. Morrissey fused a big glam rock with a rockabilly roll on the album that was produced by Bowie sideman Mick Ronson, a wonderful blend of the old and the new, and – in the closing months of Ronson’s life (he was to succumb to cancer in 1993) – a fitting piece by which to remember one of the most influential guitarists of the Seventies. Equally fittingly, there was no irony but maybe a quiet sense of achievement when Ronson’s former employer David Bowie later covered one of the album’s best tracks, ‘I Know It’s Going to Happen Someday.’ The best Christmas presents for the festive season in 1992 were undoubtedly the two Smiths ‘greatest hits’ albums released in August and November respectively. While of course they were more than simply ‘hits’ albums,
Best I
and
Best II
did exactly what it said on the jacket, compiling some of the most memorable Smiths tracks together.

Throughout Johnny’s career, personal relationships have come to define some of his most long-lasting professional relationships. It took years from their first getting to know one another for Marr and Matt Johnson to finally work together, and Electronic took a similarly long time to ferment. In Noel Gallagher, a fan became a friend. More than a decade earlier, the young Gallagher had lapped up the Smiths, alongside The Beatles, T. Rex and Slade. Gallagher hailed from the same streets down which the teenage Johnny had
ridden his bicycle and yelled the songs of Marc Bolan. He was working for Oldham’s Inspiral Carpets, one of the bands that had been ‘most likely to,’ alongside the Charlatans, Mondays, James and Roses. As a guitar tech for Clint Boon’s band, Gallagher travelled extensively, learning the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle and watching from within how a proper band operated. The potential of his younger brother Liam, singing in a local band called Rain, soon became evident and, with Noel’s guitar and songs on board, Oasis was ready to take on the world.

In May they played a now legendary gig in Glasgow and were spotted by the founder of Creation Records, Alan McGee. The five songs they played changed the pop world forever, as McGee fell hook, line and sinker for the Manchester miscreants, offering them a contract on the spot, from which they conquered the world. Although it was some time after the gig that the band actually signed with Creation, in the meantime a copy of their demo had fallen into Johnny’s hands, and he was (excusing the pun) instrumental in helping them establish themselves. “I used to go to The Hacienda on a Saturday night,” remembered Noel. He would regularly bump into the same guy there and chat to him. “I told him I was in a band and he said, ‘Give us a tape, I’ll give it to our kid.’” Every time Noel saw the guy, he would say the same thing – “give us a tape.” “And then I saw him just after we had the offer from Creation… and he says ‘How’s the band going?’” Noel remembers having a copy of the new The The album in his hand, and the guy saying “Fucking hell – you’ll definitely have to get a tape to our kid.” The guy was Ian Marr. “And then it clicked,” says Gallagher, “…Johnny Marr!”

“I gets him a tape,” Noel remembered. “And two hours later
I had Johnny Marr on the phone. I fucking freaked out.” Johnny thought the tape was fantastic. “We went out for a drink that night,” said Gallagher, “and he came along and brought his manager, Marcus Russell.”

Noel Gallagher’s story illustrates beautifully the way Johnny would happily oil any wheels that he thought ought to be turning more easily within the business. Russell, of course, went on to be Oasis’s manager and to oversee their major successes. While there might have appeared much musical water between Oasis and The Smiths (swaggering loudmouths versus sauntering bibliophiles), in fact the bands had much in common, not least their Irish catholic upbringing in the southern suburbs of Manchester. Johnny immediately took to the duo. “When I first met Noel,” Johnny was to say years later, “he took so long tuning up between songs that I had to lend him a guitar. He fell in love with it – and I didn’t have the heart to ask for it back!” Over the forthcoming months, that guitar would be the one on which Gallagher wrote some of the biggest rock anthems of the decade, including ‘Live Forever’. Quick to get to the point, when asked about that, Johnny jokes, “If that’s the case, then I reckon he owes me a couple of million in royalties!”

Within the year, Oasis were headline news. In their famed spat with Blur, it became clear why it was that Oasis – while they had sold fewer records than Blur at the time – went on to be a much bigger phenomenon in the long term. While the development of ‘lad culture’ – and magazines such as
Loaded
and
FHM
embraced unreconstructed maleness amongst the under-thirties – Britpop as a whole struggled to manage its sense of irony. Were Blur being ironic? Was Jarvis? Were Sleeper? While the message of Britpop was
open to misinterpretation, Oasis suffered from no irony. Compared to the art school graduates of many of the London bands, Oasis brought the swagger and the fun back into rock ’n’ roll.

One of the most obvious comparisons with The Smiths – apart from the Gallagher brothers’ style bearing a passing visual resemblance to Marr’s (down, perhaps, to them sharing a hairdresser in Manchester) – was that however much they attracted column inches for all the wrong (ie. non-musical) reasons, their reputation was backed up by some of the best rock ’n’ roll of their era. Because their music was so good, their antics elsewhere could carry the day. However much the UK press tried to knock Morrissey off his pedestal, as long as The Smiths made the best music around they would always succeed. Ditto Oasis – their swaggering confidence recalled The Faces, their boogie was heavy with the pop influence of Slade, The Beatles and Dr Feelgood. And in Johnny Marr they had a champion who knew the ropes. Marr has remained close to both the brothers. The relentless glare of publicity that the Gallaghers have endured over the years has been more punishing even than that which shone on The Smiths; Johnny understands that it isn’t easy being a Gallagher, just as it wasn’t easy being a Smith.

Over the course of 1993, Johnny would work with K-Klass, make some demos with Ian McCulloch, record with Nelee Hooper and, of course, watch the release of that The The material, while much of the year belonged to Electronic. For starters though, 1993 saw The The release
Dusk
, a dark, city-night album, perhaps Matt Johnson’s
most personal piece of work. ‘Love Is Stronger Than Death’ was one particular favourite of Marr, a difficult song for Johnson, concerning as it does the death of Eugene Johnson, one which captured the writer’s intention perfectly. Rather than indulging in melancholy, the song is remarkably positive and optimistic, Johnson’s vocal at once tender and strong, the lyric intense but couched in images of blue skies, springtime, beating hearts and smiles. The acoustic guitar is Matt, but Johnny created his own harmonica part, and its wistful and haunting tone perfectly sets off the swelling Hammond organ of DC Collard. After the swaggering anarchy of the opening track this is a soulful, moving piece.

The R&B harmonica that Johnny plays to introduce ‘Dogs Of Lust’ is as distinctive as any of his rootsy guitar on the album, the song bathed in a rawness that Jack White would seek out a decade later. DC Collard’s honky tonk piano triplets establish ‘This Is The Night’ in a similar way, though the music is a very different proposition. As the drama of the track develops, Johnny’s electric guitar soars over the rich melody, setting it in a warm but disturbing light.