On The Smiths And Solo Praise: "I Just Kinda Swim With It"

"I guess now that you’ve asked me and I think about it there is no real differentiation between the noise and my life,” says Johnny Marr from his Manchester living room.

The question in question is the one about the veritable mountain of accolades he’s accrued since appearing on our radars in 1983 with a band called The Smiths. Not only are The Smiths revered as one of the very few genuinely original bands in rock history but Marr often makes ‘best guitarist’ top tens. His jangly Rickenbacker stylings have not only spawned countless imitators but fuelled a diverse career that’s included everything from stints in Modest Mouse, The Cribs and The The to movie soundtracks and now, finally, solo records.

“Maybe I don’t avoid it, I just kinda swim with it,” he says of the hoopla. “I’ve never really known any different, I suppose. I mean, perhaps there is no clear differentiation between all that stuff and a private life.”

Nonetheless, Marr admits he stopped paying attention “somewhere in the late ‘90s”. These days, he just stays busy. “People always say ‘don’t read reviews’ but I actually don’t; and in this day and age when you’ve got so much information flying at you all the time you’d need three brains and six pairs of eyes to understand all of that. It makes you far too self-conscious to pay any attention.”

Now in his 50s, Marr is at last able to employ a once awkward sounding epithet. “I appreciate what the word ‘artist’ means more and more as each year passes because that is what I love. I love creating things; in my case it’s music but also videos now and even the merch. Mine is the life of an artist but I don’t believe you can really be an artist and be entirely media savvy. You become something else then.”

"Maybe I don’t avoid it, I just kinda swim with it."

So rather than tweaking his public persona, Marr simply treads the path he’s been on since before The Smiths. “Writing a song under four minutes with an interesting title, upbeat loud drums, hooky guitars and kinda catchy vocals is the greatest thing for me.”

While every Smiths fan will doubtless point to one song or another as an example of such perfection, unsurprisingly Marr believes he’s now closer. “I feel like with the solo records I’ve got pretty lucky and got kinda close to catching some of that.”

Perhaps what’s most striking about Marr’s two recent solo records, The Messenger and Playland, is they took so long to arrive; no less than 26 years after The Smiths split in 1987. “I think I needed to go through a period of just making records and playing on people’s records. That was something I always wanted to do from when I was a boy and, after The Smiths split, that’s what I pursued. I wasn’t hiding out from anything or getting away from my legacy or any of that, I just wanted to be in The The, so that’s what I did.”