MUSIC: Johnny Marr

The legendary guitar hero is back with a solo album

Even now it still seems oddly improbable that Morrissey and Marr formed one of the great songwriting partnerships of the ‘80s, via The Smiths, a band that garnered extreme levels of adoration and adulation, in no small part due to Marr’s brilliantly inventive Rickenbacker guitar playing and way with a song.

When they imploded in the summer of ’87, Marr wasn’t out on a limb for long, teaming up with New Order’s Bernard Sumner to create Electronica, which included collaborations with Pet Shop Boys, as they scored three consecutive top ten albums plus a number of hit singles.

“I was 23 when the band ended,” explains Marr. “I needed new air and I could see what was coming around the corner. There was this amazing new movement parallel to what we were doing, though it didn’t have a name yet. I was getting tired of what indie had become.”

Hugely influential among fellow guitarists, Marr was awarded NME’s Godlike Genius earlier this year, and was voted fourth best guitarist of the last 30 years in a BBC poll conducted in 2010. Guitarists such as John Squire of Stone Roses, Noel Gallagher (“he’s unique, you can’t play what he plays”) and Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien have all pointed to Marr as a major influence.

His exalted status is also due to his continuing innovation and ceaseless collaborations since The Smiths and Electronic; he even briefly became a member of The Pretenders, and played for the likes of Billy Bragg, Oasis, Talking Heads, Black Grape and Beck, as well as producing and performing with Modest Mouse and then become a fully fledged member of Leeds’ The Cribs from 2008 to 2011.
It may come as a surprise that he has never released a solo record until ‘The Messenger’ came out last month.

Recorded in Manchester and Berlin, it features his voice as well as guitar, fusing indie and art rock with good old fashioned rock ’n’ roll. “The underlying idea of the record is my experience of growing up in Europe,” Marr has said (he has been based in America since 2005). “When you’re away from home you’re more compelled to write about it; whether that’s because you’re homesick or you’ve got more objectivity, I don’t know. But I’ve continued to see stores and energy where I grew up.”