Features

Parting Shots: Johnny Marr

Photo by Jon Shard

There are few artists who are as elegant as Johnny Marr. He’s as cool as an oyster, self-effacing, yet supremely talented, with his trademark Rickenbacker leaving an ethereal vapor trail of clear, shimmering jangling bell-like sounds, which launched an entire school of guitar playing, informing everyone from John Frusciante to Jonny Greenwood. It was also a big part of making The Smiths the most important band to come out of the U.K. in the 1980s.

Marr is a master of time and space, knowing exactly when to get involved in a project, and, more important, when to exit. He left The Smiths in 1987 and went on to form Electronic with former Joy Division member Bernard Sumner; played with The The, Bryan Ferry and Neil Finn; and did session work with Jane Birkin, Beck and The Talking Heads; and was a guest guitarist with Oasis and the Pet Shop Boys.

In 1988 founded his own band The Healers, and then surprised everyone when he moved to Portland, Ore., to join Modest Mouse in 2006, and again when he left them to join The Cribs in 2008.

This February, he released The Messenger, his first solo album in a decade.

You’ve called this record The Messenger. What’s the message?

This record is inspired by my impressions of the world I’ve grown up in and where I’m at in my life now. If there is a theme to what I’m writing about, it’s how some of the things that I worked out when I was young don’t necessarily need to be worked out again. One hopes that the payoff from getting older is getting wiser but still, there are some things that I learned in my teenage years, that I got right the first time. Maybe people in my own age group feel the same way and you realize that you’re not entirely different from your younger self in some matters. I think young people grasp things and shouldn’t doubt that they have. This kind of notion corrupts us from the start.

What is the most profound thing that you discovered about yourself in doing this album?

Looking back, my prerogative to go off the beaten track and get away from habitual kinds of patterns. I like that I’m someone who is, by nature, very searching. It’s good when you actually realize that the search is the important thing and that the actual end result isn’t going to matter. As it is, I don’t mind if I never find what I was searching for.

Part of your searching refers to modern technology.

I am blown away with technology that allows me to research the geography of Montana or the causes of the Czech Revolution. All of these things are accessible in a whimsical, instantaneous library. But even so, I had realization that we have an entire spectrum of instant information that we really don’t need, but we’ve gotten used to accessing. We can find out anything we need about anything and everything, but in the end, how about being OK with mystery?

Mystery has always been a theme of yours. In 2000, you joined Modest Mouse because you wanted to figure out their mystery. Were you able to?

I’ve got a good insight into how that situation was working. Maybe because I’m an outsider. But then, I became very much an insider and part of the family. I’ve been in bands since I was 14 or 15, and one thing I know about is the chemistry in bands: when it’s special and when it’s not working. That particular group of people at that time had amazing chemistry and all six individuals had a very interesting part to play.

Do you find it easy to write lyrics?

I have to take the business of it seriously and I realize that you have to be somebody entirely living life as a poet, which, in my case, I hadn’t been. If you’re fronting a band, you can’t be shooting off in a garret by a lake somewhere, which I would have liked, but there comes a time when you mentally have to do that. I guess what I’m saying is that you’ve got to get rid of all the distractions and allow yourself to take back on some of the responsibilities of being in a band. You have to respect it and make it the thing that’s at the forefront of your time. We’re out on tour now and I’m doing a lot of promotion for the record, but the heart really wants to write a new song.