Johnny Marr

42:29So it's a real melting pot, Manchester, of working class immigrants and they all brought their own cultures and their own need for entertainment. So a lot of comedians, Jewish comedians came out of here. A lot of people came from Eastern Europe. In my case, you know, a lot of my family, they moved over in the early 60s and they came over to work in construction and building the roads and all of this stuff, the Irish. And my parents went to all the Irish clubs and they would see all the show bands. And me and my sister would go sometimes to these places in the afternoon where my dad was a booker for these bands.

43:05And so we grew up around... Your dad booked bands? Yeah, he did, yeah. Incredible. I love it. Yeah. That was in the 70s. Me and my sister would be there. We'd be giving, like, soda and just loads and loads of sugar. and I'd sit there and I'd watch these cabaret singers and their microphones would be going into a space echo or a tape echo, a Watkins copycat, and there'd be an organ player and a drummer. And if I was lucky, there'd be a guitar player and they'd be playing all these kind of 70s songs. And I thought that was amazing. I just watched these, me and my sister would watch these bands and be like, holy shit, this is great.

43:46And sometimes I'd go, no, they're not too good, Dad. No, they're not too good. But just seeing the amplifiers and the electric guitars and all that, I would have been like nine or ten. I thought that was magic. Yeah. Wow. So your dad did construction and then somehow got into booking. What was that? Well, that was to do with the Catholic Church. Because he was a working class Irish guy, as I say, and he laid pipes. He dug holes in the road. My dad, I'm very proud of it. but to do with the Catholic Church, big Irish thing, they would have bands on on a Friday and a Saturday night and all these bands would go and audition in these bars or these pubs, usually on a Sunday afternoon and all of these, they used to call themselves agents, but all these people who could say, hey, listen, come and play at my social club for 50 pounds.

44:39So they would go and audition for people like my dad, you know. so amazing yeah yeah i mean they weren't all that great but to me it was magic it must have been an education unto itself you know in terms of how to be and on stage and you know 100 % to be 100 % what it was was the big thing for me was that i um when i watched these bands set up their equipment when i was about seven or eight at these parties so this this was a little early because we used to have these these bands play at christian it being i don't know reinforced a culture of stereotype, but there was a lot of christenings and a lot of weddings.

45:17And my aunties and uncles used to have these bands come and play. But when I saw these adults setting up their equipment, that was when it occurred to me that, oh, this is a job. Ah. Usually nearly always guys. These guys, and I see the same people, these same guys, and they'd be bringing their amplifiers and someone's setting the drum kit. I'd be like, oh, as an adult, you can do that. It's not just people on the television, because on the television you just see these bands magically appear magic it's magic and looking great you know with the velvet suits on and all of this and i'd actually see these men setting up their equipment and pulling these amplifiers and feeding back and testing and i i was like where do i sign up for that wow that looks like a great job yeah and your parents must have been thrilled as much into music as they are that you started thinking that way right yeah you know i I think a lot of people can probably relate to this.

46:13They were absolutely thrilled until at 15 I decided, or 14, decided that I was going to go for it and not go to school. Right, right. So now that it's worked out and it's my day job, they're really, really proud. Much more than the fact that I'm famous, they're just really proud that I'm a full-time guitar player. Seriously. And if I ever make records where there's not enough guitar on it, I kind of get to hear about it you're slagging off and yeah but you know man, craft work no it's okay, I'm playing synth on this one, so they're proud of that but you know like a lot of teenagers, you know I went through kind of a pretty rebellious and rough patch we went through kind of a bit of a you know typical sort of rebellious kind of they were worried that when I stopped going to school and and was very obviously, you know, taking drugs and spending all my time with these reprobates.

47:13But it was all really wrapped up with the music as well. It wasn't just hedonistic stuff. I joined a band. The thing was, I joined a band when I was 15 of adults who were very dubious. And my parents kind of said, well, it's either that or you have to get out. So I just left home, you know. Just got out. yeah and that was a bit contentious and i you know so i was a little wild 15 16 but what was your sister thinking my sister was the mediator she was the great mediator she's only 11 months younger than me we were very tight still are you know but it's a funny one because yeah they were proud of me being a musician but i think when i actually was like listen i'm gonna go for it and i'm gonna go to london and i'm gonna even though you know i had no money whatsoever and i'm going to join this band and these adults so they were very obviously kind of dangerous characters you know they're pretty druggie they sounded like a cross between uh hawkwind and i guess stooges they're called sister ray i think their tracks up on youtube it's this song called suicide so because he'd made a record they sought me out at 15 right and they were like come and be in the band and i'm pretty sure i said listen you are aware that i'm i am 15 or 14 even i think i didn't want it to be a freak show and they were like hey listen now come on come on it'll be cool so i used to go to their rehearsal a couple of times a week and it was the red light area really kind of rough area manchester a couple of nights a week and um to subsidize that i used to sell clothes to my pals and working clothes shops and all but anyway i left i had to leave home i had to leave home to do that because my parents didn't approve and that was a little bit of a kind of a rough a bit of a look back now and it was a bit of a wild time for me but London in 77 at 14 15 yeah must have been that must have been crazy well it was amazing because I went to the I went to the marquee when I was 15 to see a band called Pearl Harbor and the explosions and they had the stray cats who else was in London at the time the clash was still around, this is 78, 79 and I was really into this band called The Only Ones.

49:28Do you know that song Another Girl, Another Planet? Yeah. So I fell in love with this band called The Only Ones and I followed them around quite a bit and that involved, you know, sleeping on train stations, me and Andy Rourke, who was my best pal at the time, I enlisted in the Smiths, so we yeah, and I used to hang around clothes shops And that was all, to me, that was all part of the apprenticeship of being a musician. Because I heard loads of records. As I say, I saw Brian Setzer when I was, I think, 14. I saw Patti Smith when I was 14. I saw The Cramps. And to me, all of this stuff has made me what I am, really.

50:09Seeing all those bands when I was really young. What did you think of Brian Setzer at the time? I couldn't believe it. He was amazing. And what were the Stray Cats doing over there? They had a hit. they had a, I think they were, England was where they took off. And me and my pals were like, listen, there's this crazy guitar player. It's a rockabilly band. I saw them, I think there was, you know, maybe about 30 people in the audience in this hall that held like 800 people. So all of that stuff, you know, I saw Perubu and I saw a whole load of bands I didn't care for because we used to sneak into all the venues.

50:41So I look back on all of that and it can sound romantic and I can make it sound romantic and that's because it actually was. I had no problem with walking back from a venue, from going to see some band, whether I liked them or not, walking back for miles with no train fare, and it all feeling like it was part of an apprenticeship. Yeah, yeah, all part of the mission. Yeah. How did you meet Andy Rourke? We went to the same school, and he was, you know, it's like with guys in school. I saw another guy with long hair, long, scruffy hair, and we were either going to be friends or we were going to fight.

51:23We were either in competition or we were comrades. And I think neither of us wanted to fight. I had a button in America, a badge that said, it was a Neil Young Tonight's Tonight. And he walked up to me and he went, Tonight's the night. And he did this really amazing Neil Young impression. And I was just really impressed that he knew what Tonight's Tonight was. you do that kind of thing when you're a kid it's so important i was like yeah well i mean i wasn't going to wear one that i'd harvest it had to be obviously it had to be a really obscure badge and uh and he walked up to me and he just sang tonight's the night and i thought wow this guy's cool and then we just became friends for life you know it's beautiful yeah did you see neil on that tonight's the night tour in london no no that was i was too young for that yeah you know the big amazing story about that about tonight's the night that tour so he came over to england he played at the scala which i might be wrong about it might be the rainbow but anyway uh john lyden told me this so he comes and the album hadn't been released yet and it's also a real down heavy album as you know right anyway he comes out and he's got a scraggly beard and he's drinking loads of tequila and the stage and if you look on the inside of that record the stage set it's crazy it's got platform boots hanging up and it's got like a it's got hubcaps all over the stage and a fake palm tree so so he comes out and he starts playing this album no one's ever heard so he plays tonight's tonight from start to finish it's not even been released yet and it's this real down alcohol kind of thing and he plays it and the audience are like what the hell is this and and he's going down kind of badly.

53:05He goes off and gets called back on for the encore, and he says to the audience, now I'm going to play one that you've heard before, and he plays Tonight's The Night again.

53:18That happened. I just saw Neil six nights ago. It was just like, this guy does not give a fuck. I love it. You know, I've never seen him play. You've never seen Neil? Never, man. It's crazy. I've just, for some reason or other, just never. It's worth it. It's just, I've never seen someone so... Single-minded. So single-minded. You know, those... I don't want to generalize too much, but I've met a few 60s musicians, which obviously are very, very fortunate. Just a few, a handful, and they nearly, to a man and woman, really care about playing. You know what I mean? That might sound obvious, but the most important thing is if there's a guitar in the room, they will pick it up and they'll play.

54:02Ronnie Wood's like that. Donovan's like that. you know, Paul McCartney's really like that, you know, like those people, hats off to him, you know, I think they're really, ironically, it's kind of come around where some of those older generation musicians, they go out and they appear to do it because they love it, you know, whether it's your thing or not, but you know, the Rod Stewarts and the Who's and the Jaggers and Springsteens and all of those sort of people, Joni Mitchell even now coming back, Like, you know, it's nice to see that those people who could be just sat on their boats or sat under the palm trees or spending all the time with their architects and all of that, they appear to be out there doing it because maybe they know something that we don't, which is, you know what, there really isn't anything better.

54:47Yeah. I've realised how super fortunate I am that I have people's ears. You know, there's an audience, there's people who are interested in what I'm up to at the moment. That's such a motivation. but I do like to think that this might be bullshit but it's easy for me to say but that if I didn't I'd still be playing everyday practicing you know just for the love of it and just to try and get better and better in some ways you know if that's all you've got to do all day you get pretty good but it's horses for courses you know I like what bands are I like what indie rock for one I don't like to put myself in a box too much but I like the area of music that I work in.

55:31I still feel like that there are surprises in that area of music. Obviously, you and I, we can talk about, go off on these different tangents, talk about all kinds of different music, you know? But my mission, I think it almost kind of got doubled in a way when I got a solo band together. I felt like I had this freedom to pull in all my influences that really goes back to people like Sparks. It's an interesting thing, I think, because what you love is such a subjective thing, obviously. And I think you get to a point in your life where you kind of go back to, as an influence, you really do draw on those things that were your first loves.

56:16I love being in the modern world. I'm not particularly a nostalgic person, but the area of music that I'm working in guitar music, I guess, melodic, that I suppose, you know, I don't want to use terms like art, rock, but you know, I'm fine with being called an indie musician. It all sounds like, to me, it's all what used to be called rock music anyway. For the longest time, I used to call myself a pop musician for the longest time. And still, until I started really recognising that pop music is something very, very different now. And I think that's post rave and to do with the technology and all this sort of stuff.

56:49I'm not going to make past judgment on it. but when i started out at 11 or 12 and studying these records t-rex the sweet uh sparks that luckily for me had amazing guitar playing on it um on those what in england we call glam rock in america glam rock was a different thing was a little bit i know to do with sunset and the hair bands and all that metal yeah yeah but in england glam rock was very definitely 1972 73 74 David Bowie, you know, you listen to the Gene Genie and all that stuff, which, you know, you know, those 45s were an amazing education for me. And as I say, it's probably subjective, because that was when this stuff really, really hit me.

57:34But I still think that what I do is working within that area, where it's, for me, the best thing is it's concise. It doesn't have to go on for seven or eight minutes, unless I'm making a point. and there's guitar hooks in it and the tempos are up and yeah it makes it gets a blood racing a little bit with some quite sort of interesting clever if possible lyrics that fit that's the pop musician in you that that that's where that is located and that's what probably i'd imagine like probably how you fell in love with chic in the 70s yeah yeah well i think with chic it was to do with the the harmonic progressions a lot i always say this but with so much is made with now rogers everyone obviously thinks even if they're not musicians what they're thinking of is his right hand well what i really fell in love with was his left hand these beautiful mccoy tyner first time i ever met now rogers first question i asked him was do you really like mccoy tyner because the core progression's so beautiful so pretty so emotional you know i I want your love and Lost in Music.

58:46And oh, man. So that's why I like that stuff particularly. It wasn't just the groove. It was those beautiful harmonic changes. So yeah, I'm a real melody freak. And I'll try and squeeze those hooks in to exciting kind of punchy guitar music wherever I can. Amazing. Especially if it's my own stuff. We're going to take another quick break and then come back with the rest of my conversation with Johnny Marr. This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. Everybody loves to travel, right? We can get away as a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, all of it. And no matter where you're going, Chase Sapphire Reserve is your gateway to the world's most captivating destinations.

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1:00:49It's just like doing my eyes closed. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And on our new show, No Such Thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the runway. I'm looking at this thing. Listen to No Such Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back with the rest of my conversation with Johnny Marr. where did the riff for uh spirit power and soul can you figure out how you arrived at that riff yeah what i did was months before when i was on on the road we had this third album called call the comet i started to think the next single off the next album should be like an electro banger i kind of did conceptualize it hand on heart now hey i wish i could do that with every track but the Smiths used to do that sometimes.

1:01:57We'd go, because I was given a title, often, not always, but sometimes, say, sometimes I was given a title like Panic, and I was like, oh, what does that conjure up? Or Meat is Murder. And with Meat is Murder, I set myself the task of writing a horror score for animals, because I had the title. So I quite enjoy, hey, listen, as I say, I wish I could do it more often but I had the idea for Spirit, Power and Soul months before and I went oh man this band the next album the first track on it it'd be really good if I can write an electro banger so I started with a drum machine I borrowed a drum machine off Steve Morris from New Order which I've actually I've got to give it him back and yeah and I thought if I'm gonna borrow if I'm gonna borrow a drum machine who better to borrow one off than Steve Morris.

1:02:51That's great. so I got into programming even though I could have done it much quicker on the laptop but that wasn't the point I wanted to do the process and I was kind of going alright we'll do something that's like Cabaret Voltaire so I had the beat anyway I was playing along with that for like four days and I wrote this song that wasn't very good and then I had to just kind of scrap it and apply myself again and I just wrote it and wrote it and wrote it and wrote it I went in the studio So from 10 till 5 or 6 for five days, and I would sing melody and melody, and this is too clever, this is too melodic.

1:03:30I just knew what I wanted, but I knew what it would be when I found it. Hey, I'm talking a little bit like I've written The Day in the Life, but that's what I had to do. It's a great song, man. It's a great song. Thank you very much. Well, I appreciate that because I worked my ass off doing it. I just kept writing these vocal melodies that were too melodic. so it became a real craft the interesting thing about that song is that sometimes i have ideas and i've had these ideas from being a kid where i have an idea for what would be a good song away from the guitar and away from the studio and i have it in my mind and then i set about trying to do it and when it works out it's fantastic that's a wild way to come up come to a song like you're you're not even in the realm of music you're away from it yeah you would think that that would be the worst song potentially that it's like this thing where you're like conceptualizing it before you even have the chance to you know yeah well i'm really glad it works out but i was determined um and to be fair i think when you're talking about skill say one of the skills that i've learned that i didn't have years ago was i learned this perseverance from bernard Sumner from New Order, working with Bernard for nine years in electronic, if he had an idea for a song and he believed in it, he would not let that thing go away.

1:04:55He would keep coming back to it until it was right. So that was a skill that I've learned along the way from somebody else. It wasn't to do with, you know, diatonic scales or to do with, you know, music theory. It was to do with application process yeah and i've learned on that subject it's been i could go through all the people i've worked with and tell you what i've learned from them now i think about it i might be getting a little bit sentimental in my old age but isaac brock chrissy hind everyone everyone really i learned something from from all of them you know what about from chrissy chrissy hey listen well i played with her last week at glastonbury you know and that was amazing rejoining the playing those songs after 30 years you know because i haven't played them since 1980 whatever so chrissy well i learned that there's a lot when you walk on stage even though i don't want to embarrass her she might not even realize this but when you walk on stage as the front man you give off the vibe to the rest of the band that no matter what happens you've got this and I picked that up because I was very young when I was working with Chris I was 24 and we were doing these we were playing sometimes we played to 100 ,000 people opening for U2 and certainly 70 ,000 people most nights on the Joshua Tree tour and I'm telling you I was terrified but when I walked behind her on stage I was like it's cool she's got this and I'd try and be that for my band and also you know things like in rehearsal when you hear that one, two, three, four when you start singing, you sing like you're on stage.

1:06:39None of this like looking at your phone or looking up at the roof or, you know, being distracted. For those four minutes that you're singing, you really are in it. Yeah, I learned a lot from Chrissy, yeah. She's quite dedicated as her role as front person. In a natural way. In a natural way because a big part of her as well is that she's a punk rocker and she's not too referential. the business of being in a band she honors that she thinks being in a band is a special thing and especially her relationship with a guitar player that goes right back to jimmy scott who i was a big fan of when i was a kid which you can really hear in my playing you know yeah speaking of like you know you're sort of thinking of yourself as a pop musician in a weird way on paper could look like a strange pairing but i think having spoken to you now it seems to make a ton of sense you and Hans Zimmer and Pharrell getting together yeah about a decade ago to work on some of that Spider-Man stuff like yeah you know well I've got to say this is classic Hans because Hans is a real lateral thinker he really thinks outside of the box and um he genuinely has told me this so many times now that I really think it's true so when me and Pharrell first got in a room together and we wrote two songs on that that thing just me and him Hans loves telling the story that he was watching the guy who wrote literally watching the guy who wrote heaven knows I'm miserable now writing a song with the guy who wrote happy he thought that was a mate hilarious and um so we got offered that movie the amazing spider-man 3 and he and I got together and he was like well what comes to mind what you're thinking I don't really know the franchise very much but i had this idea i saw the opening scene saw a real rough of it and it was new york and it was like there's a lot of action and everything and i i said you know what it should it should be like the who i wasn't thinking classic rock but i was just thinking it should be like won't get fooled again it should be like if you're asking me as a guitar player power chords whoa this big kind of explosive thing i never think in terms of metal it's just not my bag but yeah if i think explosive i think of like the who or whatever and he really liked that idea and then from that he jumped then to like having a band in a room so straight away because junkie excel was he had a studio in the same building that we were in and he was brilliant like well listen we'll get junkie excel on bass and then um we had this idea about this explosive pop but Hans then was like, who's the most melodic singer that you can think of?

1:09:19Who's amazing at coming up with melodies? And he just, let's just ask Pharrell. And I was like, well, I was like, well, this will be interesting. I mean, I'm not, I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this at all. But when Pharrell comes in the room, he's like, where's the tune? Let me write a tune. He's amazing. We were putting a song down i'm sure i don't i'm sure he won't mind me telling this story i'd been for a run in the morning and i had this idea for that we needed a romantic song we need like the love the love song in this and i just happened to be out running in the morning and i heard that this this tune in my head i was like oh that'll be good so i'll get i was enthusiastic to get in the studio and put this tune down so i got in the studio kind of early and we're in this big room and i started laying this down and there's some of the musicians a couple of string players piano and I think maybe Hans was playing piano.

1:10:14And Pharrell wasn't there. And we started running the chords down. And I've got this tune. And we're putting it down. And we're recording it. And about the second time I get through this tune, Pharrell walks in. And we're halfway through the tune. And he's kind of trying to be quiet and not make a noise. And he picks the microphone up. And when we finish doing this quick run through, we go to start a third one for some technical reason. And he's asking Steve Lipson to stop the track. I want to sing. And Hans goes, can we just put the track down? He goes, I want to... Now, my point in telling this story is that most musicians know that is the opposite of what happens.

1:10:52What usually happens is you have a tune and you put the tune down and you have to wait for days for the singer to sing. Pharrell was like, plug this in, plug this in, let me sing. It was brilliant. And he's in the control room. He's tapping on his phone all the time, tapping on his phone writing lyrics so my experience with with pharrell for on that movie was he he was he's exactly what i i thought he was just music just oozes out the guy i love it yeah so that was this funny thing but when i when i've been asked a couple of times about collaboration right i use that that example of writing with pharrell as an illustration as to what happens in the collaborative process because on the face of it, what I say is it's like when you've got two musicians working together.

1:11:47On the face of it, look, I'm an indie rock musician from Manchester in the 80s and then Pharrell is a R &B, you know, hip-hop, pop musician from America. But I always say it's a bit like you get in a rowboat and the two ears are rowing in the same direction and the horizon is the speakers. I think the point is that music and collaboration and when you're trying to create something with someone, even if you don't know them very well, it transcends your being from different backgrounds. Completely transcends it. Music's amazing for that. And collaboration is amazing. You're both trying to just come up with a really good middle eight.

1:12:30And because of that, because people on the outside will go, oh, yeah, you have to check your egos at the door well I mean that's a given because people who are serious they just want to make something great and it's not even a question of egos you know I mean the people I've worked with the greats I'm sure they have an ego when they're getting out on stage but when it comes down to work they know you've got to put the hours in Billie Eilish is like that Alicia Keys is like that just real hard working rolling the sleeves up and putting the hours in you know all right talking about greats who put in the work what was it like observing or being a part of the the joshua tree tour like seeing you two in that moment as up close as you were well the amazing thing was um i told edge this actually that so when i joined that tour because the pretenders have been doing it for a while and then the guitar player quit, and then I joined on there.

1:13:33At that point, Bono was doing this thing where he's in front of, whatever, 70 ,000, 80 ,000 people, and they've got this material that is just really sounding good in those stadiums. And don't forget, it was new music then, where the streets have no name, and I still haven't found what I'm looking for. They were new songs that people were just hearing on the radio, right? So it was like, whoa, this is a pretty good place to be. I was set out the side of the stage going, wow, when you hear that, when you hear What the Streets Have No Name, which I think they used to start with, you go, wah! I think this song's going to stick around for a while.

1:14:10And so there was a vibe, and they'd come on, and Bono was doing this thing where midway through the set or whatever, he would climb up onto the PA, and then he would climb onto whatever, on some light in truss or whatever, and he was hanging down off doing that thing, and he'd be hanging down off it. and uh you know and Chrissy said to me god look at that you know it's kind of laughing about it what does he think he's doing and I said to her you know Chrissy I saw him do that in front of about 40 people in a little room in Manchester when they first came to Manchester in 1980 I want to say me and my pals went down we'd heard about him on the John Peel show and um I thought that's really cool because he was doing it back then and also i guess the um the music i think i started to see that well first off you've got to have a real um you've got a lot of energy to be the head of you know that that kind of organization with like you know 15 trucks and such a big big organization you know that takes a lot out of you during the day forget even the shows just being the centre of all of that operation, which, you know, made me realise that I'm kind of OK with being what I am, you know, because, you know, I don't like a lot of fuss.

1:15:35So I really admired that. But how masterful it was that the tunes have to be really... If you listen to that kind of music, which I guess was part of what defined now stadium music, it's very simple but it's uh in and i remember those those nights as being pretty there's a lot of motion in that music simple doesn't necessarily mean uh like vacuous yeah that's a good you know i still haven't found what i'm looking for is such as and and the singing man yeah so yeah that was really uh that that was very very cool and again you know the chemistry of a band if ever you know you want to talk about chemistry you know look at those guys they're kind of really archetypal you know the edges are really archetypal his role in the band you know he's kind of arty and he's he's got imagination and he he sort of paints pictures and with his guitars sound and all of that and adam really holds it down and then bono's a flamboyant on stage and off kind of concepts guy and then larry's the guy who kind of really is he formed the whole thing and he's like the engine in a way yeah so uh it comes back to that thing if you are what you play yeah when i think about the edge i also start to think about like johnny greenwood oh yeah i mean he seems to me like you also where it's like it's sort of just down to like how like it doesn't matter how complicated it sounds it's just like what fits this track you know and is adventurous similar yeah as well well difference between me and johnny that though is that he's been able to grow with the same musicians over a long period of time yeah you know i mean because again they're another band you know with amazing chemistry you know they've all become who they are i mean i know now you know they've got to a place where they're all doing their own projects and everything but johnny's been in a place where he's been able to grow with Phil Selway playing behind him and with Tom next to him.

1:17:44The difference with me is that I've done that in different bands. I think that's a big difference between me and Johnny. You know, in a way, if you like, Johnny's family stayed together a long time. Whereas my family was a very, the family I was known for was very short-lived. You know, the Smiths, which is fine. Now it happens with a lot more bands than the ones that stayed together for 40 years. Think about the Beatles too. The Beatles short-lived, but a lot of packed a big punch in their time. And it's so much miss. I mean, you look at the work you guys did in the short amount of time. It's like, damn, it's a lot of work.

1:18:20Yeah, yeah, it felt like that. And I'm extremely proud of it. But I think Johnny's, as well as being supremely talented, I think he's been in a place where he can really, he occupies his place in that band and has done for a long time now. And that band, they've all sort of grown around each other. You know what I mean? You pick any album, like Kid A or Amnesiac, that period. I really like him, Rainbows as well. And they've all kind of evolved together. So I think that's really suited him as a musician. I think it always suited my personality to kind of flit around really you know it doesn't come as any surprise to me whatsoever that I've been in loads of different bands going back to the beginning of our conversation I love that it's something you've done I and I wish you I don't know it's like you know if I had my druthers my personal taste taken into consideration if I had my druthers I would have that happen more often like I love seeing different like going back to jazz like I love it's like I love the fact that I can pull up and be like oh I want to hear oh I can hear Oscar Peterson play with with Chet Baker on this one or I can hear oh I want to hear Wayne Shorter play with you know Jimmy Cobb instead of what you know yeah right I just want to hear what the different combinations and formations sound like and that's what's cool about and why I got into making those playlists around you is because it's like just cool to hear how someone sounds in different contexts with different people different times it's just fun yeah thanks well sometimes I think what I do is is more heard in some situations than others so in there there was quite a lot of space for me to do my thing in um especially on the Dusk album you can hear you can hear me quite a lot and then in other times like with with electronic the guitar kind of got squeezed out but that was my actually down to me because I was really kind of getting getting so into electronic pop and I just got really enthusiastic for that and I guess you know I just sort of fell out of love with being a rock musician during that period but that's okay because i was only 25 26 27 it's all part of it and i've done that now and um if you know but but where the guitar did feature in on electronics records like feel every beat and get the message uh it was pretty interesting stuff i kind of wish that i'd done more of it uh and bernard was always to be fair bernard was always encouraging me to do more of it but i wanted to learn about other other aspects of record making now so it is all what it is and you know and on the cribs record that i made there's plenty of me on on that stuff i can hear a lot of that so i mean i really feel like as a and i don't mean to sound glib or whatever but i kind of think of a as a british guitar player i've kind of had the best job i could think of i mean genuinely you know i i understand oh sure because it's mr so revered and and so loved over time and almost you know time's made the band even almost even more kind of you know uh valued or whatever the big narrative is people assume oh the band was so short-lived if only they could stay together for longer and all of that but it makes total sense to me that just speaking for my own life that i've i've done all of this different stuff as a guitar player it's entirely the person i was when that when i was 14 15 and i say that all the time and it's it was the person that i kind of dreamed of being really i mean obviously you know life life throws all kinds of curveballs without getting down you know too philosophical nothing's uh doesn't turn out like a fairy tale but professionally man i can't sometimes i think wow i was in i was in the there they were my favorite band at the time yeah yeah and you didn't maybe and you were with them on maybe you know like maybe their best record you know like dusk is like yeah you know dusk is a real good one yeah it's just weird how it all turned out and then you know i was really when I the short thing with Body Smiles was that I went through a period where the late 90s where I just wasn't really hearing that much in British guitar music that excited me but I was hearing it in American guitar music I'd built a spill I really liked and there was a band called The Lilies I really liked from out of Boston I thought The Lilies were great and and then and Elliot Smith and what happened was I met Elliot and he You met Elliot Smith?

1:22:42Oh, yeah, I met Elliot a couple of times. And the first time I met him, I was talking to him about these bands and he hit me up to Modest Mouse. I didn't know who Modest Mouse was. It was Elliot who told me about Modest Mouse. And he said, well, listen, have you heard of Modest Mouse? He said something like, all roads lead to Modest Mouse. I was like, oh, okay. So that's how I got into, he turned me on to Moon and Antarctica. And then six, seven years later, I ended up being a full-time member of the band for like, longer than people think. I joined the band 2005 and I left the band 2010. thing uh and and ended up moving to portland so that was all down to without elliot i wouldn't have known about that how did you meet elliot uh i was in la and mutual friend said he wanted to meet me and we had a couple of mutual friends and i think xo had just come out and i thought that was great i just thought he was really good yeah and and then then i knew a couple of his musicians and he always had really nice the thing about him was the people i knew who worked with him were all really nice people yeah my friend scott he was his drummer for a while so we had kind of we had a sort of mutual sort of scene really so good yeah but i look back on all this and uh i think wow i'm kind of glad i'm glad that things worked out worked out amazingly before we go man do you have i see your guitars back there do you have your nine you have a good you have a book coming out called mars guitars that i'm excited to check out do you have your nine pickup guitar back there.

1:24:09No one's ever asked me about that guitar. They probably won't. Again, just it's in my actual studio because this is my house now. But it's an amazing sound. It's a fucking crazy looking guitarist. Yeah. You know, I don't drink anymore. I wasn't actually drunk when I bought it, I may add, but it was back in the days when I was like drinking quite a lot. I was either drunk from the night before, but I went into a guitar shop with Noel Gallagher. It was only, I think it was maybe the, might be when the very first day we met. And I saw this thing and I just was like, my logic for buying that guitar was like, okay, if Kraftwerk played guitar, that's what they would play.

1:24:51Noel had only just met me and I think he thought, this guy is a crazy, crazy rock star. That's a fair assessment. But you know what, maybe it was about what, probably almost 30 years later, I had to wait to get a song out of it, but it was Spirit, Power and Soul. So cool. It came up with the riffs. So hey, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Man, I got a thousand and one questions for you, man. Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure talking to you. All right, man. All the best. Thank you. See ya. Thanks to Johnny Marr for talking about his epic career. You can hear all of our favorite tracks featuring Marr as well as some of his solo work on a playlist at brokenrecordpodcast.com.

1:25:35You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash broken record podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Ben Taladay, and Eric Sandler. Our editor is Sophie Cran. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin+. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted ad-free listening for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions.

1:26:12And if you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music is by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richman.

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