In 2018, I became a fan of Johnny Marr.
It only took thirty years. Three decades after dubbing my buddy’s Queen Is Dead cassette, after a few fecund summers spent driving around with Meat Is Murder and Louder Than Bombs jammed in the dash, I finally caught on.
Surprised by the delay? Yeah, me too. It’s no secret that I’ve always been a Smiths guy, heck, a proper addict on occasion, cycling through debilitating loops of unrequited longing, self-pity stoked by Morrissey’s enabling aphorisms.
Listening back then, with the dilettante taste of a future English Major (he name-checked Keats! he kinda rhymed it with Yeats! oh, he must be so deep!) the songs offered escape from cold-grey, sleet-strewn Akron days. There’s plenty of mouldering Manchester to be found near faltering Rust Belt towns.
The Smiths broke up a few years before I was old enough to tune in. And so I came up at just the right time to suffer no distinction between Morrissey’s solo work and The Smiths, drew no snobby line between the two. As a fresh-eared kid, it was all new Morrissey Music to me.
Being a tender proselyte of the faultless St. Stephen, I loyally believed that blame for their demise must lie with those other blokes in the band, with Mike and Andy and most certainly the enigmatic Marr: that jet-haired jackal prowling stage-left with the jangly Fender Jaguar.
My prejudiced assumptions came crashing down when I read Johnny Marr’s superb autobiography, Set The Boy Free.
I wasn’t aware of this book when I happened upon it. No, I was looking for more Morrissey. I’d heard that Moz’s memoir was less redacted in the UK version, so whilst on holiday (as they’d say) I popped into a few bookshops to see if I could find a copy. I did not, but Johnny’s tome was new and readily available and I figured that it would do well enough to keep me occupied for those tedious hours I’d soon spend at thirty-thousand feet.
He pulled me in on page one. Much like Springsteen’s Born to Run, Marr writes with first-hand fluency of working-class hustle yoked to a dogged devotion to the craft. Dispensing with sleep and safety, he did whatever it took to fund his muse. And that teenage vim hasn’t left him. Embarking on new bouts of sober self-discipline, his drive remains to this day: touring, writing, collaborating world-wide. It’s a real kick-in-the-creative-pants. You oughta read it.
Over the years, I’ve driven many lonesome miles to see Morrissey play his (infamously worst) shows in middle-America. That fall I had the chance to catch Johnny Marr in Minneapolis and figured, after reading his book, that I must indulge a delightful obligation to see what the boy could do. Ripping through “How Soon Is Now” — guitar breaks extended to fit his whim, clear and confident on the mic — Marr nixed any doubts. The Gen-X lady beside me turned and asked: “Who needs Morrissey?”
She wasn’t looking for an answer, but it got me thinking: Marr needed Morrissey. He wouldn’t be on stage that night without the coy rhymes, the winking words that hooked so many of us years ago. But Morrissey might have needed Marr more. Sans Marr’s shimmering songs to carry him along, would he be more than a local crank-poet, another unread blogger drearily dispatching Mancunian missives, heir to nothing much in particular?
Yes, you know I’ll always love Moz. But these days I’m less enamored by the moping poet, shifting much respect to the tenacious tradesman by his side. That’s the guy I’d like to be these days. Marr’s got me feeling inspired. It’s time to get back to it, to string up the axe and learn another tune. When? How soon is now?
Here’s my take on it:
