Recent recipient of NME’s “Godlike Genius Award”, ex-Smiths guitar hero and occasional member of Modest Mouse and The Cribs, the ever-relevant Johnny Marr will be gracing us with his presence next week at The Commodore to promote Playland, his sophomore album. We reached Marr by phone somewhere in Montana and talked musical obsession, egos and being an icon, and the mawkishness of nostalgia.
Hello Johnny Marr, where are you right now?
Good question! (laughs) I’m in Missoula, Montana.
How old were you when you first picked up a guitar, and who inspired you to get into music?
Well, I started playing a proper guitar when I was 10 or 11, but I had a guitar when I was three or four – it was the first toy I ever liked. I literally can’t remember a time when I didn’t have one. I have no idea what inspired me to really love that first guitar, but it was my first proper toy: My parents were very into music to the point of obsession. The first person to really influence me was Marc Bolan from T. Rex. That’s really stuck with me. But I’ve been doing it seriously since 14 or 15.
How does it feel to listen to a generation of guitar players who have essentially used your style as a prototype?
I can only react to that in one way, and that’s on a human level, and take it as the ultimate compliment. It’s incredibly flattering and humbling. Whenever I’m asked about it I can’t really talk about it in any depth. I can’t really get my head around it in any other way than to just be touched by it... There’s just something about somebody discussing their own work with any significance that seems unpalatable to me. It’s great to be liked. But I absolutely don’t know why. I like a bit of mystery in life.
I was half expecting an answer like this, because I’ve read over and over that you are this grounded, cool character. Almost the anti-rock star.
I have my moments, don’t believe what you read! (laughs) I’ve got no interest in having people around me who make any kind of concessions to fame or notoriety. That isn’t because I’m such a good guy, it just seems fucking useless. I want my friends to be proper people, and therefore my friends are very interesting and can hold their own and treat what I do as a fortunate thing to be around, but judge the same way they judge everybody else. Even in the Smiths days, my friends around me would [prefer] to listen to The Velvet Underground than what I was doing with my band. I’d go home from a recording session for one of our albums, and [my friends] would be a bit pissed that I’d take off the new Gun Club album to play my new shit.
I could imagine that’s kind of humbling!
And that’s the way it should be! It was very good for my music and good for the group that at least I was surrounded by people that really weren’t that fucking impressed that I was on Top Of The Pops. My friends have always been that way. I do have my moments, fuckin’ hell, I shouldn’t but I do.
Though you have been collaborating at a prolific rate since leaving the Smiths, Playland is technically your second solo record. What took so long?
[Modest Mouse] wanted to take a break, which turned into an extended break. I didn’t want to take a break. [So] I fell into making a record with The Cribs, and that went so well that we toured it. When The Cribs wanted to take a break, I still didn’t want to, but I knew I didn’t want to join another band. So I did this movie soundtrack to Inception. That went really well. But this notion of not wanting to join an existing band but having this record to make was still in the air.
So after Inception I just went “Ok, it’s going to have to be a solo record”. Had Modest Mouse or The Cribs not wanted to take a break, maybe some of these songs would have made their way to those bands. I just had this music that I needed to get out. So about two weeks into writing [what would become] the first record, The Messenger, my friend said to me, “Why don’t you just finish this yourself and call it a solo record?” That’s when I got the idea of putting my own band together. Playland happened because when I went out on tour with Messenger, I was doing something that people who like what I do, really liked. And I guess my audience just gave me encouragement and enthusiasm to keep going. Let’s put it this way, when songs are coming to you at a quick rate, and they’re sounding pretty good, you should really take advantage of it and don’t stop.
I read that you don't get nostalgic, especially when it comes to looking back at records you've made in the past.... How is that humanly possible?
JM: I don’t really see it as being particularly useful. Maybe because I’ve been asked about it so much [that] I have the association that I’m being asked about putting my feet up with a glass of wine, putting on some old records I made in the '80s, and that just seems really useless to me. I’m aware that I really enjoyed what I did, and there’s probably some good stuff on there, but there’s something kind of mawkish about nostalgia. I like what’s happening right now. Lets say people are asking me if I sit down and put my feet up and wonder about when I was making The Queen Is Dead. When I was actually making that record, I wasn’t sitting there with my feet up picturing the memory of when I made Meat Is Murder. I was going forward, that’s how you get shit done!
Johnny Marr plays The Commodore on Dec. 7 with special guests Hooded Fang. Doors at 7. Tickets $44 in advance.
