Johnny Marr On The Smiths in NME Special

Johnny gave a filmed interview and some extra words to NME for this week's special issue celebrating the 25th anniversary of the 1986 release of The Smiths seminal masterpiece  'The Queen Is Dead'. Johnny’s

Johnny Marr speaks to The Guardian about The Smiths TOTP debut

Johnny spoke to The Guardian about The Smiths TOTP debut as part of The Guardian's 'history of modern music', the 50 key events in the history of indie music places The Smiths debut

Johnny Marr on Pete Paphides Vinyl Revival

Johnny Joined Pete Paphides on the world's only vinyl music show, where he celebrates the format with musicians who are avid collectors.

Here is Pete Paphides talking about the show.

"I've always collected vinyl. And everyone I know who is obsessive about music never stopped buying vinyl. I always thought that my dream radio show would be one where you just had someone playing vinyl records on good equipment, perhaps talking about them with other guests who had brought in their favourite records. And it wouldn't matter what the genre was or if you could hear surface noise, because no-one I know is really that bothered about surface noise anyway. And what you gain with the depth of sound from vinyl far exceeds the clarity gained from digital formats. Plus, everyone knows that aesthetically, vinyl offers a far more satisfying experience.

So when I resigned from my job at The Times last year, I arranged a meeting with a producer called Ben Walker – he produces Dermot O'Leary's show – and told him all this. Ben liked the idea and took it to BBC 6 Music. To his credit, James Stirling, who is the station's execuive producer, and commissioning editor Paul Rodgers, got it straight away, and commissioned a pilot, providing there was enough interest from prospective guests. The pilot (which aired in April) featured Paul Weller and Laura Marling in the studio, with me going to Norman Cook's house and rummaging through his vinyl.

All the musicians I approached understood what the show was trying to do. Johnny was high on my wish-list of guests. I had interviewed him about five years ago about his involvement at a gig that Andy Rourke had helped organise. The interview lasted about half an hour, but we carried on talking about old records for about another hour. I was a huge Pentangle fan, and Johnny had worked with Bert Jansch, so we talked about what an incredible guitarist Bert was. Johnny was the first musician I met who had ever heard Stormcock by Roy Harper and or Moyshe McStiff & The Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart by Clive's Original Band – both real collector's records. I remembered I had his email address from when I had interviewed him on that occasion. I wrote to him and told him a little about the show. I know he's not over here a lot these days, so I wasn't expecting him to say yes. But he remembered talking about those records and about Iggy & The Stooges' Raw Power. I wasn't that surprised that he got the idea – because everything about our previous encounter and the way he has always talked about music in interviews led me to believe that he would get it.

The records he's chosen to play on the show are – in microcosm – what I hoped the show would be about. A combination of stuff you might already know and a whole load of stuff you wish you had heard years beforehand. The Arturo track is an absolute find, I think. I'd never heard it before, and I'm dead excited about turning on thousands of listeners to it. The Amon Duul II track is just an incredible, life-affirming piece of music that once again, it'll be amazing to have on the radio".

The transmission date is around the end of June on BBC 6 Music.

Johnny Marr “The Big Bang Dig” Listen Here

The first track off Johnny’s upcoming “The Big Bang” soundtrack album, “The Big Bang Dig”, can be heard here on the site, check it out in the side bar. 

The film, that Johnny did the soundtrack for,  “The Big Bang”, starring Antonio Banderas, has been released on DVD and is available through iTunes and Amazon.

Johnny Marr Talks Soundtracks Albums and Guitars

Johnny recently spoke to Phil Gallo of Billboard Magazine.
Johnny Marr  who is currently working on two albums  and scoring the second season of David Cross's British TV series, "The Increasingly Poor Decision of Todd Margaret," plans to release music from his new edition of his band the Healers early next year, soon after Fender's release in January of a Johnny Marr edition guitar.

"I just want to write more than enough material to avoid ducking back into the studio to record a follow-up album," Marr tells Billboard, His  previous solo album, "Boomslang," was released in 2003.

Marr has toured with the Healers, Modest Mouse and the Cribs over the past several years. Having recently left the Cribs, he figures that once he starts touring again, there will be no stopping.
"I want to take advantage of this point and when I set sail I want to set sail for awhile," he said.
 Johnny Marr was nominated for an Academy Award last year for his work with Hans Zimmer on "Inception."
His first full-length film score can be heard May 24 when the detective thriller "The Big Bang" -- starring Antonio Banderas, James Van Der Beek and Sam Elliott --  is released. Marr wrote the score last year, which meant working on the film while he was touring.
"The discipline of finishing a few scenes in a day was useful in writing the record that I am now writing," he says,  "There was not a lot of time for indulgence or experimentation - and I like to deliver when I say I'm going to deliver."
As for that Fender guitar, based on a 1962 Jaguar, Marr says " the model has to be perfect. You can see I'm spinning a lot of plates." 

You can listen to the Big Bang Dig in the sidebar.

Johnny Marr Sarrencia plant at The Chelsea Flower Show

Horticulturist Matthew Soper’s carnivorous plant named after Johnny  is in the running for a prize at this year's Chelsea Flower Show.   Matthew said “ Johnny Marr is a musician whose work I greatly admire and has given me so much pleasure over the years, this is my way of saying thank you." The Johnny Marr Sarrencia hybrid plant will be available to buy in a year or two. 

Johnny Marr - Record Store Day Is A Celebration

Record Store Day took place  worldwide on Saturday 16 April 2011. NME’s Laura Snapes asked Johnny what record store day means to him.
You’re reissuing 'The Queen Is Dead' for Record Store Day. What prompted you to get involved?

"I first got involved with RSD a few years ago when Modest Mouse put out an EP [for it]. I think a lot of musicians would seize the opportunity to be involved with an event and a gesture that means something to them and people that think the same way. With regard to ‘The Queen Is Dead’, the record company put it to me at the start of the year.

"My experience of RSD is just a very well intentioned enterprise, so as long as we got it technically right and made sure the records were all sounding and looking right, then it’s something of a celebration - celebrating something that I always loved and still do. Records transcend their physical dimensions. You get more than some plastic spinning around. Lots of things can happen in a record, and lots of life can be taken from a record."

Having been in bands over four decades, you must have noticed differences with the way that people produce, manufacture and sell records.

"Yeah. For a start, I always connected with them as objects, what I was hearing from them as a very little kid. One of my very first memories is of two young women in my family standing at a record player, playing a record on repeat with utter fascination and obsession.

"That was a really powerful thing that I’ve never forgotten. That little object was able to take you away from life and put you in a different place. Then I made the connection between the object and the music, and started to really love the object. They did so much. I still feel the same way.

"All the bands I’ve been in have wanted the same things as the fans, which is important releases, not just tracks. And to this day, I don’t consider the songs I write to be tracks – they’re always records in the making, or being made. The Smiths wrote records. When we wrote the songs, the first thing on our mind was to get to the studio and record it, and we did that in a way that I’ve not seen any other band do.

"Almost immediately as the last chord was written, the studio was booked, the sleeve was being glued together on Morrissey’s kitchen table, and the titles were being considered. It was all one big activity, writing the songs, and it’s been well documented that a lot of our songs were written specifically for people like us to go out and buy as soon as possible."

The Smiths really thrived on non-album singles too.

"Yeah, that’s one of the reasons we wrote them in batches of three – the a-side, the b-side and the extra track for the 12”! It wasn’t exclusively like that, but that was often the way. So we always felt that we had this discourse, a communication between our audience and the band, and the records for me were what it was all about, even more than the shows, to an almost pathological degree! "

Mercury are going to stop selling singles by U2, Arcade Fire and The Killers – is this a mistake?

"Depends on the band! I think it’s a shame - one of the reasons people stopped buying records is because they’re not visible, they’re not available. It’s not as straightforward as saying there are no record shops because people don’t want to buy records. I wonder if it’s not also the case that people don’t buy records because they can’t find the record shops.

"Last year I wrote a short essay called ‘Landlord Stole My Records Off The Street’, which was my observation of the 90s – a lot of the towns I would visit in the UK were just filled with wine bars. A lot of councils and landlords got very greedy, and in their quest to make the world just Next and River Island, they just assumed that the big bucks would come their way from all these huge stores, they priced out all the little shops – certainly the record shops."

"If you take them away, obviously people are going to stop buying the records. These little record stores became estate agents for yuppies, for people who don’t buy records, don’t like records, and wine bars for people to play really bad trip hop in! At least we’re having these kind of dialogues, there’s this light being shone onto these beautiful things, really.

"And like art galleries, they’re mostly there to represent what’s happening within the culture now. Retro record shops are all well and good, fabulous, but there’s nothing better than buying a great new record with a great new band."

And it takes labels like Wichita and bands like The Cribs to insist on vinyl releases as well as downloads, not settling for less.

"It takes people like Wichita to try and find the money to put where their mouths are, and they do. Mark [Bowen]’s a really great example of it. You need those people where the culture, and this case we’re talking about the actual physical records, come before business. And those people would be considered too maverick in ordinary business."

The prime example of this is New Order, losing money on every copy of ‘Blue Monday’ sold, but it changed everything.

"Yeah, that’s a really good example. The Smiths put out ‘Shoplifters Of The World Unite’ in these plastic carrier bags that said “shoplifter” on it as a stylistic joke against HMV, really, but that ended up putting that record in the red, and there was quite a few things that happened like that. The New Order example is a really good one.

"Without someone like Peter Saville – he’s absolutely changed design because of vinyl, and Nick Scott, who I think is one of the really great modern designers, made a really great statement after that on The Cribs’ last album, and that is alongside the music. Without records, those things don’t happen."