Johnny Marr

By Jamie Franklin

Noel Gallagher said this man made the most unique music of perhaps any generation. NME said his band, The Smiths, were the most influential band of all time. Want to find out which Boss pedals were used on some of The Smiths’ greatest tracks? Want to know which Roland product he sleeps with in his tour bunk? Ladies and Gentleman, we give you the fourth Cribs member, Mr Johnny Marr.

Johnny MarrYou mentioned once that warming up before going on-stage, was basically you not talking to anyone, drinking tea and remembering all the music that you’ve loved since you were 15. Do you still do that?

Yeah, absolutely. On the last Cribs tour I noticed there tends to be a lot of activity going on in the dressing rooms, so I have to try and carve out my pre going on time. I’ve been shrinking it down to 20 minutes, coz otherwise I just end up standing around in the cold. I do mentally get myself in the right headspace, because there is an important job to be done. A lot of it does involve playing the guitar for about 20 minutes. Not scales or anything like that; I just walk around absent-mindedly playing riffs. It’s for me to get my attitude right and put a little bit of intensity into my guitar playing coz I don’t wanna be too casual about it. I try and mix it up, but normally I end up playing ‘Gimme Danger’ by Iggy and the Stooges.

How are The Cribs fans treating you?

Really well. The first gig I officially was in the band was Reading Festival last year. We closed the last night and had 18,000 people singing the riffs and singing your name. It was as emphatic a welcome as possible really. The important thing is that the band sounds like a really great band. Whatever band I’m in, the priority is to make the band sound great, I just try and fit in and add what I can. Obviously I like to try and have my own artistic and creative satisfaction, but what the fans think is very important. If you lose sight of that, you’re out of the game. The audience are not fools, you know what I mean? I’ve had a really great time the last five or six years in that regard coz Modest Mouse’s fans were just fantastic too. Having been around for a long time, I get an opportunity to observe and have some interaction with a very discerning and quite serious yet passionate bunch of people young or old. I like to take advantage of and learn from them.

How important is it for you not only to like the music of your band, but for them to be saying something and meaning it?

It’s really important that there’s an ideology behind it, either artistically or with some kind of social conscience. With Modest Mouse for example, Isaac Brock had a very unique creative outlook. The Cribs, just as people, have a very social conscience about them, which is too rare I think. Even if it’s just taking the p*** like on ‘Hey Scenesters’. I think ‘Mens Needs’ is a really overlooked song, lyrically it’s amazing. It’s important that people have got something to say.

Whether it’s trying to escape from where they grew up, or from, a job, or a situation, do you think escapism plays a big part in a band’s creativity?

I think humans need that in art full stop. Whether it’s high brow, low brow, or mainstream culture – although that’s been taking to extremes now with the stupid celebrity culture – it’s all necessary escapism. One of the reasons why pop culture is not trivial to me is coz it’s something I personally got an education from. In my case, I was escaping from a lot of concrete, and a fairly edgy insensitive environment where I grew up. I learnt everything I know because of knowledge and facts, however little that might be, from people like Andrew Loog Oldham who used to manage The Stones, from his quotes or his example. Even Patti Smith interviews or David Johansen interviews. One or two journalists too, when I was in my teens, like David Savage. I don’t think bands should be embarrassed about doing interviews. There are so many kids out there who want to read a magazine on their way to school who really want to read more than someone’s new tattoo or someone slipping over on a banana skin outside the Met Bar coz they had 55 Sambuccas or whatever. The pendulum swings for me a little bit when it becomes a celebration of the inane. Good pop culture is good art.

Do you think if you had grown up in a wealthy part of London you would be a different person, a different songwriter?

I think it wouldn’t have changed me as a person coz luckily for me I have a very strong work ethic. I say luckily: it occasionally has made life more difficult than it could have been, but if you don’t know where you’re gonna get the money to get a mortgage other than to be in a soul-crushing job, it really helps you get your skates on and form a band. More importantly it gets you out the house! My parents used to say, “If you don’t work, you’re out”. John Lydon had a similar background and I think we’re both grateful for it really. I had a very happy home life and come from a very nurturing family, but you needed to work, otherwise how was I gonna get myself an amplifier? Over the years I’ve come across some very talented people who were more comfortable and things didn’t really pan out for them, and that’s a fact.

Do you think you need that tough background to be more intense as a musician?

I think it can create a lot of drive. You don’t necessarily need that tough background to have a drive though, as it might come from something internal. Take Nick Drake for example. Incredible poetry and masterful moments of music, driven in the extreme probably by alienation and sensitivity, but he came from a very pastoral, comfortable, almost idyllic lifestyle. You don’t need to be urban, but I think if you wanna be in a street rock group of a certain type, like The Smiths, The Clash or The Buzzcocks; you have to be a Steve Diggle, Mick Jones, or someone like me. Being outside on the corner and dreaming about songs and making up band names, and seeing the romance in it, is only romantic if it’s better than sitting in your bedroom.

You used to rehearse below Joy Division right? Did you ever jam together?

Yeah we did, but we never jammed. Joy Division were older than me and they were a very imposing bunch, even though underneath that weirdness was actually a bunch of regular lads. They really were the epitome of that kind of post-punk attitude and post-punk style, I mean, they wore old men’s clothes, and that was really weird! Ian Curtis’s haircut was weird. The sound they made for the first 20 minutes while they were warming up (and I mean literally warming up, that place was freezing even in the summer) was a pretty imposing kind of dystopian inner-city sound. If you wanted to know what their life was like you listened to how they sounded. They weren’t designing anything really, or if they were they were just getting it wrong and coming out with something real. They certainly had direction, but they sounded like the place they came from, without a doubt. They couldn’t copy anyone else, which is sometimes really useful.

What did you think of their proper songs after the warm-up?

They were by no means the enigma they soon became. Martin Hadden’s production put what they were doing in a completely different context, and I remember distinctly when that penny dropped. There was a kid who lived two doors down from me who was playing ‘Unknown Pleasures’ with the window open while I was outside, and even though it was a nice sunny spring evening, it all got very dark and east Berlin! It was like this big black cloud was just over his house all alone, and I just thought, holy fuck….what’s that? Then they really came what they became, you know? Before that they were just a bunch of older guys playing unaccomplished, thrashy music.

What did they think of your music?

They didn’t know I existed, and quite rightly, coz I was just in one of my crappy bands I used to be in when I was like 14…

What were you called?

We were called The White Dice, which even then wasn’t very good.

What’s your history with using Boss pedals and effects in general?

Well first off, you wanted an amplifier that could break up enough to give you some sustain: that was the big word, which was ironic as it was the first thing I dropped when I got my own sound. The first pedal I bought at that time, which was the late 70s, was the purple BF-2 flanger. I’ve been thinking about that recently: I imagine The Cure wouldn’t exist without that little pedal. Like all great effects it can’t really be duplicated. It’s got such a cool distinctive sound that really reminds me of the time, you know? But the problem was every single riff I had was just going woooosshhhh!!! It was the only pedal I could afford at the time!

Were the pedal effects you were using changing the way you wrote songs?

Absolutely. This is something I think about to this day. I drive myself bananas thinking about tones and pedals. On the one hand, you want to come up with really inspiring parts that people like and that turn you on, but I never wanted to rely on this huge pedal board so you have to call a cab when you want to get to the compressor pedal, so it’s a dilemma really. It’s a really nice dilemma. God, I’m such a rock star, dilemma! My sound dictates the way I play. Even if it’s about things that aren’t really that obvious, like compression, which I use very sparingly, but a certain kind, and the exact amount of modulation. I nearly always use delays, but very often it will sound completely dry, so I just think, why wouldn’t you? You don’t have to sound like Space Rock to have delays on, I learnt a hell of a lot producing records. Even if it’s just a clean sound which I think a lot of people associate me with, has a lot of things going on to get to that sound, you know?

What influence did Patti Smith have on you?

I saw her when I was 14 in Manchester, and I was right up close to the stage, and it was as if this enormous window had been opened wide and that I wasn’t even in the same room any more really. It felt like an insight into a different dimension, and I wanted to be in that room. Not to be on-stage and to be adored by everybody, but I wanted to get in to that space and live in that space that she, and a couple of other bands, appeared to be in. It was a physical thing. I had similar effects when I listened to T-Rex records, another world really. I know it sounds all mystical, but that’s how I felt. Days after seeing the Patti Smith gig, I wandered round going, “What was that?” It was like performance art, and I wanted to participate in that.

Is that a feeling you can experience when you play too?

It’s something that a lot of people will understand. Even if you’re surfing or skateboarding and you’re in your flow, you will be in that zone, certainly improvising when playing music. I’ve been lucky enough to have that experience on-stage a lot, especially with bands like Modest Mouse and The The, and The Cribs too in fact. You sometimes have those nights you know? We’re talking about transcendence really aren’t we? I mean, as long as you’ve got a cool pair of shoes on, and not sandals.

That was my next question! Noel Gallagher said you always have the most impeccable shoes and the best haircuts. What are your Desert Island Shoes?

(Laughs) My Desert Island Shoes? Has to be the Desert Boot! Birkenstock made the best ones in the mid to late 90s, interestingly enough for me, they’re called Portland. They fulfill that very classic and very stringent criteria of style, functionality, maximum Beatnik association and Bohemia.

Do you ever do what I do and wear shoes that hurt, but look great?

Oh yeah man, no one said it was easy!

My new boots are squeaky and that worries me in quiet places.

You know what? That’s other people’s problem!

What do you think of Portland as a city?

I’ve got a place there. I’ve spent most of my time there since 2005. For the last 14 months I’ve not really lived anywhere coz I’ve been on tour. If there was a hat, and I could lay it down, it would be my home. My studio is in Manchester, and my family is in Manchester. It’s just so easy to live for people like myself who only want a few things in life, when those things are getting harder and harder to find. Vinyl shops, other people who aren’t terribly uptight, artists I guess. You don’t have to have loads of money to get a decent apartment there. It’s a very artistic place because it’s cheap it attracts musicians, people who work for musicians and people in the visual arts. It’s quite trendy, probably because people like me have moved there!

Is it cathartic for you to move around from place to place?

Absolutely. I never complain about touring coz I treat travel like it’s an opportunity to learn something. I think it’s very healthy to be on your own a lot. I’m quite a sociable person, and I was growing up too, but whether you’re on the tour bus, in the airport or in the dressing room even, it’s important to zip up and read or catch up on music. It’s something I don’t take for granted anymore, probably because I’m getting older. I never complain about being bored, I’m never bored. There aren’t enough hours in the day to do what I need to do really. I left school when I was 15 to work on my band so after that I’ve just been moving around like a ghost really. Don’t get me wrong, I realize how lucky I am to be able to do that, but it doesn’t necessarily cost a lot of money.

I heard you carry a bag of white tea around. When did this start?

White tea is the elixir of life along with sex and rock ‘n’ roll. When I was making the Modest Mouse album, one of the band brought me a bag of this tea. Then the album went straight in at number one. So I though, OK, I’ll try and drink that every day! It’s almost got political with me. Rather than spend a few quid on some piece of crap from some corporate place, I can just take the time and spend the same money and carry some around with me in a bag. Everybody drinks tea or coffee, I just thought I’d get particular about what I drink, as I am about my jeans or my shirts or my guitar. You don’t need to be a rock star to do it, everybody has to buy stuff. I like to think it has ethical consequences. Being vegan is a big part of my life. All this can sound very po-faced, but living in the west, particularly Europe, costs an arm and a leg, so I opt to have things that I really treasure. This shirt cost me $18 from a thrift store; unfortunately it cost me about $30 to get made the right size, but I could easily have spent £140 on something I didn’t like that much you know? Teenagers know that the way you live can be an art. You’ve got that choice that it can be an art, even if you’re completely skint. It’s a matter of self-expression and I like to really enjoy that.

You run for about 20 minutes when you get to your next venue. Have you always done that?

It was introduced to me when I met the Hip Hop band Naughty By Nature. We got talking about ideology and I asked why they were always working out in all their videos. They explained to me the reason was they wanted to be as strong and healthy as they could really. A lot of things appeal to me, that I’ve never done. I have no intention of jumping off a bridge with a piece of elastic tied to my ankles, but I’ve been very lucky in my life to have ticked a lot of boxes and I don’t want to squander opportunities that I get. I still want to be great and I still want to do great things. I essentially come from a rock ‘n’ roll culture, but I want to do it in a new way. I think it would be tragic to be this older guy just falling into clichés.

You play a Boss GT-5 Multi-effects as part of your main set up. Can you tell me about it?

When I was in the band Electronic, we started to experiment with guitar sounds; we tried all kinds of things. I’m typical of musicians in that I wanted to use what was going on at the time you know, be current. I started recording guitars straight, and then putting effects on afterwards, and then decided that was a mistake. The sound of a 10” speaker with the effect chorus on it and delays going through it, sounded much better than if you added it afterwards. It sounded like it was meant to be, really. I decided then and there that I was always going to do that as a policy. So I went back to some of my old stomp boxes that I had when I was in The Smiths, most of which were Boss. I used to love the white GE-6 equalizer, and the very first light-blue CE-2 chorus that still sounds really good. Ryan (The Cribs) uses one too. When I wanted to change the size of reverb on riffs, it couldn’t be done any other way than getting the sound man to do it, or using an expression pedal, which is how I got into the GT-5, and essentially that’s why I still use it. I use it for delays, reverb, some subtle kinds of modulation, and panning.

So while in The Smiths, what Boss effects were in the pedal board?

I had the yellow OS-2 overdrive/distortion pedal, the OD-2 Overdrive pedal; actually that’s how I got the riff to The Smiths song ‘London’, (sings riff), I had the CE-2 chorus pedal, the white GE-6 EQ, the BF-2 purple Flanger and when the very first grey reverb pedal came out, the RV-2, I got that. I still own it. It sounds really good.

You recently got a Roland Micro Cube amp. How are you using it?

I use it for the dressing rooms, just playing around, and on the tour bus as well. Also I find it to be just the job coz often these days bands are invited down to do acoustic sessions. It normally involves two of the band pulling out acoustic guitars and doing a half-arsed version of your punk rock hit. In The Cribs there are three of us who play guitar and I just thought that would be overkill. I have to fight for it sometimes, coz I say look, that microphone you were gonna put in front of my guitar, just put it in front of this little amp, and then you see their faces drop as I get out my electric guitar! I just dial in a little bit of delay, and a little bit of reverb and it does an absolutely great job. We used to have a few Roland Micro Cubes in Modest Mouse that we used to put beat boxes through and all these weird samplers and it just did the job great.

As a teenager you had a checklist of stuff you wanted to achieve, and you felt you had done most of it. Are there any other burning desires?

With The Cribs, we hope to continue making a good collection of singles that mean something to people who like British street punk rock, whatever it is. That’s something I’ve carried with me since the early 70s and new wave really. It’s what we tried to do in The Smiths.

You described your tour bunk with Modest Mouse as ‘the starship enterprise with a pillow’ due to all the gadgets and gear in there. Is it just as bad with your new digs?

It’s even worse now (laughs), I don’t even think there’s room for a pillow! The Roland Micro Cube is in there right now with my Jaguar guitar! I’ve learnt to sleep just on one shoulder. There’s my laptop, which believe me is annoying in the middle of the night, also I’ve recently added a little hard drive for my movies and stuff; there’s my phone, my iPod, my noise-cancelling headphones, my M Box, two books, my jeans and that’s it.

You need a shelf!

It’s something you just get used to I think. If you’ve had a few beers or a bottle of wine, it’s worse.

What is it about Bert Jansch you like?

One of my friends said they had found this amazing folk player. My idea of folk at the time was ‘All Around My Hat’, and he just put on this Pentangle record and it sounded very aggressive and free form; just cool you know? I had no idea where Bert was coming from, and I couldn’t work out how he was doing what he was doing. Since then I’ve got to find out about David Graham and some jazz, but still Bert is his own thing. I played with him quite a few times and I’m still none the wiser, which I’m happy about. Very lyrical, with a brilliant rhythm and just coming from a really cool place. If you want to know what Bohemian sounds like you just have to listen to early Bert Jansch.

Why do so many Smiths songs still resonate so strongly today?

If you get away from the aesthetic of the band and look at the philosophy, when you hear it, the music was written and there was a lot of emotion in it – in whatever direction. Some of it was written in a very pure ecstatic state of joy, and some was written in a more melancholic and more introspective state. Either direction we took it was in the max, and was recorded in those states too. We were very high functioning and not hung up by arguments or bad feeling coz we felt like what we were doing was the most important thing in the world. So we had this emotional music that was recorded in a very respectful way to what we were doing, we didn’t just bang stuff down, it was very inspired.

Which track are you most proud of?

I think ‘Last Night I dreamt that Somebody Loved Me’ followed closely by ‘Stop Me If You Think You’ve heard This One Before’.

Do you ever listen to them?

Never. I hear them sometimes, but I never play any of the music I’ve made. Normally if I’m in a shop or a restaurant and I hear one played, it’s normally a commercial one so I’m sort of proud of it. When I mastered the catalogue last year it was quite a lot of work, it wasn’t the nostalgic experience some people think it might be, or some wild cathartic type thing, but it definitely was emotional. I could still hear all that love and care in it you know? I know every single note of the guitar, I know every single note of the bass, I know every hi-hat hit. It’s like muscle memory. It’s not boring, it’s just part of my DNA now. In some way it’s like looking at an old school photograph. You remember it and what it was like but it feels like another time in your life. Fundamentally you’re the same person, but one would hope that you have a lot more to you than the person back then.

What advice would you give any young guitarist in a band, writing songs?

It’s a little boring, but I would first off invest a few quid in a capo, and don’t be afraid to sound crappy. Be as spirited and outgoing as possible. You shouldn’t treat learning the guitar like an egg coz it takes too long. If you break through that barrier in terms of physicality and just get stuff out there, you can do in two minutes what you do in two hours just with broad strokes. Rhythm players get stuck in this thing of strumming down two, then up one, and its just nonsense. If you just feel it, you soon fall in to the right rhythm. It’s like dancing. You just have to dive off the deep end and not worry about being crap – that’s the most important thing.

I heard you like the 60s girl groups from Detroit. Have you heard Glasvegas? They take a lot of inspiration from that, but they twist it.

I haven’t heard much of it, but I will definitely check it out. One thing me and The Cribs have in common is the old girl-groups. I also like a lot of stuff that was coming out of the DC scene, precursor to Grunge maybe. This band called Candy Machine I like quite a lot and The Monorchid. The DC punk scene I really liked, you should check some of it out. The last two Fugazi albums are amazing. The guitar playing is great. They’re not muso at all, but are really in control of what they’re doing. I think a lot of English people think all they do is get in a basement, with no tops on, screaming but there’s something really beautiful in what they do.

Isabella from Florence and The Machine wanted to ask what the rate and depth of the Tremolo on ‘How Soon Is Now’ was…

I can’t remember the rate, she’ll just have to work that out! Because it was pre-sampler the rate was probably something like 4, 6, 5, 6, 4 coz we were chasing it all the way round through the track. It certainly was better than just cut and pasting it. The depth was about 8, so the signal is riding over the wave a little bit. It’s by no means 10, but there was four amps doing it, two on each side.

Finally Hugh from The Kooks wants to know if you will join his band?

I’ll think about it…

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