No, former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr isn’t getting back together with Morrissey, and no, he’s not up to anything untoward involving that legendary band’s trademark. Instead, Marr is now on the road in North America with his solo band and fellow Manchester, England-reared support act James, celebrating a 20th anniversary reissue of his first solo effort, Boomslang.
The tour, which began last week in Denver and visits Los Angeles tonight (Sept. 26), is a reunion of sorts for Marr and the Tim Booth-led James, who formed in Manchester shortly before the Smiths in 1982. James later opened for the Smiths on the latter’s 1985 U.K. trek in support of Meat Is Murder, and the Smiths were such big fans of James at the time that they even covered the band’s song “What’s the World?”
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Marr tells SPIN that he recalls James’ single “Hymn From a Village” coming out on Manchester’s fabled Factory Records and being impressed by its “original sound. It was intriguing. The sleeve was very modern looking too.” A few years later, “going out on tour with James was a good experience,” Marr says. “We were all young and it was quite exciting getting the success. Both bands were in ascendance and had built up a following over the previous couple of years. Looking back, [covering ‘What’s the World?’] was quite an unusual thing — to play a song from the opening band. It shows that we had a lot of respect for them.”
In the decades since, Marr and the members of James have bumped into each other from time to time, including a run-in with Booth “around 2017 when he was living in Topanga Canyon and I was in Santa Monica. I played a couple of songs with them at a festival in England around that time. We’re from the same part of the world and the same time, so there’s a common sensibility.”
As for James’ recent, improbable No. 1 debut on the U.K. album chart with Yummy, Marr enthuses, “I’m pleased for them. Their albums are always good. I’ve particularly liked the last few. They seem to have entered into another new chapter.”
Marr himself was doing the same in 2003, when he released Boomslang some 16 years after the demise of the Smiths. During that time, he’d largely served as a guitarist for hire with acts such as Pretenders and The The, as well as a member of the supergroup Electronic with New Order’s Bernard Sumner and Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant. Indeed, Boomslang was the first time most fans had ever heard Marr’s singing voice.
“I learned a lot fast from doing Boomslang, like fronting the band and writing in new ways, he says of the LP, which found him backed by his then-band the Healers. “It was a lot to take on, but everyone in the band made it worth it. It was an unusual group of people who were interested in things outside of music — quite esoteric I guess, which was interesting. I’m glad it happened.” The anniversary edition of the album includes seven previously unreleased songs, with Marr singling out the slow-burn jam “All Out Attack” and “The Way That It Was” (“a nice song — pretty”) as favorites. “There are a few songs that didn’t come out for some reason,” he notes. “I might’ve been overthinking the running order or something.”
Marr recently reconvened with Sumner and New Order during an Aug. 24 show at Wythenshawe Park in Manchester, which he describes as “definitely an event. Wythenshawe Park was where I hung out most days, dreaming of playing music full time. It was where I first kissed my girlfriend and took mushrooms with my mate — or maybe it was the other way around. Both incidents were a bit confusing.”
Asked how the process of documenting his musical ideas has evolved over the years, Marr notes that he’s currently writing new songs and that he and his band have been experimenting with one of them, “Navigator,” in soundchecks.
“I like working on ideas on the road, as they have a certain energy about them,” he says. “My early songs were on a two-track tape recorder that I was able to trick into bouncing tracks together, and then I upgraded to a Teac Portastudio. I’ve kept up with technology, because it’s usually interesting and sometimes fun. Right now, I’ve gone right back to getting guitar ideas down on a looper and layering them without looking at a screen. I’m bored of looking at screens when I’m making music. It’s a long subject.”
Marr, who politely declined further comment beyond his recent statement about Morrissey’s claims regarding a Smiths reunion and reissues, is, however, keeping his eye on another big Manchester-related music development: the impending reunion of his longtime friends and occasional musical collaborators, Oasis’ Noel and Liam Gallagher. Asked if they’d reached out for advice ahead of their 2025 trek, international dates for which sold out instantly, Marr replies, “nah, they wouldn’t ask me about that stuff. They know what they’re doing.”
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