Johnny Marr

One of the greatest guitarists of all time, Johnny Marr, joins Questlove Supreme to talk about his playing style and extensive career. The Roots' Captain Kirk Douglas joins the conversation as a special guest co-host. Marr speaks about growing up in Manchester, England, and co-founding The Smiths. He touches on his time with Modest Mouse and The Pretenders, giving away famous guitars and being embraced by diverse audiences. This conversation is a thoughtful and revealing look at a true master craftsman passionate about all types of music.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. Ladies and Gentlemen.
What's up, Ladies and gentlemen? Fuck it, man, let's just
let's just start talking. Go no, I'll say that this

(00:22):
is another episode. I remember who I am. My name
is quest Love. This is Quest Love Supreme. We have
the Supreme team with us Sugar Steve on paid Bill.
Why yeah, you look a little different today. Yeah, well,
you know, just don't say nothing. Don't say nothing the song. Now,

(00:42):
we don't do theme songs on the zoom. Okay, okay, So,
ladies and gentlemen, this is a special Quest Love Supreme.
This conversation, in my opinion, is probably six to seven
years overdue. I first met our guest of the show
maybe like two months after his memoir set The Boy

(01:05):
Free was released, and I distinctly remember my guitarists in
the Roots, Captain Kirk Douglas A say hello, Captain Kirk there,
what's up? He had asked me if I read the
book at the time, and at that time I didn't,
and with great intensity, you know, Kirk was like, dude,
you gotta get him on the show. Like he's tailor

(01:28):
made for a nerd. Haven like Quest Love Supreme, And
I remember my response to Kirk was, wait, you listened
to Quest Love Supreme? And actually he was right because
around the pandemic when I went on my book reading

(01:48):
rabbit Hole, I'll say that his book was probably one
of the few non self help books I used to
escape whatever it was that twenty twenty was. And Kurk
couldn't have been more right. The musicianship of our Guest
has kind of been the sonic lighthouse or north star

(02:09):
to many guitarist or songwriter. You'll be pressed to find
any band at least worth their grain of salt that
has been formed that at least you know, doesn't name
check our Guest as a major influence on their creativity.
Of course, he has most notably co founded The Smiths,

(02:30):
but he has played and collaborated with such luminaries as
of course Modest Mouse. I have so many questions about
you and Portland like my all time favorite self right,
the Pretenders, of course the Cribs, his supergroup with Bernard
Summer and Pet Shop Boys. Neil Tennant has worked with Beck,
Crowded House, the Avalanches, even the The I Love Saying

(02:54):
the and of course Bragg Billy Bragg, Billy Bragg and
of course also just work with Don Zimmer and Pharrell
and the uh the scoring of inception. I will say,
like his his haunting, our pageo kind of guitar texture

(03:15):
pretty much is defined a generation, and we're giving the
honor to have a musician talk a musician rant.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
If you will, with the rapt Yeah he's gone now
wait too long.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Intro was too long. He was like, fuck it, I'm
out my guitar collection. He's back. All right, We're good, No,
for real, We're We're happy to nerd out with iconic songwriter, author, guitarist,
producer Johnny mar The Quest Love supreme.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Thank you, it was so nice. Thank you very much,
really great to see you again.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Thank you what are you doing man?

Speaker 3 (04:02):
Great?

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Were you speaking to us? Now? Where is this?

Speaker 3 (04:08):
Thank you for all that quest Love. That was lovely
to hear all all those friends of mine being mentioned.
I'm in the studio that's in my house. I have
kind of a big main studio that I've had for
a number of years. And then the funny thing. I
don't know whether you guys to relate to this as musicians,
but I did this thing where after years of having

(04:29):
a pretty comprehensive home studio. When I moved out and
I moved into this kind of old factory building in
twenty sixteen, I ran around to everybody saying, I've seen
the light. Get out of your house in the morning,
drive to work, go and do your day's work. Drive home.
Don't you know, get out of the house, don't we'll

(04:50):
have a home studio. Well, now I have two studios.
I have one in the house and I have one
in a separate building. But this room was kind of
modeled on one of the rooms that I was working
with when I work with hans In. I just had
a spare room in the househouse isn't particularly big, but
with technology being the way is these days, you can

(05:12):
have a pretty decent mixing room. So I spend all
the time that I'm supposed to be at home with
the family a sort of spending this room.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, So I always wondered about that because I'm currently
you know, I waited three decades to do my first
real purchase. If you will, I guess the only idiom
I can use is I'm debating on whether or not
I should ship where I eat, and I know the
home studio is sort of a factor in many a

(05:41):
creative's live but part of me is also has the
option to put the studio outside of the house, so
that way, my house is my house and my studio
is my studio.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yeah. I think the rule of thumb really is if
I don't know now, I like the discipline of getting
out and got work and there are a fewer distractions.
This might sound obvious, but I think if you've got
the choice of having your main proper workplace away from
the house, I think that's better for the work I do.

(06:14):
If you can do that, if you're fortunate enough, because
I think it gives you that kind of window of
time when you want to because look, we're all human,
as inspired as we may be, you know, I know
sometimes you get into these crazy deadlines and twelve hour,
fourteen hour whatever days. I've in that window of time
when your subconsciousness is saying I need to make these

(06:34):
decisions now because I'm going to get in the car
and drive home at nine o'clock, nine pm or whatever
it is, and try and be like a human being.
I think that's good for the work.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
All right, I'm poinding it. It's not silence I keep
forgetting this a podcast, so I have to.

Speaker 4 (06:50):
The sound of thinking.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
It's the sound of thinking. I'm like, hmmm, I don't know.
I just I think I have a concern and a
fear that if I put my studio on the scene
place that I live. Then you know, I have boundary
issues when it comes to personal life versus work, and
I kind of enjoy this thing where they're far apart.

(07:11):
But you know, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
That's what I'm that is what I'm saying. I think
it's better to work away from your house. Yeah, as
a real as a rule of thumb, but I think
that thing. Don't mean to be presumptuous, but that thing
of what you you know, your term boundary issues has
just been a musician, been a musician of a certain type.

(07:34):
I've been very fortunate in my personal life in that
my family. I've been with my wife since we were kids,
and you know, my family and the way they just
kind of get on board. They wouldn't have it any
other way.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Sometimeline. Yeah, they got.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
To just in case they might be listening to this.
I mean, you mentioned Portland earlier, but that's a good example.
When I when I joined that was a whole surprising
episode and the way that went down. But that was
me following a musical hunch and when Isaac brought from
the band inviting me over there, and you know, I

(08:13):
did what I did. I did the grown up version
of what I did when I was a teenager, which
was falling with a bunch of people who were strangers.
But it sort of felt like there's got nothing to
do with the fact that they were a big band
and I was known that managers weren't involved or any
of that. I was studying a room with a bunch
of strangers three thousand miles away, and we found myself

(08:35):
making music that felt really good that I couldn't identify
the one band. You know, It's like when you're a musician,
you can hear you can hear bands, and you can
hear their influences. You know, you can hear a certain
band and you go, you go, Okay, well, the singer's
doing Tom York or she's doing Shaka Khan, or the
bass players doing Flea or why you know whatever. You

(08:55):
can hear these influences and it's all good. But with
modest Mouse, I had no idea where they were coming
from and I got the invitation from Isaac and it
was enigmatic and kind of a funny kind of invitation,
and I said, okay, well we'll go. I'll go over
there as an experiment for ten days and it was

(09:16):
a whole of the story. But it went really gangbusters
straight out the gate when we started writing, and it
was inspired and I've got enough about me and know
when it's really happening. But to get back to the point,
I found myself just really loving what we were doing musically.
I've had no idea what to call this music or
any frame of reference. It just made me feel good

(09:38):
in the way that when you're fifteen you kind of
go I don't know what it is we're doing, but
it feels good. It really was like that. But my
family were getting off on my enthusiasm. You know. My
wife was like, well, Johnny's buzzing. He's calling me from
Portland and you know, he's digging the place, and I'm
hearing about all this music they're making. And I was

(09:59):
sending over. My son was a fan of the band,
and they heard my enthusiasm and they were kind of like, Okay,
this is what we're doing for now. Then so my
life sort of, I guess because the people that I'm
involved with and because it's my living. You know this,
when we get back to this idea work life boundaries,
I try to live, you know, as an older person

(10:19):
a little bit more humanely now and you know, not
be too crazy. I mean, you know, not be too
sleep deprived. But everything we do is led by the
music and what I'm doing really by by what Dad
is doing and he's doing. So I'm very, very fortunate
that I don't really the work life balance thing. Work
is my life.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
So since you brought it up so to hear you
explain it, you were just to do a limited maybe
a week and a little bit a week and a
half of work with Modest Mouse, and you liked it
so much you became a permanent couch guest in there
proverbial a matter of work all house and join the band.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
An easier way to answer that question is that it
was so intense. By the time we'd written nineteen tracks
and gone to Mississippi, made an album and we've become
like this tight gang, it just would have been too
weird to quit. There was a brotherhood, you know, you
go through this project so a ten days turned into

(11:24):
months because I knew it was happening. I was like, well,
this is a really interesting collection of people. The guys
in the band and the people around the band were
making a really good noise. We all like each other
straight off, and this brotherhood happened. And this is What's
happened in a few bands that I've been in that
there was exactly the same. And from the outside it

(11:48):
may look like I you know, I've I've joined the band,
I've quit a band. But I'm more of a serial
joiner than I am a serial quitter because those projects,
when you get involved with people in your an album,
you get so invested and you talk about it so much,
and you're on the phone talking about the tracks, and
you're getting together and you're caring about it so much.

(12:11):
By the time we finished recording The Modest Mouse album,
I was still a guy from England, but it just
would have been too weird to bail. I just wanted
to see it through and I cared about the songs.
I cared about the guys, I cared about about the record,
and I cared about how it was going to go.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
When I was in you guys started in Mississippi and
then you ended up in Portland or.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
No, we got started in Portland, and it was it
got off to such a good start from the very
first night with writing songs and jamming, which is something
I don't really do with a lot of people. I
always make it made a conscious decision when I was
maybe fifteen in nineteen seventy nine. Jamming for me was

(12:54):
standing in a really damp cellar with a bunch of
dudes who would smoke too much trash stuck on the
one chord and like for like twenty five minutes. That
helped my songwriting because I then sort of said, Okay,
note to self, when you come to practice tomorrow, bring
a couple of riffs, or bring some chord changes, or

(13:16):
bring a direction. And then that sort of fell on
me then too, and it helped me out as a songwriter.
Was I mean, I love writing songs, but it was
kind of a bit of a practical thing too. So
I can jam with people, but as I said, in
my career, haven't really been called on to do that
too much. But in modest Mouse, where it's collective, like
six people happened to be six guys in that band

(13:39):
with really different influences. Each member of the band would
thought they were doing and thought the band was something
different and so inspired.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
And that's a good thing because in my mind that's
like my worst nightmare because you mentioned that if the
bass player thinks that, Okay, I'm Larry Graham or Flee
and I don't speak guitar language, and I know that
your your texture and your tone is like probably like
the most respected in the game. So I you know,
that's kind of why I wanted Kirk to be on

(14:12):
this episode, because you know, I I didn't even know
it to your book that gretch made guitars, you know
what I mean?

Speaker 3 (14:21):
Quest of that is such a drummist thing to say.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
Are you saying Gretz was a guitar first before it
is a drum Pretty sure it was. I think it's
where I'm finding that out.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
That's really funny. Hey. Also, yeah, I hate to break
it to you, but Zilchin made banjos.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
I'm joking episode over, that's.

Speaker 4 (14:48):
Pretty cheap Yabahavi speed boats.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
I assume that if you're in the room that you're
kind of the the alpha only because you know the
band that you're you're most loved in your journey. Yeah,
sort of never used like you were anti Well I
don't know if you guys were anti synthesizer or whatever,
but a lot of the weight fell on you as

(15:17):
far as melodic and texture and tone. Do you often
feel as though you have to be the alpha in
terms of like determining where the melody goes or the
musical direction.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
Well, it's interesting to use that term. Well, as you'll know,
the chemistry of bands is both musical and personal, and
i'd almost say, particularly in high pressure situations or bands
a were big, maybe the personal chemistry is maybe even
as important as the musical chemistry. So my role in

(15:51):
all the bands have been in has usually been the
same and in a way I think, on the one hand,
alpha is an interesting way describing it, but my role
is to let the singers think that they're off about
really I'm running it.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
Real leaders are Jedi mind triggers, listen.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
I learned that from all the women in my life
very early on.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
Where they make you feel like you're the leader.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
And I saw it with all the older women in
my life, these great, absolutely great women, and the guys
knew it. By that, I mean I have a very
I really care a lot. I mean, I don't try
to train myself as a saint, but I bring a
lot of enthusiasm, enthusiasm to it and a lot of
energy to it, and you know, and I really do

(16:38):
give a shit. And obviously The Smiths is the most
notable because I formed that band, and you know, we've
gone on to be very well, well loved and everything,
which is obviously amazing. But I'm happy with my role
in all the bands that I have been in, which
is in a way, is that the great enabler if
I can be. And I have such respect for the

(16:59):
craft and the talent of the front men and women
that I've been involved because I learned so much from
being in the Pretenders with Chrissy Hind. It was a
short stint between eighty eight and ninety one, but I
learned so much about front in a band from Chrissy.
But the singers that I've worked with, you know, also

(17:20):
I grew up in the time in the mid seventies.
I was getting a lot of my ideas together about
what a guitarist was. And you learned so much from
there was an archetype, if you like. I mean, I
know in the States there's the archetype to say, Joe
Perry and Steven Tyler, or there's you know over here
there's like maybe Jimmy Page or and Robert plant in
the rock vibe. Right, It's the same the world over

(17:42):
with guitarists, you know, without getting too cliched, a lot
of musicians are a type. It suits. A lot of
the bass players I know are very similar. A lot
of the drummers I know have quite similar personalities. They
go crazy if they've got nothing to do. You know,
if you give a guitar player, like a you know,

(18:03):
a couple of days off with a movie camera, suddenly
he's making his arty movie, you know. So I was
very typical of that, and I just worked very well
with certain kind of singers, obviously Morrissey being one, Matt Johnson,
Isaac Brock. I mean, there must be something in it
because I've done it with so many of them, and

(18:25):
I learned so much about them. But I was so serious.
I took it. I took the business of my apprenticeship
trying to form a rock band or be in little bands.
When I was a kid fourteen fifteen, sixteen seventeen, I mean,
I left school, I left high school early to be
in a band with adults when I was fifteen. I

(18:45):
took it so seriously that a lot of the lessons
I was trying to learn when I was a teenager
proved to be correct. You know, a lot of stuff
that I said that I was learning before this, myths,
you know, I was studying, like, serve the song, the
sing is the most important thing. Lock in as a
rhythm player with the drummer, and make the bass player

(19:07):
fit in, don't sit on top. These are all things
that served me. I was right to study that stuff,
you know.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
I want to ask you about that. Can you recall
from me what your very first musical memory was?

Speaker 3 (19:19):
I can, yeah, it was. So. My parents were very
young when I was born, at seventeen. My mother was seventeen,
I think eighteen maybe, and they came over from Ireland
in the early sixties, and they are absolute music freaks,
record freaks. They were teenage record freaks from Ireland and

(19:40):
they loved rock and roll music. And my mother comes
from a family of fourteen and nearly all of them
moved over to the city for work, to Manchester. So
I was around a lot of very passionate, highly spirited,
hard living, you know, young music freaks. Well, certainly my

(20:02):
earliest musical memory is watching my mother and my dad's
sister play a forty five like fifteen times over and
over again, and luckily for me, I had guitar on it.
It was the Everly Brothers record. But watching these two
young women stand at a record player and just play

(20:24):
it with this joy and I was sat on the
floor with his joy and then play it again and
then again. And then I kind of grew up with that.
And my mother and father are still still around now.
If I go around to the house now, I have
to build in an extra forty minutes because I know
my mother's going to be showing me these songwriters on
YouTube that she's really into. So I grew up in

(20:46):
I grew up around that kind of musical obsession.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
Really, what did your record collection like?

Speaker 3 (20:53):
Oh? It was pretty good, you know. So. The thing
is the great thing about the household record collection was
that my friends, who were from more same middle class
English families, they had kind of books. I realized this
when I put out my You mentioned Myles guitars before,
I remember that I had got my friend's houses and

(21:13):
then they would have these the Great Big Book of
Mercedes and English country gardens and architecture. Well, in my
house we had records. So my parents were into They
were into a lot of country music. They're into like
people like George Jones, a lot of the Nashville thing.
But then there was the pop music, like bands like

(21:33):
the British bands like the Hollies, and they liked they
liked Elvis Presley and that was a real Irish thing,
you know, from the country, So there was a lot
of that kind of It was all American except for
some of the pop music that was coming out of Manchester.
So it was all about buying records, which was a
real working class thing, and then I got into buying

(21:55):
forty five's when in the UK what we call glam
rock is a little different from what the Americans are
called glam rock. That's kind of hair metal and the
la scene. But in the UK it was all the
early ce Rex yeah, exactly, t Rex Bowie, Sparks, not
the whop all of that.

Speaker 4 (22:12):
Why was Manchester such a hot bed? I just got
back from there two days ago and it's a very
funny and interesting city. But why was Manchester such a nexus?

Speaker 3 (22:21):
Well, the Industrial Revolution happened here in the eighteen nineties
and that made it a very industrial city. So you
had lots of industrial buildings and mills and factories. So
you can compare Manchester to two places or three places
in the United States, Seattle, because of the climber and
the size of it, and the fact that there's been

(22:42):
a couple of music movements out of there. But it's
very like Detroit. It feels like Detroit. It's very blue
collar or was, and a lot of people. So because
of the Industrial Revolution, loads of people of all different
ethnicities and nationalities came here for work. So there's a
massive immigrants scene. There's a huge Jewish community, there's a

(23:05):
Caribbean community, there's an Asian community, a lot of people
came from India, a ton of Irish people, which makes
it have that kind of Chicago Boston vibe as well.
So all of these people had their own entertainment. So
in the sixties, Manchester had more clubs per capita than
any other city in Europe. So there was comedians, there

(23:27):
was bands, there was the beat movement, and it was
a place that all the bands, you know in the
swinging sixties, well, you know, you had everyone You've got
Cream and Jimmy Hendrix and Brian Auger and whoever. And
before that the jazz scene and the blues scene. It
was the second place everybody came after London because there
was so many different It was so diverse and working class.

(23:51):
So you know, Sunny Terry and Brandon McGee came in
the early sixties and that was a game changer. And
the famous footage of sister Rosetta Tharps standing on the
train station that and in Manchester and then the Blue Yeah,
and then the Blues boom, and it goes way back

(24:11):
before Oasis even.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
For you. And I guess you can also ask this
or not ask this, Kirk, but answer this because in
my mind I was told that, you know, the lead
guitarist is sort of a singular string thing and rhythm
guitarist is more about the rhythm and chord wise. But
were you at your essence consider yourself in terms of

(24:38):
your guitar work, And also wanted to know, like in
early Smith shows before you added a second guitarist, like
how would you figure out the vision of labor inside
yourself because obviously, like a lot of your work, you
have to overdub chords on top of chords and parts
on top of parts.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
So okay, yeah, it's a good question. Well, I for
the lo longest time because I was I grew up
primarily in the seventies, so I was eighteen, I was nineteen.
I think when I formed the Smiths that was eighty two,
So you know, I think of myself as a seventies kid,
you know. So I learned to play guitar by playing

(25:17):
along with forty five's like the old way, and my
little brother who was nine years younger when he was
a toddler, his job was to put his finger on
the record to slow it down, which he loved that.
So I learned play from records, and of course I
had pals who were in bands, and I was in bands,
and then I went through that phase work we all did,
where we're all listening out for guitar solos and we're

(25:37):
listening to rock music and all of that. But why
I mention this too, because this is why, for the
longest time I thought myself as a pop guitar player,
because the pop music for me meant he's real, banging,
great breath died quite quirky, eccentric, forty five's. Of course

(26:00):
I love all kinds of music, but that was my
introduction to it. And I still the way those records
were put together and that the guitars were on those
records by the Suite and on Roxy Music, they're unexpected
and they're kind of hooky, and they're dazzling and they're
really exciting. So I always harnessed that, and in a sense,

(26:24):
quite often the studio I still do, especially when I'm
listening to playback and I'm wondering what I'm going to
do with overdubs, I think that's my job, hooks and
preferably something a little unexpected. So it's not about playing
amazing scales or solos or anything like that. It's making these,
like in my way forty fives. So then when I

(26:44):
came to start being able to put my own bands together,
say fifteen sixteen, and certainly write my own songs. So
this was the late seventies, a new wave was starting
to happen. I realized that quite a lot of other
guitar my friends, who some of them were great, great
guitar players, A few of them they would listen to.
Whoever it was, Jimmy Page or Bert janch or you

(27:06):
know whoever in my case now Rogers. But they were
listening to this and they'd want to play like that,
whereas I wanted to play like the whole record. I
would play the whole record, so the whole big picture.
So I kind of approached the guitar. I didn't go,
this is what a guitar does. I kind of went,
what does this record need, We'll do it on the guitar.

(27:28):
That's why there's all like high lifey.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Riffs, high life like afridin Feeler.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Yeah, yeah, like Armi Man's like a really you know,
like that was pointed out to me, but I wasn't
doing that because I was trying to. Later on, I
got really into King Sonny a Day and people like that,
But that was only because people told me I sounded
like that. But if you listen to all the overdubs
that were being done, the overdubs that were being done,
that was me sort of trying to go, oh, well,
that would be a string part, or that would be

(27:53):
a piano part, or that would be So that was
stuff that I learned off these glam rock records that
I try to do on the guitar. So I'm very
lucky that accidentally. You know, I can talk about this
now like fifty years later, because you know, I've had
plenty of time to think about it and you start
to know yourself better. But at the time I was

(28:13):
just that was the way I learned to play, trying
to play like a forty five, trying to do everything,
not just being in my lane. So I would hear
these melodies backing up the vocal or intros and stuff
like that, and I would just go, how do I
do that on the guitar because we didn't have a
keyboard player, so that was my approach. And then because
it worked, I guess now that I'm older, if I

(28:35):
do sessions with people, really that's what people want me
to do. You know, it's one thing being a describe it.
That doesn't make it say you can automatically do it.
But for quite a number of years in my thirties
and forties, I think maybe I was trying to kick
against that a little bit or do something different to that.

(28:56):
But then when I got old old, I went, you know,
what's kind of cool to have a thing that people
know you for. I'm all right with that now, and
if people you know, if I get invited to play
on someone's track, I think I know kind of what
they want me to bring really, and it's not like
they just want me to play, oh you know, make

(29:17):
it sound like what difference does it make? Or make
it sound like this German Man, but they do want
something that you notice, maybe.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
You're almost first out the gate on most of the
songs that you're on between your groups and your production like,
so I would imagine that even in concert, like the
second you hit a chord, it's almost like an immediate
explosion of you know what I mean. So, yeah, when
you're working with the artists and they're enlisting you, does

(29:45):
it ever get awkward in terms of them getting you
to be so derivative of a sound that.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
I think because everyone I've worked with almost by none
I've been a fan of. So there've been someone, let's
you know, someone who is really cool. Oh, I think
he's dead cool Beck or Billie Eilish or Matt Johnson.
I mean, I've done a lot of sessions, but generally,
you know, I mean there's been a few different times
when things have happeneding for different reasons, you know, I've

(30:15):
happened to be in the studio with someone or whatever,
and I don't really know them. But generally, when I've
been invited to play with people, I guess the answer.
You know what. Question of the answer is, I can't.
I think they're kind of too cool to say that.
But now I'm older, I kind of go. I want
to deliver what they what they want. I think the

(30:36):
main thing, though, is, like when I was talking earlier
about some of the lessons that I learned as a kid,
this thing of being appropriate to the song. I know,
with you guys as musicians you go well obviously, but actually,
in guitar culture in the in nineteen seventy six, thirteen
year old guys didn't give a shit about being appropriate

(30:57):
to the song. A thirteen year old year old guitar
players did not give too shits about the song. It
was like, how quick when do I get to be
loud and as fast as I can possibly be? So
when I came across that from reading a couple of musicians,
I was like, huh, okay. So when I do sessions now,

(31:20):
I think I'm trying to find the balance now of
being there and delivering something that is noticeable, because sometimes
in the past maybe twenty years ago I got too shy,
maybe my ego got too small even or maybe I
was insecure or paranoid, or in the last twenty years
or twenty years ago, maybe in my thirties or something.

(31:41):
I did plenty of stuff where I was just playing
too down. I was just being too look. So when
I did Inception, I'd worked a one movie before in
the late eighties, Dennis Hopper movie called Colors, which was
amazing with her behind. I didn't score it. I played
on it, Okay, Yeah, with Charlie Drayton.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Ya.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
Yeah, that was the first movie thing that I did,
which was amazing, and because I really loved the movie,
blah blah blah. But anyway, you've done that. But Inception
was the first real big movie that I was working on.
And get back to the point, I think Ann Zimmers
said to me, after a couple of days, you've been

(32:26):
too reverential to the score. We need it to be more.
You play a bit more out, be a little bit
more ego, if you like. And I was being a
little bit too careful. That's what I mean that. So
these days now I've tried to think the most recent Yeah,
so the most recent, I think record that came out
was what I did on Noel Gallagher's last album, which

(32:48):
is a great album. I love playing with no because
Nole is forward thinking and it kind of answers your
question really because he wants me to do my thing
and be recognizable, but also he knows I will also
want to do something. I don't want to just be
a throwback to forty years ago. But on his record,
I delivered something which really stands out. I'm not saying

(33:08):
it's amazing. I'm just saying it jumps out from the track.
It doesn't sound like another one of his band members.
So these days I'm kind of more comfortable in my
own skin, really.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
And I'm glad you brought that up because I get
this a lot whenever I'm playing with someone that I
feel really doesn't look under the hood to see what
it is that I'm known for, because I'm known for
underplane like I'm known for I'm not saying hiding in
plain sight, but you know, for what drummers are doing now,

(33:45):
which is basically look mino hands all over the place.
They'll usually say like now, man, have fun with it,
and I know part of them is missing factor, and
I'm trying to tell them like I'm not known for
I'm known for the pocket. So yeah, I mean obviously,

(34:08):
if Hans hires you, then he knows your work and
knows that your chord structures your tone. Yeah, that that
is what really makes you you, and that you've not
been you know, eruption level fireworks when you know, how
do you handle it or do you just rise to
the occasion?

Speaker 3 (34:30):
Yeah? I I you know, I rose to the occasion,
I think, and essentially I think, do you know what
I think? That says more about Hans than it does
about me. He's just a really, really nice guy. And
he kind of gave me that direction where he realized that, look,
you know, this is Johnny's first big movie, and he's
been too polite once he gave me that permission off

(34:52):
a when And then there was a couple of other
movies where like on this the Spider Man movie, we
were working on the music for that for a couple
of weeks and I mean a lot a bunch of
us all doing different stuff, and I just came up
with a riff that unlocked the whole thing. I didn't
know it, it was just it was a Wednesday, and
we were all trying to come up with stuff, and
I thought lots of music was being made, but that

(35:13):
was because of what he told me to do an inception,
which was be you and turn up, be you and
be loud. But still, if we come back to it's
interesting what you were saying about your approach, I'd call
that just being tasteful. And there does come a point
where you kind of go, hey, look, I can do
all of this Joe about your stuff while I'm on

(35:34):
the subject. So guitar culture is changing. It's always changing
and always evolving. I love guitar technology and I love
new guitar players, but TikTok and I don't know whether
it's the same for drums, but TikTok and Instagram is
really changing a big part of guitar culture. And you've

(35:55):
got these like amazing children sat in their bedrooms just
being crazy, absolutely amazing, and it's kind of mind blowing
without sounding like some old git about it. Though. I
do wonder if the trick is to sit in a
room with three other people playing and make it sound
like music. And because that is just such a solo activity,

(36:18):
playing as flash as you like, I like stuff that
sounds like a group. There's a place for that, and
I applaud it, but my I get I don't know
whether the values is too much of a pompous way
of saying it, but I have my I do have
my values, and a lot of my values were as
all of us, it kind of baked into you when
you're starting out. I got to play some in my

(36:39):
life now where I want to keep evolving and I'm working,
you know, thinking about my next record, and you crossed
your fingers that you're going to be inspired. And it's
always quite a big journey. And as I've said, you know,
my family get involved. It's a big deal. But I
don't repeat myself. But I kind of like the values
that I've got, you know. I like the way my

(37:02):
band sound. We have a very and I think that's
something that comes with age. It's not about success, it's
about doing it for a long time. You go. You know,
I don't I don't know. I want to evolve, but
I don't really know whether I want to. I don't
need to be TikTok, you know, I just don't. It'd
be nice to be on there and all that, but yeah,
well thank you but I think a lot of it

(37:24):
is to do with your own personal taste and maybe
you can call that values or it's just what you're
into you you know. But luckily for me with what
I do, I said before that I used to describe
myself as a pop musician in the smid stays and
electronic and I've played a lot with pet Shop Boys
and they like that. I'm a guitarist who likes pop music.

(37:45):
But I have to say, in the last sort of
ten years, in this genrefied world, that you can't escape genres.
I now even I can hear that pop definitely sounds
like something else. Now pop really does sound like a
certain thing. So I have to then if I have
to put a label on it, I'm going to go
the easy route and say what I do is I'm

(38:06):
a rock musician. Well I'm okay with I used to
be okay with being a pop musician because I liked
the eccentricity of all those records that I grew up
trying to play.

Speaker 5 (38:17):
Full Disclosure when You're the Guitar Player article came out,
I believe it was in nineteen eighty nine. The black
and white cover that was kind of a Bible for me, and.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
Uh, what was in it that spoke to you? Kirk
a lot of.

Speaker 5 (38:33):
The influences that I didn't know what he was talking about.
But then it was also coincided with the time that
I started to rummage through my parents' record collection. So
when I saw you mentioning things like Fat Back Band,
when I saw you mentioning things like Bahannan, when I,
you know, talking about Chic, I remember thinking at the time,

(38:56):
I'm seventeen years old at the time, thinking like that
don't sound like some and then I'm realizing certain things
like you know, jump out, you know. First time I
heard King Sonny a day like mentioned was in that
article and highlight realized like, what the hell's highlight guitar?

Speaker 1 (39:12):
You know?

Speaker 5 (39:13):
And then I started to hear all of that in
the Smith's music, like in This Charming Man and everything,
and just how it's all coming from trying to replicate
multiple instruments. But it seems like it's all from the
Smith's days, well, your collaborative days with all the different projects,
and then with your solo stuff. It seems like you've

(39:34):
just created like a nice bed of influences to draw from.
So to say, I'm a rock musician, I guess for
simplify things, but it's so all over the map.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
Yeah, thanks Kirk, Yeah, I think you're right. It does
feel a little reductive. I think maybe of it it's
because of what pop now is. I have to just
oh my and go pop now, as we know, it
is a different if you talk to a twenty two
year old person, it's it's not what I'm talking about.
But that article you talk you talked about it's interesting

(40:10):
because you know, I mean me and you we played together.
You got up and played with us in Brooklyn that time.
Is so cool and and but I know we know
each other. Like whatever was that now more than thirty
years ago to talk to another guitarist that I know
about that article, because I got so much shit for
that article in the United States?

Speaker 1 (40:30):
Really, oh man, why yeah?

Speaker 5 (40:32):
It was so great though, because you tell it was well, no,
it's so nice.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
So now thirty years later to hear that it landed
because well, for those very things that I was talking about, Like,
there are a lot of rock guitar plays, well, I
guess you call them shredders now, but back then there
was a whole load of people who a lot of
the guitar playing community in America at that time, may
possibly in Europe as well. I guess we're very conservative.

(40:59):
They didn't like what I was saying. No, total, I'm curious.

Speaker 5 (41:05):
There's an There was an in Vay Molmstein comment and
oh yeah, I think people like in Bay Molmstein should
be forgotten as soon as possible.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
That was a quote, Oh look, I just okay, total
disclaimer the well no, no disclaimer, that is a sound
that someone uh just being a little rude.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
What's incredible.

Speaker 5 (41:31):
No, but what's incredible is looking back exactly. But I'm
seventeen then, so I guess you're twenty Seven's what's amazing.
You're reading an article like this and like, this is
a grown man talking.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
That's in my mind.

Speaker 5 (41:45):
And then it's like, but it's a twenty seven year
old and now being the age that I'm at now, Yeah,
that was a kid in that article, and it was
an attitude that needed to be her at the time.
With the type of guitar playing that around was so
u big with us, it needed to be said.

Speaker 3 (42:02):
You know, yeah, I think I was, well what it was,
I was I knew it was going to be a
big story, and I think I was. I was, as
we say in Manchester, I was on one right. You know,
I was kind of on ad an attitude. I didn't
walk around with loads of attitude, but I had an
attitude in that moment because I was maybe a little
bit too bluntly talking about what I was opposed to,

(42:25):
and I was trying to make a point. Hey it worked.
I think people people got my point, and I think
I think I was called the anti hero. Then, you know,
it's an interesting thing. Look, hey, the guitarists are not.
It was amazing when this when the Smiths arrived in
the United States, we arrived eighty five tour and so

(42:47):
the tour was sold out. We'd been known and doing
pretty well. We were a big enough band in the
UK and getting kind of well known in the States,
so we weren't we haven't busted into the charts or anything,
but we were. You know, we're playing the Fox Theater
in Detroit, I remember, and we're playing the Arrogan in Chicago,
so we were playing at maybe two and a half
thousand and three thousand people, and then on the West

(43:08):
Coast some bigger crowds and stuff. So we arrived with
an audience. It's kind of interesting because our audience they
were kind of like get us, and there was all
these kids who were like they were giving us this thing. Wow,
you've liberated. I didn't know what a jock was until
that tour of nineteen eighty five, and then when I

(43:29):
was meeting fans and they were like, yeah, we hate
the jocks too, We're really anti jock. You guys really
pissed the jocks off. And I was like, what's it, jock.
But I'd say there was a movement of bands. It
wasn't just a Smith. I think Depeche Mode did that,
and The Cure did that, New Order Echo and the
Bunny Man. So we were part of this wave of

(43:50):
British boys mostly who and it was cool.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
You know.

Speaker 3 (43:55):
I look back on that now and I think, oh,
that was so sweet. You know. I liked playing too.
I like playing to those kids because I was a
kid myself. I was twenty one or something, so it
was all new to me. I couldn't obviously, I'm going
to say what all British musicians have been saying since
the fifties. I couldn't wait to get to America. Wow,
And then that we had these people who wanted to

(44:17):
look like us, and then kids wanting may who were
trying to play guitar like me, and stuff that blew
my mind. But I was very nervous being a guitar
player because I have a huge part of it. I
used to get so nervous before shows because I did
because of the guitar culture. I thought, these people America
is not going to get me. This is coming back
to I'm remembering the mindset when I did that article,

(44:38):
because they asked me to do that article you're talking
about beyond the cover of the first it was the
last one of the decade or the first one, and
I was like, I don't know whether guitar playing America
understands me.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
What was the makeup of the audience? Do you remember?

Speaker 3 (44:56):
Yeah? It was well in America, it was. It was
kind of more mixed than you would imagine.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
Okay, I'm so glad you said that, and still is
the sport, right, So I found out. You know, people
that listen to the show, of course know my worship
of the production work of Jay Dilla. And when I
first started working with Jay Diller, like around ninety seven,
I was really amazed at how like a big part

(45:25):
of my expansive musical vocabulary, you know, I mean it
was prevalent in the household because you know, I grew
up with a sister that listened to rock and alt
music and all that stuff, and you know, my dad
liked yat rock, and so I got everything out of
my two parents and my sister. I realized that in

(45:46):
Detroit there's a black radio station that had a show
by a DJ called the Electric Fine Mojo, and the
Electrifying Mojo was open format to the bone, like if
it had a texture that touched him, he would play it,
you know. And again, Funkadelic's from Detroit, so they would

(46:07):
sometimes do straight up rock shit, and you know, it
wasn't like now where it's just like it has to
be funk or rap or you know, he could play whatever.
And they were trying to explain to me. One day,
they were singing, Ah, I forget which album of yours

(46:27):
Dylan was trying to sample.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
Maybe it Meet his Murder. Maybe that was a big
album in America.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
I don't know if it was Charming Man or whatever
whatever it was. He had it and I was like, yo,
what do you know? About this shit, and he hit
me to the fact, and later I got tapes where
I would listen to, you know, someone would record four
hours of the Mojo Show, and for the life of me,

(46:53):
I couldn't get how some of the most gangster ass
motherfuckers from like Detroit when suddenly if you were put
on you Guys or depeche Mode or New Order, yeah,
like they would just go creat and start singing it
like off the top. And I was wondering, like, how
did mojo DJing in the Midwest, if you will, sort

(47:16):
of affect that. So I always wanted to know what
the concerts look like because it.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
Was really cool. So it's eighty five, and frankly, I
was surprised. It was great. But then there was so
much about America that I was learning about. It was
so good. And I mean, you know, us being musicians
from from England, we were just like, we're gonna go
to a motown. We're gonna go to a motown, you know.

(47:41):
But and then the Fox was it was a oh yeah,
and you know all those places were but he's a
mixed crowd and and that stayed right the way to
this day, to this day. Being sampled it's amazing. And yeah,
and the audience, I mean my own audience as well,
it's it's pretty it's pretty cool. But you know this,

(48:05):
we come from a city that it's a whole different
sub I guess, well, maybe it's related. But in eighty
one eighty two Manchester had this really strong relationship with
New York and the electro scene. And really we have
to thank Factory Records and therefore New Order for that

(48:26):
whole thing, certain ratio, and these were all my pals
and I hadn't had a record deal yet and I
was born in the Smiths but everybody, everybody knew everybody else.
And you know, the first ever Smiths show in America
was at Dancetyria.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
WHOA what was like it?

Speaker 3 (48:47):
Well, we were jet lagged in like you know, no manager,
and you know it was it was New Year's Eve,
got from eighty three going in eighty four, and it
was we couldn't believe it. We were in Dwan to Teteryia.
So because we were from Manchester. So on the face
of it, people from the outside world they're like, well
the Smiths are this chirpy, quirky in very very very English.

(49:11):
But because of the Manchester experience. We you know, Downceteria.
We were buzzing that we were at Downceeteria, and the
myth goes, people say, this is true, but I should
know this, but that madonnacause she worked there, that she
opened for like a twenty minute set. I know, it's
spending a couple of books and it may actually be right,
but that was that was crazy that that that happened. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, So the very first time I heard of you
guys was courtesy of Factory Records, but not in the
way that you think. So, I know Factory Records because
around like eighty nine to ninety kind of when a
second wave of hip hop is starting, some independent record

(49:57):
labels got wise to the fact that you know, of
the old records that were sampling and whatnot to come
up with compilations, and so of course they were just
instead of you having a rummage through shit at the
Salvation Army, you know, and find doubles, you could just
buy a compilation and have it all on there. But
then Factory Records would take it even further and not

(50:20):
even just put the song on there. They would just
put the brake on there. So they would they would
just look like sixteen bars of a reticular break do
that for five minutes. And that's how like at least
three or four of your songs were on those like
I think his name is Simon Harris, but it was

(50:41):
on Factory Records. Yeah, and I always wanted to know, like,
were you guys that all ever connected with or even
a where.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
Well I did hear about that at the time, and
we just thought, I still to this stage, I thought, wow,
that's really cool. Again. That's that's another example of music.
Does that, doesn't it because in some ways culturally you go, well,
you know, our countries are so different, but that's Manchester
is so like Chicago in that in that instant, you know,

(51:11):
like S nine hundred was it was it S nine
hunderd the thing and the NPCs and stuff. I mean
everybody the first nine yeah, yeah, you know, everybody was.
Everybody was making music with those with those things. I
mean it was the center of Manchester as in eighty
well eighty seven, but definitely eighty eight was the center

(51:31):
of house music in Europe. It wasn't Berlin, and it
wasn't and it wasn't London. Everyone knows it was Manchester,
So it is brilliant that you have those kind of
you have those connections that music can do that you know,
it's amazing. Yeah, yeah, you mean like your dad liking
yacht rock. You know, everything's fair game. But I think
a lot about that to do just plainlist, to do

(51:53):
with our age and where we are in If your
musician a certain age now, it tastes should be eclectic
because we grew up with like fifty years of all
kinds of people doing really interesting things. And if you're
just someone who likes music, you're like a hook in
this song, you like a groove in that song, you
like the way that person sings. It's all fair game

(52:16):
and the way the technology has served us all. I
think it's a really beautiful thing. You know, it's an
Zim has got this great story about meet and for
l writing on Spider Man. He always says, I mean
he was watching the guy who wrote Happy writing a
song with the guy who wrote Heaven Knows how miserable.
Now that's a good story, right, Nice, it's a good story.

(52:41):
But but it's that kind of proves my point. Really,
like everything's a mix up now in pop, which is
kind of amazing. You take something like Billie Eilish with
Billy a few years ago on that Bond film and
her and finished a great examples of modern musicians. You know,
So I feel how great I look at I've got

(53:02):
the best guitar gig of all time, playing with all
these different kinds of the people from different genres of music.
It's just great.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
Okay. So you're in a room right now with Lord
knows how many actses are behind you.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
Yeah, but few.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
But you can only play one at a time. Maybe
you could play two first of all, And I'll ask.
And I always scream on Kirk about this as well.
I feel as though any legendary guitarist that at least
has clocked in double digits in years into a notable career,
I feel as though you should keep. And this is

(53:41):
where Kirk disagrees with me. I feel as though you
should keep your first ten years of guitar for history sake.
But yet, you know, Kirk, I don't know if you
know the story, but how old were you when Vernon
Reed gave you his guitar.

Speaker 5 (53:56):
That's for my twenty fourth birthday?

Speaker 1 (53:59):
Wait a minute, I thought it was like me and
Joe green Coke commercial, like you were like eight, and
he's like, here.

Speaker 5 (54:04):
Kid, I mean I was a young twenty four, you're
kind of I was green.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
At thirty bro.

Speaker 3 (54:12):
Guitar, right, but.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
I gave that guitar to someone else.

Speaker 5 (54:17):
I think Johnny understands this.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (54:21):
In one sense, it's spreading good energy. And in the
other sense, it's like when you know there's such a
thing as having enough to share and recognize him when
you have enough to share. And I think Vernon felt
that way. I got to a part where like, I
have enough to share, I want to pass on good mojo,
to keep using the term, and and I think Johnny

(54:44):
can take the rest.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
Well, Cris, Look, guitar players are just nicer than drummers, man,
But a guitar.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Am I to believe? I heard that. I don't know
if this is a guitar that is on wonder Wall whatever,
that's your guitar that yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
Yeah, it is? Yeah, I mean wonder Wall is that
that's a third one. But by that I think I
sold him that. By then I was sick of giving
him guitars. I think it's that's that's the way he
got it.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
How do you start your friendship with no.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
My brother's I said earlier. He is nine years younger
than me. He's a really low key very He's a quiet,
cool guy, really cool. And one day he said to me,
he would have been about nineteen. There was one were
I was in electronic he said, there's a mate of mind.
He's got a band together and he's cool. He's a
pretty cool guy. Now, my brother at seventeen eighteen, he

(55:36):
was always getting guys usually say to him, will you
give this? Give this D to your to your Johnny,
give this that. Because my brother was out in town.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
A lot, give this, use your A and R C
D ref and he would just.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
Be I never even got to hear about it. So,
because he's so low key, the fact that he said
this guy is pretty cool, I should have listened harder. Really,
But what happened was when I made a record with
the Other called Dusk, which I still is one of
my favorite things I've ever done. And Noel, who my
brother had seen around town. Noel was coming out of

(56:12):
a record store with Dusk, and my brother Ian said, Hey,
what you got there, and and Noel said, I it's
this new Other album. And my brother, who Noel had
known for a while, said, oh, yeah, my brother's on
that record. And Noel was like, what what do you
mean your brother's on this record? What do you mean?
He said, he's playing guitar on it. So and then
no was like, hang on a minute, what's your what's

(56:34):
your last name? And he said, oh, mom, Ian Mars.
So anyway, that's how that's how that came about. And
that's kind of a long story. I won't go we're
going to be here all night. But my brother gave
me the tape of an early Oasis demo and then
the next thing, I saw Noel in the in the
rain in Manchester one day and I gave him a

(56:54):
ride in the car and we went and talked and
I just really liked him. And the thing is I
went to see his band. The story really short. I
went to see his band a few days later, and
I swear there was eleven people there max and the
show was just for my benefit. They were on it
like seven this is no this is in Manchester. It's

(57:16):
way before that, okay anyway, he so I went and
watched him. He did like five five songs. But then
when he called me the next day asked me what
I thought I'd made a point of saying, well, look
in between numbers, you take a long time tuning up.
His guitar was so shitty he kept going out of chin.
I only said that because he asked me, do you
have any advice? And I said, well, you know, you

(57:38):
really could do with a backup guitar, And quite rightly,
he said to me, well, that's okay for you to say,
mister indie rock star. I'm on the doll I'm on
the benefits. So I was like, oh shit, okay, yeah,
good point. And I thought he needed a guitar, and
I can't give him a crappy one. So I gave
him a guitar that I did a lot of smith

(58:01):
stuff on. That was I did panic on and a
whole bunch of stuff, and it blew his mind.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
You gave him my last bar.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
Yeah, I gave him that that I got from the
who Oh.

Speaker 4 (58:14):
God Flex small Flag.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
That's a good one. I don't regret it for a second.
But the thing is, though at the time, no one
knew he was going to go on to be who
he is. You know, he was just a kid. He
also came from We've got a lot in common. He
comes from our Irish family. It was just an easy
it was really easy thing for me to do, and
I wanted I wanted to help him out, and and

(58:40):
then off they went, and their rise was really quick,
and so they then got in my office. I introduced
him to my manager and all of that was great.
He and my manager just really hit it off, and
they've been really tight. They've been together for thirty odd
years throughout the whole journey, and me and Noel are
closer than ever early thirty years later. But and you know,

(59:03):
he's done plenty of good stuff for other people too
that is less well known. I guess. So's it all
kind of comes you know, what goes around comes around,
you know, johny, I got a question.

Speaker 4 (59:12):
Have you ever been asked to play on an African record?
Or is that something interesting? Giving the sunny hour day
references and all that stuff in the way you play.

Speaker 3 (59:20):
I played live with I'm doing Marry Him, and that
was really interesting. That was someone who had did jam with.
They invited me to come and play with him. I thought,
oh man, this is going to be amazing. So the
answer is no, not in the way, not in the
way you mention it. No, I haven't. I got very
because when after this Charming Man came out a lot
of people were writing that the guitars were very high life,

(59:43):
and as Kurk mentioned, I had no I didn't know
what high life was now in the UK, in the
sort of underground station everyone knows, you guys don't know
about John Peel. He was such a seminal guy.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
That's the guy that breaks you.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
Yeah, he was. He used to play low loads of
underground music on and outlying music, but on on BBC.
So he was a brave guy. And he broke a
lot of bands. And I think you two started out
on his show, and and and the Smiths, and there's
a lot a lot of bands that I've got, you know,
John Peel to thank now. He used to play. That

(01:00:20):
was when I first started hearing high life after that,
so it started to become it was a thing, but
I didn't know about it in the in the UK,
in the underground. But I just played the way I played,
As I said, I was just looking for melodies and
I had a kind of unusual way of playing. I think,
playing that real clean sound m h. And I mean,
if you want to know about that as well, that

(01:00:41):
was it's funny how these things come about. But I
was almost forced into a clean sound, which really suited me.
It was great because of the way fashions music fashions go,
so because of punk rock and the sex pistols playing
this very overdriven, let's say, like a Ramones kind of
sound in the In the US it was short, sharp,

(01:01:02):
very distorted like that, because that had happened after punk
everyone was looking for their own thing. You might, you
guys might find this interesting in Manchester because we're young.
You know, quite often young people define themselves by what
they're not, so if you're kind of hip in Manchester

(01:01:23):
or but probably anywhere in the UK and maybe the States,
not too much the States, but seventy nine eighty eighty one.
For guitar players, there was a whole lot of thou
shalt not so it was thou shalt not play pentatonic
blues licks, thou shalt not sound like Freebird, thou shalt

(01:01:47):
not sound like and it gave us. So there was
a lot of As a guitar player, you know, you
want to be modern and you want to be contemporary
and cutting edge. So in my case, for me, my
took this stuff very seriously like distortion was out, a
lot of effects were out, except for Charlie Burchill from
Simple Minds. He did it well. A guy from Killing

(01:02:10):
Joke did it well. But there was a whole bunch
of guitar players and in my case, what all I
was left with was clean, no effects, and I was
the one guy playing melody in the band, and the
Factory Records guys all went towards funk, so a certain ratio.
You hear it in New Orders Records. So obviously now
Rogers was real Big Nile's thing, because if you've got

(01:02:31):
no distortion and no sustain when you play guitar coord
it disappears real quick unless you're going the game thing,
unless you're playing a lot of funk. Now, I mean
this was very deliberate on my part. There was a
few bands who were doing that very well, who were
on the John Peel Show, and I was able to
do something else. I was able to play very melodic,

(01:02:54):
and I was able to play our pegios, and I
wanted my own thing. So bands like you hear it
in Orange Juice and some of the What Postcard Records
where they've got this anemic, very low fi approach with
James Brown Beats because it had to be non rock,
that's the thing, non rock, non rock, so funk was

(01:03:16):
kind of a thing, but still it had to be
lo fi. I think in the US the closest to
it would have been ESG, you know. So it's this
minimalist lo fi almost amateurish cool thing, and so the
guitar version of that. And no one was doing what

(01:03:37):
I was doing, So my point being that I was
left with a few sort of very only a few
things left that I could do. And I think that's
a really good thing for art. I think if you've
got just a few options, particularly in this day and age,
when you can sit in front of a laptop and
you can just pull down loops orchestras, choirs, anything you want,

(01:04:00):
any kind of plugins. But then may as a guitar
player I was, I was left with just a very
very narrow set of options. So it made me play
in a very hyperactive way. And that's where this high
life ye kind of king Sonia day thin comes from.
Because I didn't have a whole load of echo hanging

(01:04:20):
around or a load of distortion, and I was very melodic,
so I was kind of just really getting busy.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
Was it ever a temptation to go there? And I
understand what you're saying, because you know, we started off busking,
so I always played like a two piece set, a
three piece set, and then of course the second we
got our record deal, I fucked around and got a
Neil Pert set, which my manager was like, nah, dude, like, no, right,

(01:04:49):
go back to your kick, your snare, your high and mess.

Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
It like that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Yeah, And I learned my lessons. But were you ever
tempted to like go out and five pedal effect wars in?

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
Oh yeah, Oh no, I do that, but I try
and do it to make to make it sound like
my records, like I'm really into the technology. In the eighties,
no one was more diametrically opposed to my approach than
Eddie van Halen. There's no doubt about it. If you
go what's the most extreme opposite to what I was doing,

(01:05:23):
I guess is Eddie van Halen. And I saw Edie
van Halen, and I watched this guy smile for two
hours while he was playing and look like it was
the greatest thing in the world. And I was like,
he's all right, And then I met him. What a
beautiful guy was absolutely beautiful guy, but no one needs

(01:05:47):
me to be in that area. And it was just
it's kind of a funny thing, and you know, I
had forgotten that. I almost wish that i'd remembered that
when when I wrote my book. But I think knowing
what you were about well but still hoping to surprise
yourself is where I'm at. But I love technology. I'm
my pedals crazy and but I've got it down now,

(01:06:10):
and I think it's a whole other thing. But I
think the technology is finally now. Maybe it was a
number of years ago, but finally actually caught up with
the musicians. If I'm not careful, I can spend too
much of my time pressing buttons. I love programming pedals.
I love it because it's I say it's programming, I
say it is producing with my feet. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:06:31):
I'm so happy you included your pedal board in uh
Mars guitars.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
But I did notice.

Speaker 5 (01:06:39):
Maybe I missed it, but I was looking for what
you were using, and maybe you just omitted it because
it's just simply unsex No, just it's just the rack
units that you were using in the late eighties, like
you had you were using a rack amunted boogie. You
had like a mess a boogie, power ramp, messu preamps

(01:07:00):
and rack effects and yeah, but you didn't include that
in the book. And it was it just do you
not have them anymore? Or just it's just there. They
don't look as beautiful as a fender.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
It was just an asthetic decision. I thought that if
I'd done that, it would have tipped the book slightly
too much into the realm of this book. Is is
four musicians? Because right, the balance with that book was
I wanted it to be Yes, four musicians, but I
thought it would be a neat trick to pull off
if people who weren't musicians had it next to zen

(01:07:33):
gardens in their house. I want for that book, if
I'm being honest, to be a little bit like the
Trojan Horse. That's the book I'm trying to That's my
way of getting guitars into people's houses who would not
normally have a guitar book.

Speaker 5 (01:07:48):
Yes, and and Ra units are only sexy to guitar
players of a certain vintage and to really no one
else at all. Correct while I'm in here, I just
I wanted to ask we got the pleasure of playing
with Nil Rogers at the Roots Picnic in New York

(01:08:12):
a few years back, and he mentioned your son, Nile
that plays Ye mentioned you know how great he was
at guitar, you know, hearing your story about your you
with your parents and just the effect of seeing you know,
your playing the record over and over and just music

(01:08:32):
made in spaces. I'm getting the feeling that there wasn't
much of a feeling of what's that noise that Johnny's
listening to? Like your parents were listening to the noise
of the day, it seems as well. And wondering what
the dynamic was with Nile growing up. Was he ever
into music that you were saying, oh that's shite or

(01:08:54):
was it a similar dynamic that you had with your
parents or.

Speaker 3 (01:08:58):
That's an interesting question. Yeah. The thing is, well, now
has made a few albums. Now he's made he made
an album with his band, Man Made, which I mean,
I mean, you know, I get it. I think he's
really I think he's really good. He's made a few
solo records and now he's got a new band called
Share And but because he put these records out, he

(01:09:21):
was he'd done interviews and he knows he's going to
be asked about me some less polite or call or
consider it rather interviewers are gonna ask him about me
right out the gate. And he's a smart guy, but
he's you know, he's okay, he can handle it. There
was one time I was doing something and a podcast

(01:09:43):
came on and he was on it, and I was
hearing him being interviewed, and I was like, oh, I
don't know whether I want to hear him talking about
his childhood. What am I going to hear? And he's
a funny guy, So it was weird. It was it
felt a little like eaves dropping. It was I shouldn't really,
I don't go out of my way to avoid it,
but I was a little like, I don't I want

(01:10:03):
to listen to the being in if you don't want
him to do his thing. But in the interview they
asked him about growing up in the house. Now. The
thing is, he said, well, straight away, the people that
because our house was a recording studio. It wasn't like
we had a studio in the house. The house was
a studio that we lived in really, so there was

(01:10:24):
ants in the rooms and they were miked up for
certain rooms sounded good because I had a big studio
in the outbuilding outside, so there's a lot of musicians around.
So he grew up with his sister in that environment.
And his answer was that the thing that growing up
in his house with me as his father, that the
first thing he saw was that my famous friends, whether

(01:10:45):
in Radiohead or New Order or whatever, that he saw
a serious work ethic, not just from me and his mother,
but everyone. He saw that successful people really work hard,
which was nice, but then said it was unusual being
in a house where where when he was playing a
record he had to explain exactly why he was listening

(01:11:08):
to it. And and I said to his sister, I went,
he's got easy exaggerate. Is that right? Is that a thing?
She was like, oh yeah, it was like so I
was like, well, really, I used to go in there
and he'd be like listening to Pink or Ave Levine.
I've got what's she listened? Tell me why? I know
you're six. I know he's six, but tell me exactly

(01:11:30):
why he's turned me onto a lot of music and
vice versa. And yeah, So it was a similar dynamic
to my household. It was this thing of I guess
it's just like all of us. Really, it's learned behavior.
I think of, Okay, you've got to be musical anyway,

(01:11:51):
because his sister isn't in a band. She can sing
like great, but she chosen not to be in bands.
And he is a talented musician. But it's that thing
of loving music, and I guess he saw how it
can be your living, how you can take it seriously,
how you can take it almost too seriously. I guess

(01:12:12):
I say this quite a lot with the Irish thing
as well. But in my house, seriously, when I was
going to music was really was like a religion in
my house. And I get and it's it's kind of
like that in Uh, it's probably been like that for
my kids. But they turned out okay, so it's all right.
But so you know, it's an interesting thing. Well, he's

(01:12:33):
named after nol Rogers and he's happy about that. Yeah,
and know Nile's happy about it. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:12:39):
I'm of course a big Smith's fan, and a lot
of the things you worked on, but particularly the Billy
Bragg stuff. I'm a big, big fan of that record
in particular. It's just one record that you worked on
with him. The Taxman record or was it more than that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:54):
No, No, I did one called Don't Try This at
Home as well. In fact, recently, it's got a psychedelic
track on that. Check out Cindy of a Thousand Lives.
You will not believe it's Billy Bragg. It's this real
psychedelic shu gaizy. Yes, a good one.

Speaker 6 (01:13:10):
Yeah, and sexuality. You co wrote the single on that
one as well, right, Yeah, I did.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
Yeah, I produced that and wrote it with him. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:13:17):
I guess my question is because I do like to
turn the question of supreme audience onto artists and may
not beoper familiar with Billy Bragg being one of them.

Speaker 2 (01:13:26):
So what was what was that experience?

Speaker 3 (01:13:28):
Like?

Speaker 6 (01:13:29):
Was there some story where you guys were toring together
prior to working together?

Speaker 3 (01:13:33):
Yeah, well the thing with us and Billy and me
and Billy still so Billy was a real contemporary as in.
I say that because so many years later now, not
everybody's still around for whatever reason. Some dropped out, some
just out with us anymore, et cetera. And Billy's still
out doing his thing, which is so good, and he's

(01:13:54):
doing it doing it well, so I'm really pleased for him.
He came out and for the Smiths.

Speaker 7 (01:14:01):
On our US tour, that tour I was talking about
earlier in eighty five, and he was such a great
opener because it was just him and his guitar, and
he would he was so fearless, he would.

Speaker 3 (01:14:13):
Back then it was all about, you know, politically, it
was all about Reaganomics, and over here we had our
version of it, and he he would engage the audience
with with stuff that was kind of was political but
also funny and thought provoking. So quite often when you

(01:14:35):
go on stage, you know, after some people, you know
that the opening act, it's a hard gig for some
opening acts because the audience aren't really listening. But he
really engaged the audience as an opening act. But he
had but no one had heard based on Drumson and
we went on. We sounded really huge. But what was
great was he got the audience kind of antsy in

(01:14:55):
a way. He was funny and he was thought provoking,
and they'd never seen anyone like him, So Billy's whole thing.
Back then, he used to say, when he sings a song,
he wants to sound like all of the clash, which
was kind of what he did. He used to really
go for it, so when you would come on, we

(01:15:16):
definitely felt like he'd built a vibe. So we got
to be pals, and I played on the Talking with
the Taxman about Poetry album, did a couple of songs
with him on that, and then we just stayed to
be friends and we wrote Sexuality together, and then I
became like he's kind of producer during that period, and
he came to my studio and did a few songs

(01:15:37):
there for the album called Don't Try This at Home.
He's someone who'll feels as stayed as a kindred spirit
really politically, ideologically, I think, And it's nice when the
good guys stay as the good guys, you know, it's
really good, very heartening to see.

Speaker 2 (01:15:57):
Yeah, he's a great artist.

Speaker 6 (01:15:58):
Also somebody that I don't believe you've ever worked with them,
and I could be wrong, but I'm going down this
Nicolo rabbit hole because I'm about to interview Nikolo for
this podcast for the same for QLs, and I heard
one in some interview that you're a fan of his,
and I was just wondering where you caught onto that scene.

Speaker 3 (01:16:19):
Well, all musicians, certainly of a certain age, all regard
Nick low as a great man and a great musician.
And when I said earlier, when I was talking to
the quest of about I left school at fifteen to
be in a band with adults. That was to go
to Nick Love's house and make demos for Elvis Costello's manager.

(01:16:44):
That was the first recording studio I was ever in,
and I was I think maybe he was even fourteen.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
So this is Jake Rivieira.

Speaker 3 (01:16:52):
Yeah, j Riviera called me one day when I came
home from school. I was still in my school uniform
and I thought it was I thought it was one
of my piles playing a prank. And one of my
other piles had sent in a tape of my band
to Jake Riviera.

Speaker 2 (01:17:11):
And he liked it and for Stiff Records.

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):
Yeah, Okay, nothing came of it. But it was a
big experience for me because I've never been in a
recording studio and I was in Nick Lowe's house and
Nick low while we were there, Nick Lowe came back
from an American tour while and I didn't meet him,
but I saw him. I saw his cowboy boots wobbling

(01:17:36):
up the stairs up to his bedroom. Honestly, very very
unsteadily and then heard a crash and then no one
saw him for a few days. But I then worked
with him because of this story. When I was in
The Pretenders, Christy who was a very generous person because
behind her first single was produced by Nick Low, the

(01:17:59):
first Protect single, and because you knew I was a
fan of Nick Low, when we went in the studio
to do the only recording that I did with The Pretenders,
we got Nick Low to produce it. So I eventually
got to work with Nick Low on a couple of songs.

Speaker 6 (01:18:14):
Great man, Oh cool, So let's stop your sobbing You're
on that? Or that's the one.

Speaker 3 (01:18:20):
That's the one Nick Low produced that came out when
I was a kid. But we did one for this
movie Night in sixty nine where we did the Stooges song,
We did Windows of the World but bacrack song, and
we did nighteteen sixty nine bad Stooges, and we did
it in one take, and Nick was like, hey, listen,
I know my reputation is that I just say one take,

(01:18:40):
but really the first take was the take, and we
did it about four times and then it was right
one take.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
But yeah, it was cool. Awesome. Thanks for sharing that.

Speaker 5 (01:18:49):
This for me is like a dream. I could just
sit here like all day. There's many more questions I have,
but I feel really lucky that I could save this
for when we meet again, Johnny. But absolutely, yeah, always
a pleasure to be continued.

Speaker 3 (01:19:07):
Oh absolutely, What is.

Speaker 5 (01:19:08):
That amp next to those books up there? There's like
it looks like a little like a plexi.

Speaker 3 (01:19:14):
Yeah, it's a it's one of those little Freedman plexis.
It's it's well, it's called a it's just called a plexi.
It's a mini plexi.

Speaker 1 (01:19:21):
You have a Freedman.

Speaker 3 (01:19:23):
Yeah, I've got a couple of Freedman's.

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):
Yeah, I didn't know.

Speaker 3 (01:19:25):
Okay, yeah, I don't know whether that's made, but I
think that's made by Freedman. But it's called a plexi.
What I did that? You know that thing where a
few years ago one of my friends said to me, listen,
and you've got to get this. You're not going to
believe it. It's like actually fifteen fifteen what Yeah, it's
so so good man.

Speaker 5 (01:19:43):
Yeah, Like you say, the technology, the way that you
can dial things up so easily, whether it's getting things
that sound grade in a small you know, less wattage,
so you get more tone at lower volumes. It's really
to our advance these days. It's in a way that
it wasn't prior.

Speaker 3 (01:20:02):
Oh do you know about this? I know we can
go on forever this, but do you know about these synergies,
these little this company synergy they make They just so
this is like this is this is it the kemper
or no, above the above the kemper? You have this
one you thing and then these modules pull out and

(01:20:23):
there's a Bogner now Freedman aerplexi offender and they're doing
it all in conjunction with the they're doing it with
the companies. So it start like they're ripping the companies
offer anything right right?

Speaker 5 (01:20:37):
Oh man?

Speaker 3 (01:20:38):
And they sounded so good for at home. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:40):
Wow, Hey, John, I just want to say that you
know this, this has been six years in the making,
and first of all, when when we played with you,
we couldn't believe it, but you were just it was
a dream to play with you. And finally like we
get to have this conversation six years down the line, Kurr,
thank you for making sure that we kept this appointment

(01:21:03):
and that we saw this through and uh, we just
want to thank you for being on on on this
platform and and and and talking to us, just talking shot.

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):
It's fantastic. Thank you for inviting me. It's so good
to see you guys again. It's been too long and
I hope it's not as long again. And you know,
every every time I see you, so it's it's it's
always a joice great like I recognize a musicians, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
Thank you, Thank you well on behalf of Captain Kirk Douglas,
our special guest and uh S Steve and unpaid Bill.
I'm the entire Q and Lust family. This is a
Quest Love and we'll see on the next program. Thank
you for listening to Quest Love Supreme. Posted by a
Mere Quest Love Thompson, Are you Saying Clear? Fante Sugar,

(01:21:54):
Steve Mandel, Unpaid Bill Sherman. Executive producers are Amir quest Love, Thompson,
Seean Che and Brian Calvin. Produced by Britney, Benjamin Cousin,
Jake Paine, Elaiah Saint Clair, edited by Alex Convoy. Produced

(01:22:16):
by iHeart by Noel Brown. Quest Love Supreme is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen

(01:22:37):
to your favorite shows.