Johnny Marr (23 page)

Finn had been playing a few low key gigs around New Zealand with bands made up of local amateur musicians, who would cover his hits and those of Crowded House and Split Enz, the two bands with whom Neil is most closely associated. To end the tour, Finn decided to form a little band of his own and contacted Johnny, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, Phil Sedway and Ed O’Brien from Radiohead amongst others about sharing a bill.

“It was a whimsical notion I had around Christmas,” said Neil Finn. For the gig in Auckland, Neil decided his new little band could be something special for the town. “I was going out to do a tour with a band of strangers every night,” Neil continued, “and I thought it would be good in Auckland… to do something in Auckland that Auckland would never normally get.” As Finn explained, “it took a few phone calls.”

Johnny was intrigued – Finn’s new material, the album
One Nil
, had impressed him, and the more he thought about it the more he really wanted to get out and do the gigs. On arrival, the band rehearsed for three or four days, and when the band hit the stage they were supported by Betchadupa, Neil’s eldest son’s band. Dates
in the Antipodes were followed by a European tour (“which I had no idea I was going to do,” said Johnny, “until I got back from New Zealand!”), and according to Marr it was one of the best experiences of his career. “In the past,” said Johnny, “I always had to be dragged by the collar by the lead singer,” whereas this tour was a joy. “I didn’t realise how great Neil was until I started playing with him,” Marr admitted, “[but] when you get inside those songs you realise what a talent he’s got.” During the tour, Johnny ‘allowed’ Neil to cover much protected/little played Smiths songs. They included ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ and ‘How Soon Is Now?’ – perhaps two of the most sacred songs in Johnny’s back-catalogue. The pair shared the vocal duty. “We got better as we went on,” said Finn.

Meanwhile, Johnny was working hard on his own new material too. The new Healers song ‘Down On The Corner’ was played at virtually every gig, and often Neil would ask Johnny to run through the song for the purposes of sound-checking too.

By the time the tour reached the UK, and Manchester, they were really flying. Of the gig in his local home theatre, Johnny observed that “I haven’t seen the Manchester Apollo rock that much since Thin Lizzy.” In the spring of the following year, Johnny re-joined Finn for a series of concerts on the west coast of America. The response from the Californian audiences was as enthusiastic as it had been elsewhere. The ensuing live release,
Seven Worlds Collide
, was testament to the fantastic experience that the band enjoyed. As well as becoming friends with Neil Finn – who Johnny clearly respects extremely highly, Johnny got to know Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam and Lisa Germano too. Johnny was to work on two of Germano’s own solo albums in the next few years.

Although The Healers had been out alone and had toured with Oasis, there was still no published evidence of Johnny’s ‘solo’ project. Nonetheless, work continued on his return from the Finn tour, and the first fruits of it were released in early October. The EP ‘The Last Ride’ was completely unlike anything Johnny had released before, and he was happy for it to be considered a new beginning. “It’s really nice for people to know where I am at,” he told one interviewer, “and not have to talk about the past all the time.” ‘The Last Ride’ was a postcard from where Johnny was at in the early years of the new century, and that was certainly a mighty long way away from The Smiths which was, after all, nearly two decades previous.

Heathen Chemistry
, the dull new Oasis album, was released in the summer of 2002 to a better critical response than some recent Oasis records. To some degree the media love affair with Burnage’s finest had run its course, and the Oasis congregation was now a more settled church, a firm fan base rather than a Pavlovian response to anything the Gallagher brothers did. The album featured a number of contributions from Johnny. With a laid-back feel from Oasis, the record showcased several of Liam’s songs as well as one each by ‘new boys’ Gem Archer and Andy Bell. While Johnny was never likely to have replaced Paul Arthurs, his relationship with the Gallaghers was still good. ‘(Probably) All In The Mind’ was very reminiscent of The Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, and Johnny added an uncomplicated but raw and effective solo. ‘Born On A Different Cloud’ – one of Liam’s songs – featured Johnny on slide guitar. He played a really effective session that recalled the slide of George Harrison as much as Liam’s fantastic vocal revisited John Lennon’s. ‘Better Man’, a rocking track much in the tradition of The Stone
Roses’ ‘Love Spreads’ was Johnny’s final cut on the album, another one of Liam’s songs on which – as well as guitar – Johnny also contributed backing vocals.

On the subject of Johnny Marr, Noel Gallagher is hysterically funny. “There’s nothing he can’t do on a guitar,” says Gallagher. “You can’t be influenced by Johnny Marr, because he’s unique. You can’t play what he plays.” Noel rises to his subject with enthusiasm. “Even
he
can’t play what he plays. He told me a story of trying to recreate ‘How Soon Is Now?’, and it was like an Abbot and Costello sketch… even
he’s
not as good as he is!”

Another production credit came Johnny’s way in 2002 when he worked on the first album by Joe Moss’s recent signing Haven.
Between The Senses
was a strong album, compared in parts to Travis and Coldplay. In a series of events closely resembling the birth of The Smiths, Joe Moss, on holiday in Cornwall, was invited to see the band play live. Although Moss was still managing Marion, and they were gradually dissolving under his gaze, he liked the band that he saw, and invited them up to Manchester, getting them some support slots with Badly Drawn Boy in the process. Haven and Joe Moss got on really well, but the band and Johnny hit it off straight away. Johnny and Haven were to work on the follow-up album in a year or so’s time.

In the spring of 2003, the BBC marked the twentieth anniversary of the release of ‘Hand In Glove’ by broadcasting live from Salford Lads Club, by now firmly ensconced as The Smiths’ ‘own Abbey Road’. Andy Rourke had been playing with Badly Drawn Boy,
the Mancunian sensation whose work had rightly become feted nationwide. Mike Joyce was drumming with new band The Dogs, including former Oasis guitarist Bonehead. Johnny was of course playing with The Healers. Lisa Germano, who had met Johnny through the Neil Finn tour, released her critically acclaimed album
Lullaby For Liquid Pig
, on which Johnny played a part. Germano’s solo career – she first appeared in the mid-Eighties playing violin for John Mellencamp – was well-established, and her
Geek The Girl
was one of the highlight albums of the previous few years.

Despite so much activity, The Healers took off on tour, and their dates through 2003 made it one of the most extensive jaunts of Johnny’s career to date, encompassing a dozen countries and varying from small clubs to major stadia. The band kicked off in the USA in mid-January in Hoboken, New Jersey. Although Johnny had played many times in the USA, and loves the country dearly, he was as nervous as hell when he took the stage at Maxwell’s. His first words to an American audience as a Healer summed his pre-gig nerves up perfectly. “I can’t speak for everyone else,” Johnny told the crowd, “but I’ve been shitting myself!” The band played three dates at Maxwell’s before heading to Philadelphia, Washington and New York. By February, via Toronto, the tour arrived on the West Coast, where The Healers played at venues such as LA’s Troubadour and appeared live on
The Late Show
with David Letterman. Apart from playing songs from the album, Johnny also regularly performed the Bob Dylan classic ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ to the delight of audiences.

Still avoiding Smiths covers in the set, and sticking to largely tracks from
Boomslang
, the band played two gigs at the beginning of March to finish off the world tour. The first was back in the
home town of Manchester, while the second was a triumph at the ULU, where so long ago The Smiths had been introduced to John Walters, had been invited to their first session for John Peel, and had set off on the mighty journey that Johnny was very much still a part of.

Long-awaited, The Healers’ first album
Boomslang
was finally released to a modest but generally enthusiastic reception in February 2003. Inevitably the album was compared to The Smiths and to all the other bands who had come out of Manchester shouting, from Oasis to The Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays. The comparisons were not always entirely fair, nor were they by any means all positive, but many reviewers and fans fell in love with the record. The fact was that the idea of a Johnny Marr album on which Johnny sings all the songs was hard to get our heads around, but as always with his work, the album works perfectly if it is viewed as a snapshot of where he stood at a given time and in a given place. The album isn’t the culmination of Johnny’s career, and critics looking for the ‘final solution’ to twenty years of shunning publicity while crafting immaculate pop year after year were searching in vain. Johnny wasn’t trying to sound ‘like’ anyone, not least any of his former bands. With his ears constantly on contemporary bands, he was aware of how much his output would be likely to be compared to others too. “It would be undignified for me to try and sound like The Strokes, or Coldplay,” he explained. “God Forbid! I just wanted to make sure the [album] was wide awake, and natural and honest.”

The fact that Marr took the microphone and the centre stage for the first time in his adult career signalled that this was a different Johnny Marr altogether from the one we were used to. Not least
the confidence he exuded in discussing the project. For one riotous Canadian interview, Johnny was asked whether, looking back at the Linda McCartney tribute concert, Sir Paul had been familiar with Johnny’s own work. “Linda was a fan,” said Johnny. “And Chrissie Hynde probably played him some stuff. He just said I should have started singing a long time earlier. He said I was amazing, and he’d wished The Beatles had had five people in it!”

The title came to Johnny in a dream, in which a snake (a ‘boomslang’ is a breed of snake, and the word is a Dutch translation of the name ‘tree snake’) approached Johnny and revealed its name. The album was the result of a long period of waiting for Marr; since the last Electronic album he had been talking the project up. It started as a solo process and turned into a band, which then turned into an album. Johnny had a clear concept of what the album would be from the beginning, but as time went on he refined the concept when needed. “I wanted to make a record that was less layered,” Johnny explained. “But when I came to finish the record, I decided to do what came naturally, and what excites me.” The agenda was out of the window, and Johnny decided to add as many ‘colours’ as he could, if they were the right colours. It was irresistible for Johnny to “put a capo on a Gretsch and see what happens.”

Grant Showbiz heard demos of much of the album before its release, and knew that the project was high quality stuff. “There were versions of that Healers’ album that I just thought were stunning – I heard versions… that I just thought were killer.” The opening track, ‘The Last Ride’, clearly sets the tone for the whole collection. Johnny’s vocal has a Mancunian drawl that is, of course, immediately comparable to Liam Gallagher – perhaps the slight
distortion applied hinted that he was not entirely confident in his voice. There’s a feel of John Squire in some of the linking riffs, but that points more to a combination of shared influences than to Marr’s referencing the Roses: there’s far more George Harrison, Cream and Rory Gallagher in the track than there is John Squire. Underpinning the entire track – fluent and melodic and fired by fine percussion – is heavy strumming on Johnny’s favoured acoustic. While the opening two tracks have a very Beatles-feel, Marr is in Neil Young territory on ‘Down On The Corner’: acoustic and breezy, it builds over acoustic guitar and piano to a lilting pace, the electric picking of which does recall a few Smiths moments. The rising crescendo, treated guitar sounds, Bo Diddley riff and harmonica that introduce ‘Need It’ suggest more Smiths reference, but again this is far more Rory Gallagher than Marr, Joyce and Rourke. Johnny’s solos are more extended chorus riffs than showboating, his vocals tight within a narrow range that suits the chugging boogie of the track.

‘You Are The Magic’ strums off in Oasis fashion, but is soon coloured with sonic details that mark it out as something else. Johnny’s wah-wah, discrete percussion and rootsy bass recall some of the Madchester dance scene of ten years before; it’s funky, dissonant and groovy, ending on gently looped guitar sounds, and Johnny was pleased that it was also compared to ‘Crazy Horse’. ‘InBetweens’ is another rocker reminiscent of album-track Oasis, but the song was very much about himself and people of his generation who were ‘between labels’. “They’re interested in esoteric things, like what’s going on in the ether,” said Johnny, “but at the same time they know that it’s important to [match] the right shirt with the right shoes!” For Johnny, the people caught
up in the in-between corners of life are the ones with their eyes pointing in the right direction. As he expanded, “they’re not sitting on the couch getting sucked into so-called reality TV and the shopping channel.”

Six tracks in, Johnny’s vocal style is well-established – he sounds confident and assured at the microphone. Of course this was not what many Marr fans had expected, but if they had been looking for rockabilly Johnny with esoteric Morrissey-lite lyrics then they hadn’t watched Marr closely enough over the last few years. ‘Another Day’ has a simplicity of approach tempered by tambourine and a John Lennon vocal, major seventh chords and gentle harmonies that belie someone steeped in country rock as well as in grinding rock ’n’ roll, a major key psychedelic optimism that is very pleasing. ‘Headland’, at a little over a minute and a half, is the shortest track on the album, an acoustic instrumental loaded with atonal guitar clips, threatening feedback growls and bubbling undercurrents in a lighter tone. It introduces ‘Long Gone’, another heavily riffed, loose drummed song. Johnny described the song as being inspired by the rock ’n’ roll carousel. “It’s about hanging out with five pretty crazy fans after a The The concert in Los Angeles in 1992… ending up in the ocean at Venice Beach at around six in the morning, and getting my clothes wet…what happens to everybody really!”