Johnny Marr was the guitarist in the Smiths and has worked with the The, Electronic, the Pretenders, Modest Mouse, Paul McCartney and Hans Zimmer. He has two children with his wife, Angie, and is based in his native Manchester. He’s currently touring his third solo album Call the Comet, an eclectic blend of the rock he’s known for, and more left-field sonic offerings, including Actor Attractor. Marr has described Call the Comet as his form of “magic realism”, using dystopian imagery to reference big issues of the day. It is released on 15 June on New Voodoo.
You were working on A Different Gun, a song about the 2016 terrorist attack in Nice, when the Manchester Arena bombing happened…
I’d been trying to musically create the collective shock and suspension [of Nice]… then Manchester happened, which was fucking horrible. [Canadian band] Broken Social Scene wanted me to play with them the next day in tribute. I was so shocked, I didn’t think I could do it [Marr eventually did]. A Different Gun was about having the skill to balance such tragedy with a rock song, and it took me a while wondering whether I had that skill. The song focuses on coming together – how we feel as humans when we’re completely lost, and trying to help each other out.
Is Call the Comet largely about Trump and Brexit?
Completely the opposite. I didn’t want them contaminating my creative life. I don’t think those people are deserving of it. They’re not worthy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m hopefully socially aware – but I didn’t want to make an overtly political, preachy record. So it became more about the feeling of the issues, the emotional response... I was also reminded that music can be about escapism, and defiance. This record is my defiance.
The tweet where you forbade David Cameron to like the Smiths was a political act in itself…
I gave that about three seconds’ thought before I did it. I really was offended by his appropriation of the group, trying to be cool by association… He picked on the wrong person.
One of the Smiths’ albums is called The Queen Is Dead... Did you watch the royal wedding?
I was on my tour bus trying to avoid it. I find the way the whole country gees itself up in this pseudo-party mentality pretty corny and naff. We should know better. I don’t hate the royal family – I’m just waiting for them to be involved with the people who put them on a pedestal.
You’re often asked about Morrissey expressing controversial views. Does it feel disloyal criticising him – or that you’re his keeper?
It’s just been so long – a lot can happen in 30 years. Morrissey and I were always different – everybody knows that. I understand why I’m asked – we were a big group, we’re still a huge group. But being his keeper, being disloyal, doesn’t come into it, because I do have a life.
How do you feel now about the Smiths’ royalties court case [won by his bandmates Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke]?
I resented it at the time, but you just get on with your life. It’s just part of being in a big band – drug busts, deaths, court cases… sometimes all three.
I think it’s now illegal to interview you without asking the question... is there going to be a Smiths reunion?
[Laughs] No.
You’re of Irish stock. What did you make of the abortion referendum?
That dialogue should have been sorted out years ago. There’s so much magic in Ireland and in the Irish mentality, but Catholicism has always got in the way. I’m really happy that the Catholic church has been delivered an enormous wake-up call – it’s been getting away with too many things for too long.
You’re a vegan, you don’t drink or smoke, you go long-distance running... What would your younger self have made of all this abstinence?
I think my younger self would have appreciated it. I don’t see it as abstinence, I see it as the opposite – putting my foot down on the pedal. It’s something that gives me more juice, makes me more radical. A middle-aged musician nursing a hangover in his mate’s dressing room is a dead duck.
You worked with the Pet Shop Boys – they have that lyric “I never thought I’d get to be the creature that I meant to be”...
Being honest, I realised I was the creature I was meant to be when I was a kid – that I was lumbered with it, so I’d better make it work out. That’s what the track Day in Day Out is about. Not the burden, the predicament of it. Not of fame, but of creative obsession. It was either going to work out and I would be able to navigate it, or it wasn’t going to work out and it was going to be a real problem.
You’ve been married for more than 30 years. It must have given you stability, and more?
It certainly gave me stability because Angie is very smart and imaginative – she’s kept this whole thing on the road. But yes, more, because she’s as nomadic and restless as I am. It’s not about the dutiful, stable woman waiting at the door while her husband goes off and comes back, and she soothes my soul… Angie’s a badass!
She makes you braver?
Oh yeah. When we first met, I had this vision of this life as a new modern kind of rock guitar player, and she said: “OK, that sounds good, where do we sign on? Let’s do it!” I always said she made me brave, and she still does.
