THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.51 - JOHNNY MARR

Episode Date: October 5, 2017

Adam talks to guitar genius and co-founder of The Smiths, Johnny Marr about music and life in and out of one of the most influential bands of all time! Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for production support and Matt Lamont for additional editing. Music & jingles by Adam Buxton Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Rosie, Rosie, come here. Run towards me excitedly and greet me like a long lost friend who absolutely loves me.

She's thinking about it. Oh, here she comes. Hello, I love you, I haven't seen you for ages. It's been over three minutes. I've been running around. No, come right here. Rose, come here. Okay.

Hello. How are you? Yeah, not too bad. What do you want? Nothing, just to give you a little hug. Say hi. Yeah, I'm actually busy. Because there's like creatures over in the field over there.

I'm going to run after them. And they're going to get away from me so if I could get back to that that would be great all right see you later I love you yeah yeah okay that was it Rose sorry I'm just doing an intro she's looking at me like well actually what do you want nothing is the answer sorry hey how you doing podcats let's get into the podcast shall we more inconsequential rambling for the hardcore at the end of the podcast but right now let me tell you that podcast number 51 features a conversation with one of the best and most influential guitar players of modern times. Johnny Marr.

I left a good pause there. Because that was, yes, in some ways, a bit of hyperbole, but on the other hand, it's actually true. And it's quite exciting to be introducing someone for whom legendary status is actually appropriate. Johnny Marr. Our conversation was recorded in Johnny's studio space outside Manchester in November of last year, 2016. Sorry it's taken so long to get this one out. I mean, I could go into a long, boring story about why that is, but there's no real reason other than,

you know, it just took me a while to get round to editing the conversation and now seemed the right time. But boy, that was a long time ago, wasn't it? This time last year, more or less, 2016, when the idea that Donald Trump might become president was still just a fun joke. Just a fun joke. Anyway, the spur for my meeting with Johnny, who I had met a few times before then and got to know a little bit and like very much, was the fact that Johnny was about to have his book published, Set the Boy Free, a memoir which came out earlier this year and it's a very enjoyably frank account of Johnny's five years in the Smiths between 1982 and 1987. Just five years, it's so weird isn't it? Anyway the book also details the many musical adventures Johnny has undertaken since then with collaborators as diverse as

Talking Heads, Paul McCartney, Bernard Sumner, Chrissie Hynde, Matt Johnson of The The. I mean, I thought that it was a terrific read, but I'm a sucker for music biographies. I also read, or rather listened to, TBH, Morrissey's autobiography, which came out in 2013 and was called Autobiography. And the audiobook is read by the actor David Morrissey, which is entertaining. But it is very good in places, sort of brilliant. I mean, he is a strange, maddening character in a lot of ways, Morrissey, isn't he?

But he certainly can turn a phrase when it suits him however the whole thing more or less grinds to a halt when it starts detailing the courtroom dispute over royalties brought by Smith's members Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce Andy Rourke settled fairly quickly Mike Joyce carried on fighting for what he considered to be his rightful quarter share of royalties. And that was the trial during which the judge famously branded Morrissey devious, truculent and unreliable. Now, I enjoy hearing about disputes. I love a good dispute. But this was like being cornered by a drunk guy at a party who just can't stop telling you about his divorce and what an absolute ungrateful cow his wife is. I mention that only because we talk

a little bit about all that stuff, me and Johnny, and Johnny Marr indeed talks about the court case in his book too but as you might expect the tone is quite different and it's a lot more concise but mainly we talked about music some of the music that Johnny has been inspired by over the years and indeed some of the music that he has helped to create and he gives us one or two fantastic insights into how some of those songs came to be throughout the podcast. Here we go! So So let's start by talking about the book. Yeah. Set the Boy Free. You've written a book.

I know. About your whole life thus far. Yes. Personal life and music. Yeah, because without stating the obvious, my life is my music. But not my life has been about being a musician one from being a kid i'm kind of defined i'm very happy to say by the music i've made and because i've got to make it professionally from being very young a lot of people will uh know the

records and obviously if they followed me over the years you know they're going to want to hear about the records but i think there's not really much of a divide between me as a person in my life and the records I was making at that time or whatever bands I was in because it's been my life I realize how fortunate I am but there's plenty of stuff that a lot of people won't know because I've gone into quite a lot of detail about not too much but bore people with my reminiscing but there's all the teenage stuff and all of that and what led to the formation of the Smiths and my life before that. I'm always interested in how

people in that position writing a book about their early years, how they actually just remember it. Did you keep diaries? Did you keep journals or did you have to talk to friends and family to try and reconstruct it? I talked to my family about a few things i've got a really good memory which is kind of amazing really but i've always had a very very good memory

you know there are some events in there like you know ended up in a police cell and i'm not really going to forget that you ended up like fencing some stolen art yeah or at least stolen up facilitating the fencing of stolen art i ended up working in one shop and this guy was coming in and being very chatty and very kind of gregarious so he ingratiated himself got himself involved with the shop and it's a clothes shop was it yeah because i figured that you know if you needed to get money for guitar strings and sigs my parents weren't going to give me that money what you did was you worked in a clothes shop that's what i thought guitarists in waiting did right because i remember reading about

you know mark mclaren and a sex shop and my friend billy duffy was working in uh johnson's in london so that's what i figured i'd do you know classic guitarist yeah because you get to stand around you meet lots of cool people you can can play all the music you like. Yeah, that's exactly it. But yeah, so this guy kept coming in the shop and I think I told him about a pot dealer who lived near me. You know, you could get pot off him

if you sort of swapped him some, you know, bits and pieces. He was a fence, basically. And he's just loose talk. Give him some pointy shoes. Yeah, I would have been 16, yeah. Yeah, give him some stuff and he'll give would have been 16 yeah yeah yeah give him some stuff and he'll give you some pot nice i want to know where i get my pot from and then so this one day

just he just put it to me oh you know i've got these uh paintings or drawings or these sketches do you know i can get this guy you know you know i can get this get this guy so anyway i just introduced him to this guy and then the next thing i I know, a couple of weeks later, I was playing in a crappy little rehearsal room in Ancoats in Manchester and the door got kicked in. These three classic kind of three burly, overweight, sweaty detectives bang, boot the door in whilst we were playing. Like from Life on Mars or something? Exactly, exactly.

But they were very serious fellas and they grabbed me, pushed me up against the wall. still had my guitar on why i like telling this story is because i got busted with my guitar on right and it was going clang clang through this amp yeah you know i was like this they've got three of them got me up against the wall and they're going through my pockets and at that moment in time i had no idea what it was it could have been a couple of things really oh shit and that bloke you murdered yeah yeah exactly yeah no idea what it was. It could have been a couple of things, really. Uh-huh. Oh, shit. That bloke you murdered. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. No, I thought it was what they were going to find in my pockets.

Mm-hmm. Because I had some pot on me and thought it was about that. But then I realised, oh, this is a little bit excessive. Yeah. No, it was terrifying. I was 17, I think. Pulled me down these iron stairs and put me into a cop car. And then the other two guys in the band got taken off in another car

and still had no idea what it was about. And then sped off to this police station and I was in the cell for a couple of days and then discovered it was all to do with, like, this guy that I'd introduced to this dodgy bloke on my estate. You know, they were L.S. Lowry's paintings. Right. With his matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs. Yeah, it's like oh man

oh man i really knew i was in deep then you know found myself up in court a few months later a few weeks later everyone else got sent to prison i got let off the judge sort of i think he recognized that i was just a idiot kid sort of trying to hustle around really yeah but he was really terrifying getting that close to going in the nick because that's not you know it was a little bit of a rogue and but you know i wasn't that's not, you know, I was a little bit of a rogue. But, you know, I wasn't hardcore. Yeah. Absolutely not, you know.

And you really thought you were going away. You said goodbye to Angie then. Oh, yeah, I had a couple of people. That was the thing. I had a couple of people come out and see me. This house I was hanging out in and saying, look, you know, there's a guy in the kitchen in the nick and he'll get you a job after a couple of weeks.

So you were making plans for life inside. I wasn't. I was like, this does not make me feel better yeah that really brought it home to me when i've got someone trying to saying it's all right yeah i've got you a job in the library i was like oh my god oh my god i want a job in the library yeah so that was kind of scary i had my mum in there in the in the magistrate's court looking down at me i I was like, oh, Jesus. But, you know, my folks stood by me, which was amazing, really. You got let off 300 quid fine. Yeah, which might as well have been 3 million quid to me at the time,

or 3,000 quid. Didn't know where I was going to get that money. But then I got a job in another shop immediately afterwards, and my life kind of started again then, really. Mm. In Keith Richards book the bits that I enjoyed were the bits where he talks about the impulse to write certain songs and he doesn't get too bogged down in technicalities I mean obviously I'm a guitar player so I could read about what strings he was using and what tunings and what

guitars were days after days but I didn't want to do that in my book I didn't want to get too guitar magazine about it but those were the bits that I liked the impulse behind some of the songs that I really loved that's the thing though that I think a lot of musicians find very difficult to describe and hard to recall and that's the thing that people want to know like where did that come? How did that pop into your mind, that riff or that tune or those lyrics? And a lot of musicians really struggle. And I think they feel quite defensive, even being asked that question. They're like, well, listen to the song. The song is the answer to that question. I can't talk about where it came from. So it's great to have someone who's actually having a go at describing where those things come from well i

hope that the sense of wonder comes across you know this charming man felt like it came through the window i remember i remember the day i remember the moment i remember the feeling of it and what was that day like reconstruct for us that well it was a spring early summer morning and i got out of bed and the sun was shining through the window around about 10 a.m or something which was early for me I guess and um it was a little bit like I knew that I had some homework to do because we had our I think second John Peel session coming up so we were on our wheels were going we dismissed we weren't a big established band by then because that moment was about to make us that you know and you were aged what 18, 19 I think

maybe 19 and the band it was really early days of the band but we had our second John Peel thing and I knew subconsciously I had some mental homework to do I had to write a couple of new songs you know but I was feeling really buoyant

and it was a really had a beautiful energy in the day just one of those nice kind of feel good mornings I think maybe before that as well I'd been wondering how come Aztec Camera who are our label mates were getting on the radio and we weren't and they seem to have very breezy upbeat tunes walk out to winter yeah and oblivious and those kind of things i'm pretty sure they were out at that time and roddy's stuff and and i respected roddy because he's one of the only other people i knew was the same age as me and we'd met and i liked him unbeknownst to me he was living about two minutes away from me at that

time and we didn't i didn't know this for years later it was weird maybe he was waking up and i was like by osmosis getting these vibes through the window or you were hearing the chords to walk out to winter drifting down the road yeah and so there's a little bit of um i guess sort of pragmatism and competitive spirit going on but it wasn't angsty i just felt really buoyant i was like okay and so the mood helped me just play that because before that you know the smith stuff wasn't all doomy but it was definitely one of the cheerier songs in our canon and i always avoided up to that point i tried to avoid writing songs in the key of G because it was quite a sunshine chord. I tried to avoid songs in D and songs in G for that reason.

Because they seemed too accessible, too up-tempo. Yeah, too straight, too yellow, really. Uh-huh. I always thought D was red and G was yellow. But maybe the combination of the sun and needing to do something that was upbeat. What are your blue chords then? Oh, A minor, C even, B minor, C sharp minor, definitely. So leapt out of bed, picked up the acoustic

and then just played that chord sequence that became this charming man. Bang. I was like, oh, that sounds good. So I just pressed record straight away and then I had this TIAC cassette machine that you could overdub on. A little four-track thing. No, it was actually, it's around the corner there. I think it's just a two-track. record straight away and then um i had this tiak cassette machine that you could overdub on a little

four track thing no it was actually it's around the corner there i think it's a just a two track it's a cassette and then you can overdub on it ah it wasn't like didn't have any faders or it didn't look like a porter studio right there wasn't porter studios then or if there were they weren't you know as we know them now but anyway no it was a cassette machine that you could overdub on and then i just played the top line straight away. That was it, bang. The whole song just went out. I thought, oh, this sounds really good. It seemed to come through the window. So aside from the thinking,

oh, I'll just take camera doing it, there was no kind of plan or contrivance. And you tell a story in the book about getting the hand-in-glove riff. Yeah, well, I was at my parents' house one Sunday evening. I'd moved out by then, down the road, and I went to visit them, and Angie was with me. She would have been about 17.

Angie, your girlfriend at the time, now your wife? Yeah, and we just nipped round to see my folks one Sunday, and my little brother, and I'd left a pretty crappy acoustic guitar there. I was sitting around bored, and I started playing this riff. I mean Okay, this is much posher guitar I'm not sure it's in tune. So I was play I was absent-minded to playing this riff So that's kind of like chic really so. Sort of now Rogers kind of thing. Those little choppy chords.

Yeah. So I was playing Handing Glove like that. I thought, oh, right, I'm really on to something. And I had nothing to record it on. I was like, shit. What am I going to do? I was sort of leaping around. I knew I wouldn't remember it in the right way.

So I said, Angie, just take me around to Morrissey's. Me and Morrissey had only known each other a few months by this time, if that. You've got to take me around to Morrissey's. He's got a tape recorder. So we got in the car with the guitar, and we drove the sort of 20-minute drive from Whittenshaw to Old Trafford, Stretford, where Morrissey lived, and in the car all the time, so I wouldn't forget it.

I was going... Angie always leaves me to it. But while she was driving, she loves Iggy Pop. Always has done, always will. And she just said, make it sound like Iggy. So I'm in the front seat of the car, holding this thing. I'm just not stopping, constantly playing it, so I won't forget it, won't change the vibe.

It's really easy to develop something. I suppose it's the same in anything, but you can overdevelop it and it becomes something else and you lose the original inspiration and idea. And so she said, make it sound like Iggy, so I just went... Like, give me danger so I took this kind of clipped riff and I sort of Iggy'd it

James Williamson'd it and then that just came out that kind of happened i don't know how that happened so i i just then was really onto something right don't lose that then i got to morris's house i prayed it was one of the rare times when he hadn't left the house. And he opened the door and I was there going, Hey, Moss, Moss, Moss, have you got a tape recorder? Got any sound?

He ran up the stairs and got his tape recorder and I just went in the hallway and I put the track down. So it was like a bit of human sampling. And then what was the process for him thereafter maybe we've even been together about eight or nine months then because the other two guys mike and andy were in the band so that was on the sunday so on the monday we would have been getting together we were always getting together and rehearsing and i showed the guys the riffs and we worked it up instrumentally and he arrived shortly afterwards and he just sang Handing Glove on top of it.

Right, so he just turned up with a sheaf of lyrics. Yeah, that's the way it always was until we were big enough to be doing it in studios. But that was the process. I would give him the music. So he had been sitting with that tape for a few days. Oh, yeah, I mean, if that... The last stuff, he'd just do it in 24 hours yeah

yeah it's incredible i used to come up with songs really quickly and he used to come up with the words and the melodies and these vocals really quickly you know what was it like for you then hearing what he had done i was astounded that was my favorite out of it was maybe song seven song nine or something that we'd written the best ones ones were the latest ones, which is the best way to be. Fourth song we wrote, I think, was What Difference Does It Make? And it was like, right, this is the best one. The newest is the best one. And then Say Hand in Glove, that one was like,

well, this is definitely the best one and it's the newest. And then you write some more that you really love. But in the case, to answer your question, I was astounded because I thought the lyrics were kind of a manifesto for us. I thought us and the audience. The audience could read into those lyrics, you know. It's not like any other love. This one's different because it's us.

You know, everything depends upon how near you stand to me. It was just like a real declaration. It felt like a declaration of our band, of our friendship, of the band's relationship with our audience, all five of them. And would you laugh at lines like the sun shines out from our behinds?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Even before that on some of the very early songs when it was just me and him, you know, handsome devil, I think, let me get my that on some of the very early songs when it was just me and him, you know, Handsome Devil, I think, let me get my hands on your mammary glands. Yeah. What? Yeah, it was amazing.

And you wouldn't... Right the way through the band, it was amazing. Uh-huh. Did you ask him questions about those words and things or did you just leave each other to it? Yeah, I mean, it was a matter of unspoken encouragement. He knew that I thought he was utterly brilliant and whatever he was going to do was going to be amazing,

and I felt exactly the same way. We were so tight and so close, we didn't need to say those things. He was, like, five years older than you, isn't he? I think so, yeah. Yeah, five years older, four years. It's quite a lot when you're young. It is a lot, right. So he's a sort of 23-year-old guy,

and do you think there was any sense that you were a little bit deferential towards him for that reason, that he was your senior in age? No, it was... Actually, if you ask anyone who was around, they'd say that the role was more that I was this little hyper, run-around protector of everybody. I was a very resourceful person, had to be.

Try to find rehearsal rooms, try to find other band members, try and get demos, studios, and then that just is one tiny step away from just being very protective in a way. And then later on, when we got bigger and bigger, that role and those responsibilities became crazy big, you know. Because my heroes, Andrew Oldham and even Brian Jones, I think,

maybe I was attracted to them because I saw something that I related to. Andrew Oldham, the Stones manager. Manager, yeah. This idea of the hustly kind of resourceful making stuff happen, right? Come on, let's, you know, let's do this, let's do that and

being very energetic and how did you know about Andrew Alden then you'd read about him and yeah I'd read about him yeah I was such a stones freak and back then in the late 70s and early 80s you didn't have water stones with a huge big section on Justin Bieber yeah or Adele you know rock books just didn't really, some of them existed, but they didn't, there wasn't a culture of it. So when I used to come across old magazines and newspapers that had the Stones in,

and I used to collect bits of Andrew Oldham's interviews and things about Andrew Oldham and Brian Jones, it was really unusual in those days to do that, especially when all your mates were like guys on the estate where it was like hopping around in pork pie hats to madness. Yeah. But Andrew Oldham was a really big influence on me, the hustler kind of thing, you know, making things happen.

So that's why I went and knocked on doors and blagged studio time. And so... So it was the process of creating a band and getting that band to connect with people that you were excited about as much as actually playing the music i wasn't as as excited about as playing the music because playing the music was magic to me and being a guitar player but i you like the project though it's the only way i was going to get a band together like be that yeah and it suited my personality and I had the enthusiasm for it. Yeah.

You know, I used to think that Manchester was Broadway. Mm-hm. It was really romantic, was putting my band together. I loved Libra and Stoller. And I used to think that I was, like, you know, getting together this male Shangri-La. It was on my new Rolling Stones, you know. What were you imagining?

What were your fantasies about in those days? Do you remember? Like, what's going to happen to this band? Making a record, a seven-inch single with a navy blue label on it. That's very specific. That was, yeah, with Morrissey and Mowery in the brackets. Right. Yeah.

It was like Raiders of the Lost Ark or something. It was a holy grail for me. Because I loved all the Decca singles I had. All the Stones singles were on Decca. So that's why it was navy blue, I with silver writing yeah yeah and so what was that first single that was handing glove that's handing glove yeah so that was amazing so once once i had that in my hands stood on the the approach of piccadilly train station when i went to get the box of them that had been sent from rough trade i was in freeze frame and the rest of the world

was kind of rushing around me like I'm one of those kind of moments on a TV film. Yeah, yeah. And just stood there like gazing at it. Oh, my God. And so did that just fill you with excitement about, oh, my God, this is happening, we can do this? Well, by then, other things around the band

had really taken on a massive momentum. You know, we had Joe, our manager. He was this amazing guy who seemed, this well by then other things around the band had really taken on a massive momentum you know we had joe our manager he was this amazing guy he was seemed not i won't say ancient but he was a guy in his mid to late 30s he and i were really close and so there was him before there was there was me and angie and joe before i met morrissey and uh he never managed a band before anything he was just my older mate who ran a couple of clothes shops and he'd decided his life was going to be it he'd bought into it for his own life and he was working on it

so I had this great, really wise, fantastic guy with me Morrissey was, you know, he's got his side of why he was doing it ambition and as romantic and poetic as I can be about it, he could say the same. I don't know whether he would. So by the time that moment came out, to answer your question, wheels were already turning, you know. But that was, let me think. No, we hadn't done a John Peel session yet. It was really early that when we got Hand in Glove done. Yeah, really early. Yeah, we'd only done about seven gigs. So yeah, it was a very, very important early moment but

I felt things were happening just because we were writing other songs I just felt I had an amazing partner in Morrissey I had an amazing partner with Joe it was starting to be a little bit of a team and we're all big dreamers and very capable talented people Joe was incredibly talented Morrissey was incredibly talented and Andy's a very talented person. And so did you feel that you were all on the same page? Because, I mean, Morrissey, have you read his book? No. Actually, for my money, some of my favourite parts of that book are the early parts when he's writing about his childhood.

Yeah, I believe that they're really good. I will get round to it. People think I'm being weird when I say no. No, you're not blanking it. Right, OK. He writes very well about his early years but it is clear pretty early on that you're dealing with quite an unusual person sure and that must have been clear to you and were you thinking were you focused just on what was good about that

because it fed into the music you were making or were there little seeds of like oh this guy might be quite hard to deal with sometimes and that might be a problem for the band going forward? Eventually that would happen. But now it was like the need and the idealism and the sort of romanticism and desperation, truth be told, that I had, he had the same. And that was really unusual to meet someone else who because you're sure there's

loads of other musicians and I knew other musicians and stuff but I didn't know anyone else who was a sort of intense about it all as me and I don't just mean like ambitious or intense about getting famous or anything like that I really you know was kind of bordering on mystical about what pop culture was and what a record could do. And for instance, we talked about listening to a scratchy old record with the lights off on your own and hearing the crackles. I mean, that to me was like, you're the only person on this planet that does that besides me.

Yeah, you had that, you knew how important it could be to people and you knew what people could get from it when you connect with music in that way as you say it fills you with all sorts of amazing positive things hope being one of them and excitement and which never really goes away no matter how old you get and so yeah it must have been very exciting for you to know that you had the wherewithal you and morrissey to actually supply that to people in a new form yeah but as but as well as, that's true, but in front of that, in my mind, that's all great,

but that's almost as a by-product of making something great. That's the thing. Oh my God, you're really like, come on everybody, really loud, and you're like six. I'd say to my mum and dad jiving in this little room, like something in me that, well, how do I do that?

How do I do that? That's what I'm always looking for. How do I do that? And, of course, you want to be in a band. You want people to think you're cool. You want to wear good clothes. I didn't really like playing gigs. I didn't like touring until my late 30s, early 40s.

So for me, it was always about making that music. Being in the studio. It wasn't the cheering of the crowd. Of course I wanted people to think, you know, I look good. What was it about touring that you didn't enjoy? It took me away from making records. And I never really took care of myself. You know, I didn't eat and I didn't sleep very much.

Yeah, especially when you're younger and you're all jazzed and excited about doing this or that, actually looking after yourself, it's hard enough looking after yourself at any point in your life, isn't it? Yeah, and I'm not talking about drugs or the obvious reductive things, staying up late drinking Jack Daniels or doing loads of blow and all of that,

which I did that, but I'm not talking about that. I knew this at the time that at any point when I'd have finished a record, if the record company or the manager or another member of the band had said, tomorrow we start a new one, I would have just been delirious. Yeah, great, great. But the reason I bring it up is because I now know how unusual that is because it's kind of in reverse. Nearly every musician I know...

They live playing live. Especially when they were young. It's like you want to get out and play your songs on the stage, and in a way it was a little bit of a blind spot of mine, really. It was only really with The Healers that I suddenly had to reconcile, right, what am I going to do as a frontman here? But I really analysed it and went,

oh, right, this is really quite a great scenario. I don't mean the praise and the adulation, I mean what a gig is, the exchange of energy and the volume and being surrounded by all that electricity and the look on the faces of the audience, really, and that connection with the audience, you know. So there wasn't a sense of you... I didn't need the adulation from 2,000 people in a room. I really didn't.

Right. I wanted other musicians and fans and my mates. In this order, the band, my mates, fans, other musicians. You wanted them to get excited. I wanted them to think what I was doing was really, really good. The press, right down the bottom of the list. They were there, but right down the bottom. That must have started coming fairly quickly, though. I i mean people were excited about the band and they were

everyone knew who they were and they were quite divisive though it was like kind of are you for or against it was a very definite camp i remember when i was young and you guys were putting out records it was the hard guys would listen to the smiths and they were well it was when i say hard it was like the they were the cool serious guys yeah they were they they were drain pipes winkle pickers bird's nest hair yeah they were probably into jesus and mary chain as well the london indie kids i wasn't a london indie kid i was me and joe were like the sort of pop twats you were young though weren't you you would, what, 10 or 11 or something? No, a little bit older than that.

13, 14. Oh, yeah. But we were listening to Thomas Dolby and Thompson Twins and things like that. And Bowie as well. But there was something about the Smiths that was a bit more serious, a bit more next level. Yeah.

And I wasn't ready for that. Hat Full of Hollow was the thing that changed it for me oh that's pretty early on i got it after the fact a few years after it come out what was the deal with that record it was like i asked the same question at the time yeah but i'm glad it came out it was morris's idea and we'd amassed enough kind of b-sides because we always put two songs on the 12 inch of the each single so we had a couple of b sides knocking around and primarily was it was because the john peel sessions were so good and represented the band so there was different songs that weren't on the first album that were in our

set and in our repertoire we wanted to document really and i didn't see it coming and morrissey put the record together and i thought it was fantastic and it really did the right thing it represented the band it was great some of the versions on that record are better than the official versions or the other versions or whatever so that's what happened with that it was his projects and it was really really good yeah i found it um much more accessible yeah well we you know we uh gate crashed the mainstream pretty quickly i i liked that we got into the um the mainstream for a number of reasons obviously it's great you know hey you success how about you know try that on but um but also because we because we were sort of next level

i understood that like because when i was a little kid and you're watching top of the pops when a band like free came on doing wishing well and my brother jake now if you saw one of those bands on tv they were like you'd go oh god they look like they stay up late and do naughty things. And then you've got the bands like Blondie. And I really loved when a band who had sort of interesting ideas and, let's say, subversive, gatecrashed the mainstream. I thought that was way better than them just being cool in an indie ghetto, and I still do. That's one of the things I think pop is,

that makes pop so fantastic as a mainstream art form. Interesting people can infiltrate the suburbs and all those things i mean you know you know when bowie's the absolute king of it yeah break into the mundane straight world with ideas about gender and sexuality and art and lifestyle god art ideas. Yeah, fantastic. The 80s were great for that though, weren't they? They're showing a lot of those old Top of the Pops programs on BBC4 at the moment. Yeah.

Do you ever watch any of those? I see some of them. I always end up fast-forwarding it because it's just... Yeah, I very rarely stay on them for more than four minutes, honestly. I'm looking out for the gen well it's quite fun if you don't fast forward sometimes like if you force yourself to watch the ones that you would have walked out of the room for back when they went out first time yeah you think oh and sometimes you think okay i get it now like with some of the stuff that you

just thought no not going there when i was little i didn't understand the point of soul or R&B. You know, it's like, well, this isn't pop music. I just had a very childish grasp of pop. Oh, yeah. And so I remember thinking, like, there was a song called Mama Used to Say by Junior. Junior. Yeah. Junior Giscombe, yeah.

And I just thought it was comical at the time. Mama used to say. And I used to do impressions of it. But it's brilliant. It's a great song. And he does a great performance of it. And all these songs, Ashford and Simpson, and all these kinds of things that I didn't get at the time,

now I see them sandwiched between the songs that I did get, Madness and whatever else like that, that I was into, Adam and the Ants. I see them there on top of the pops. And I think, yeah, well, this is great. I totally get it now. That's pop, isn't it? Yeah.

I saw the clip of Whitney Houston singing I Want to Dance with Somebody on top of the pops. And I've been in that studio. It's only any good for miming if you're lucky, right? And she's singing live, and she's doing the American classic showbiz. It's very much in the tradition of bringing it as a soul performer. She's not standing there like the Cocktail Twins or us or whatever. She's on her own, no band, and she's selling it.

It was never my kind of thing, really, but I saw that performance, and you think, well done. It's incredible probably got off a flight that morning jet lagged whatever bang switches it on and um yeah so actually that's that's the thing that struck me that performance the singing's unbelievable you know and it's so bang on and uh it's so controlled and it is it's in the tradition of Sam and Dave. Obviously Aretha Franklin, but Sam and Dave. It's that classic American professional thing that great soul singers do. A really amazing performance.

But at the time I was like smoking a cig with the sound down going, what's this shit? But Gatecrash in the mainstream, that's how I felt. So when we did that, even though I was just a kid, I knew what we were doing. And I knew how good our frontman was. When we were on top of the Pops for the first time, the first thing I noticed was our record, This Charming Man, sounds really exciting.

It's quite funny because you've got all of these people who are told to dance, you know, they're trying to do some, I don't know what kind of dance it is they're trying to do, but it was very odd. But I thought, wow wow how must we be coming over on the tv right now i was in our uh weird clothes and the singer swinging these gladiola around and presumably he'd been doing that at live shows oh yeah yeah yeah because the very next thing that i thought at that moment was oh no at gigs the floors get very, very slippy. This is being transmitted live.

Do not move a muscle. Stand still. Because all I could think about was that I was going to slide off the stage on national television. On some crushed gladiola. Yeah, because those stages used to get really slippy and I used to wear these moccasin kind of slippers things because I couldn't get the real ones.

There must have been a point where you had just been rehearsing and then suddenly you play a gig was his stage presence or present and correct from day one of playing live day two it's very second show because the first show we were told by uh the band we were opening for Blue Rondo Alaturk that we weren't allowed to move anything including the mic stand so that gig, we only did four songs. It was quite restrictive. But yeah, I realized then, right, wow, okay. But I wasn't that surprised because we were really tight as friends.

We were really on a mission from the moment we met. So I just assumed that he'd be brilliant and he assumed I would. And that makes you brilliant. That gives you confidence as well. We're halfway through the podcast. I think it's going really great. The conversation's flowing like it would between a geezer and his mate.

All right, mate. Hello, geezer. I'm pleased to see you. There's so much chemistry. It's like a science lab of talking. I'm interested in what you said. Thank you. Well, William, It Was Really Nothing, I suppose,

is not a million miles away from this charming man. With William, It Was Really Nothing, that was part of the time when we moved down to London to be closer to the record company and be pop stars. We found out, I found out, that we could be pop stars and stay in Manchester. But there was a period, I guess, late 83, 84, when we moved to London.

It was great, it was fantastic, great for me. I had my own flat for the first time, me and Angie lived in Earl's Court and I was banging all these songs out there was like a run of hits Heaven Knows and Handing Glove with Sandy Shaw and then we'd come to write a few more we were always gigging

see nowadays when bands of a certain size anyway go out and tour and everything it is very much like a campaign I hate that word but it's an appropriate word and we were pretty much like the 70s bands in that regard this you know where we were we were doing stuff but we were always we always had gigs on sure you'd have a tour and you'd book it and have a string of dates on a on a poster but we all seem to be never too far away from a two-week irish tour or a 10 date rundate run in Scotland or there's always these gigs on the horizon you know which was great for us as musicians and as a band we had this van for the

longest time that Joe had financed no windows in it in the back we were coming back from Hammersmith Odeon going to the free trade hall or vice versa I can't remember now so even though we were playing these big gigs we were still on a mattress in the back of a van. So mank and so indie. And I just, I was sat on the back and bouncing around and I think the momentum of, and it's this guitar, the one I was picking up over in there. As I say, because we were bobbing around in the back of the car, I just started playing something fast.

I was going... fast that was great but i think that to me maybe because i've got this associative memory of it but it's just like being on a train or there's a rush to it it It's wonderful, the feeling of movement. Movement. And it gives you a real sense of excitement, doesn't it, a lot of the time? It's a bit out of tune, that guitar. I should have tuned it before I started playing on your podcast, but it's rock and roll.

It's all right to me. Yeah, it has that sense of momentum. Some songs come out of the ether, as that did, and then some other songs, you're lucky you get a good idea before you even pick the instrument up a tune in your head yeah yeah and or a concept or an approach meat is murder for instance was uh i had a remit for that song because i had the title first and anyone who knows the song will know it's essentially it's a it's a horror soundtrack for an animal, essentially.

But I had to apply myself to come up with the appropriate atmosphere. And that's why it has that little piano. Because that was conceptualised, because I got myself in the mood to put guitar in this opening tune, and I got myself in the mood to feel doom. But I still wanted it to be listenable. So I tried to stay in that space, occupy that space. I could talk about it because it worked.

They don't always work. And then the very first thing I did was put that piano on top of it because I was like, OK, well, what do horror films do? Well, they often have this very childlike, plaintive motive over the top to suggest the threat to innocence i think is what that is saying to you and it worked that was going on before we even had those incredible sound effects of the abattoir on top and the machines going and all the slaughter and everything and before even the lyrics had gone on there so it was doomy but it was something you could stand

hearing again and you talk in a similar sort of way about Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me. Were you listening to Low? Yeah. This is Low by David Bowie. I was trying to, yeah, in my way, I was trying to do my version of Psy 2 of Low, but it ended up sounding like,

I guess it does sound like the industrial north. I'm really happy about that. As opposed to sounding like Berlin, it sounds more like if David Bowie had recorded Low on Coronation Street, which is quite appropriate, I think. As everyone has already said, you know, great songs usually happen very quickly.

Some stuff you have to really apply yourself, and that's really satisfying because that's a craft. So when you apply yourself and it works, it's very gratifying, but for a long time, from before the first Smiths album, just as the band formed, I had these kind of very Joni Mitchell chords that went. So... Is that some weird sort of jazz tuning?

Yeah, and I just was like, what the hell is that? And so when it came time to do the second album, or after the first album, I was really determined to put to make a song out of it and then i remember one day being stood up in some studio somewhere and i was probably you know really hyped up and i just went That just happened, that bit. And this was something that I had from being in my bedroom at home. This.

That, I just locked them together and it was one of those days where these different ideas I'd had from over a couple of years all just came together in Headmaster Ritual. That one particularly, I never played to the band until I'd turned it into a song because I was embarrassed because it sounded like so Joni Mitchell. I thought it was a bit uncool. But when we just put it through the band's filter,

it just became us, really. In the Smiths, every demo I made turned into a Smiths song within days. I'd make a demo and three days later it was a song. Yeah. Which is amazing. Very satisfying. Yeah. But we were very industrious as well.

I drink your milkshake. satisfying yeah but we were very industrious as well you and i when we first met i remember we had a long chat about the dynamics of the double act and the stresses and strains that come with that relationship that's right um operating obviously in very different worlds you and i but um yeah i think there are so many things that are universal i've talked to so many of my friends who are parts of double acts either musical or comedic and the same stories and the same stresses and anxieties keep coming up over and over again. And there's always, I think, a moment when you make a transition from being school buddies or buddies who are bonded by the project, as it were,

to having to deal with being in business and earning a living. And this is your life now. You don't have any other side jobs. It's this. And that brings with it a load of pressures and tensions that before you were barely aware of. It brings those all to the surface.

And there's usually a moment where you have a conversation that turns into an argument or it's just a very loaded conversation. And you can't really ever go back. And it doesn't necessarily ruin it but it's like oh i think it's in my case with me and morris's relationship you mean no it was more gradual i think that we're probably both very willful people and in our case we had a pretty strong with sense of long-term fate if you're without getting too esoteric about it.

I think what happened with us was things went really right in an amazing way in terms of our success. And then probably how he saw his future and how I saw mine were different. And one of us was going to have to really compromise that sense of your own destiny and I wasn't prepared to do that and I don't think he was do you know what I mean by that like speaking personally I wasn't going to just be someone's guitarist for the rest of my life

I got known for being in that fairly archetypal situation which great. But I'm not like Peter Book, and I'm not like The Edge, and I'm not like Keith Richards, as much as I revere and love those people and I'm friends with pretty much all of them. But that came as a surprise to everybody, because that's who I appear to be exactly like. I absolutely see the value in security and that family thing of a band

and I see all the pluses but it's not for me I don't think I ever ever was going to have to stay in a band for 40 years or 30 years Right Ever And that came as a surprise to Morrissey did it? No I think what I'm saying is

I can't really speak for how he sees himself but I would say that he was always destined to be a solo artist anyway Right okay I would say so and I would say that I was destined to be a solo artist and someone who collaborated with lots and lots of other people. Because my MO is, as people now know, I don't mean to flatter myself,

but it is more like the way Brian Eno operates, or indeed Nile Rodgers, and it's one of the things throughout the 80s that made me relate to Nile Rodgers. I like doing different things. You like doing different things like doing different things being introduced to different ways of thinking and working and meeting different people yeah yeah and i don't really don't want to be the same musician or the same person in five years time

from now so i think what i'm trying to say is we got what we wanted but because we got our success and we became that archetypal indie band really quick you go right okay and now's the next bit absolutely you made the mistake of being in one of those bands and frank black would be able to relate i would imagine of mean they meant so much to people while they were together that they remained locked in in people's heads in that way and people didn't really want anything else some of those fans some of those hardcore yeah pixies fans and smiths fans and there's you know there's a certain type of band that inspires rabid hardline fundamentalist you're defined by it fandoms yeah and And they find it very difficult to embrace change and for the band to stop and for people to move on

and they kind of hold it against those people. That's true, yeah. And it becomes the press narrative and it becomes mythology and then it becomes accepted as fact. But I know better. There was no way I was not going to make a record that sounds like Dusk by The...

I couldn't do that with The Smiths. I mean, maybe I would have been able to work on movies like I do now. I could see that as happening, but it would break my heart to not have been able to do a song like Dashboard by Modest Mouse or many other sort of songs that I've done. And to play on that Talking Heads album. Yeah, yeah. Which was the first thing you did after the band split, more or less, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was the very first thing I did after the band split, yeah. It all makes sense to me, but that's not to say it wasn't really painful. It's obviously really, really, really painful and also difficult, and people have made it very difficult because of that narrative, but I'm totally cool with it. As long as you know what the truth is inside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah yeah then you know that other stuff you talked about is part of being you know hey i feel lucky and it's hard to talk about those things when you're in that situation when when you do realize that it's time to for things to change and especially if you're 23 i would think morrissey says in his

book that he met you years later i think before the whole court case or maybe just before it yeah and he says how nice it was to see you having not seen you for a while sure but he feels like he wants to know why you split the band up. He's like... Well, he should just buy my book then. But he knows he was there. No, but he says, like, oh, I asked Johnny, and Johnny says, well, you should know. And he said, no, I never knew. Oh.

So do you feel like... Well, he's just saying that in his book. Everybody around knows what went on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you are, compared to Morrissey, very economical when you come to the court case. One of the great things about your book is that it really is pacey, it zips along.

Good. Morrissey, unfortunately, as well as he writes, and he does write very well, and there's lots of great, interesting stuff in his book, but there are passages where he's clearly determined to settle scores and he can't let certain things go and he wants to set down all his feelings in very great detail so the court case with mike joyce goes on for nearly 50 pages or something i believe so i listened to the audio book read by david morrissey

incidentally so you can get and Andrew Marr to do yours. And that whole court case is like an hour and a half it takes to listen to that whole thing. And he goes back over certain points. And there's much about it that you really feel his indignation and his sense of injustice. And it is a horrible situation that you guys were in. But by the end of his extended rant, you think, mate, I can sort of understand why it went that way.

Well, it's interesting to me now, because you've read his account of the court case, obviously, and you've read mine. Yeah. We're both very, very different people, as everybody knows, and I think I've spent four or five pages or something. We're not talking about two different things, though, are we? Do you know what I mean?

Like, you've read both accounts. I think what I'm asking you is, they don't sound like two different court cases, though, do they? It's just two different people. It's two different people. It's one person who seems to be unable not to take everything deeply personally. And that is not just the way that he's being treated

by the lawyers and the judge, but also you. He feels like, why didn't you, Johnny Marr, say what I wanted you to say and stand up for me in the way that I wanted you to stand up for me? Why did you? I could say the same, though, but I don't. And in your book, you talk about the fact that it's just an impossibly sad situation to find yourself in that's right and of course that's the logical sort of humane yeah but also i own it as well i'm not so diplomatic that i'm going oh i really understand it i'm i resent it yeah yeah i think that i wanted to make sure that that came across i wasn't just going to be so vanilla about it that it was like oh okay these things happen because i really resented it

at the time when i resent i resent it now i'm not carrying it around i don't i don't really feel like settling scores anyway you know you know with or without an autobiography i'm just not a kind of person but when i've been wronged those people are persona non grata in my world just like anybody else I'm not that nice I can't bite back I guess for him he was singled out for that he can't do you know in my book I stand up for him on that

absolutely you do I talk about exactly what happened and how he was stitched up by Mike's lawyer with a phrase well as we know he bears more grudges than lonely high court judges yeah well we all love our things don't we i mean that whole court case and that whole sorry chapter came about because you guys didn't nail everything down didn't make everything

absolutely explicit even though you felt that that conversation had been had yeah do you ever think like it would be easier just to do what bands like i think radiohead and possibly coldplay and people like that and just do an equal split regardless of who is actually putting in more hours more emotional and physical effort so you don't get into situations like that it is easier yeah it is but the smiths weren't that kind of band. We didn't know each other when we came together. I was, like, the central person. I went and enlisted Morrissey, and then I enlisted Andy and enlisted Mike,

so I do say my role in the band was, like, the centre of this wheel, really, you know. It depends on the band, Adam, really, because that equal arrangement, that wouldn't have been right in Kraftwerk. And it wouldn't have been right in the Kinks either. You don't expect that all the members of the Kinks are equal. And the Smiths were the same.

We were more like that. That's the way it operated, really. And it was just a whole mess, really, with the Smiths, because we didn't have a manager all the time. We were big. It was ridiculous, you know. And that really was, you know... Look, you know, when we talk about Domin were big you know it's ridiculous you know and that really was you know look you know when we talk about don't mean to be you know too cosmic about things or philosophical but cosmic it up okay here we go i'm going in there but i do believe that in life especially in relationships if they're not right eventually events have a way of conspiring to make things happen that isn't

actually very cosmic that to me is just practical and us not having a manager was one of the factors that made me not be able to be in the group anymore because I don't know anyone who could say that one of the biggest most successful guitar bands in the world should be managed by their 23-year-old guitar player. And that was the situation you found yourself in? Absolutely, yeah. So I had to leave. And that happened because you guys disagreed over the management style as it was? Yeah, the manager, yeah, yeah.

The band needed a manager and we kept getting managers and they were just fired and they weren't right. And when I was finding finding when I went to get Andy in the band when I enlisted Mike through he came in the shop and we got to a club and I went and met him and checked him out and he and I met up and then we auditioned him and before that when I found Joe as a manager and then I went to hustle the rehearsal time at Decibel to make our first demo. I could do that, but tax laws getting us on a massive American tour, you know, four or five years later,

that's a different deal. That's beyond my resources. And be who I needed to be and be a 23-year-old kid. And be creative and be... Yeah, be a human being, you know, and be me, who I was expected to be, be the guitar player and come up with the tunes and all of that i'm not gonna be firing people i was sick of it meetings with accountants over tax laws i didn't understand i'd already had a record where it got stopped and injuncted whilst i was two-thirds of the way through making it which was the queen is dead by a lawyer i

couldn't get along with i was 22 22, man. That's ridiculous. And what was that? That was just to do with the fact that we tried to... Oh, you were switching? We tried to get off rough trade. Right, right, right. So who's supposed to... I'm not going to look after that stuff, you know?

Yeah, man. I just wanted to be in a great, great band. I just thought, well, I just don't see this as being part of my future. I just can't. And it broke my heart, you know, absolutely broke my heart. That's my band. I formed a band and everything, but this is what it is. I can't do this.

You know, tour managers coming and going and all of that. But I don't want, even in this conversation, for it to be a big moan because I was careful not to just bitch and moan, you know, because... Yeah, which you don't do in the book at all. But I think you can still see, I try and be straight up about things, but without it just being a sort of moan fest,

because who wants to read that, especially about a band you love? And also about a musician you like, because I feel really fortunate and I like working, and I just get on with stuff, you know. So I'm not going to sit here and bitch and moan about it, but they were the difficulties, and that's why the band split. But as I say, you know, events have a way of to sit here and bitch and moan about it, but they were the difficulties and that's why the band split.

But as I say, you know, events have a way of conspiring to make things happen if they're not meant to be, which is a little bit cosmic, but not that much cosmic for me. I love you. you were in paris was it with talking Talking Heads? Yeah, doing the last album, Naked. Yeah, and you really added something to that record that was not in any way like anything Talking Heads fans had heard before on Talking Heads records,

but it was great and it worked. Thanks. And it also pointed away to some of David Byrne's best solo stuff, for my money anyway. Yeah, I think that was the start of him finding his his own direction yeah because nothing but flowers that sounds almost like africans yeah african it's almost like half cajun half african really it's very very weird that was an amazing experience but then you turned up and you found yourself in in another. Your band had just broken up, but they were close to coming to the end of their run as well.

Yeah. So was that weird? Did you find yourself going from one stressful situation to another? There was tensions with Talking Heads. There was definitely tensions that I recognised. I didn't think they were going to be splitting up. To be honest, when I was working with David, and then I'd be with Chris and Tina,

and then Gerry, everything was cool, but there was an energy in the room when they all got together that was quite tense. Except when we were playing, when we cut the track, Ruby Deer, in some bands, they're never not tense unless they're playing. That's the sort of background, there's this frisson behind the scenes, there's sort of unspoken stuff,

and there's a wacky, you know, but Talking He talking heads was like that there was a little bit of stress there but when we started to play it was all it all melted away which is great so i remember that experience has been really great and i was just you know again i was a kid like oh my god i'm playing with talking heads you know and they cut ruby deer because of me i was, they were waiting for me to get there to do that track, so I was incredibly flattered, and it was fantastic. But yeah, after the Smith split, I had no idea what was going to happen. You know, I didn't leave thinking I was going to form another band, or I was going to join the Pretenders, or anything like that.

But I just knew I was going to play the guitar, you know, like I've always done. And then I ended up joining my favourite bands and working with my favourite people, which I never took for granted, but I just rolled my sleeves up and really, really got to work, you know. Because, say, with The Dirt, for example, those records were really hard work. Long 14-hour, 15-hour days of lots of furrowed brows

and lots of, this isn working we need we've cut this track wrong we've been working on it for five days and see the smiths was different we just we were just flying off the seat of our pants and everything works but if you listen to mind bomb and dusk they sound like very well crafted records it's a different sound and it's a different approach matt johnson was very much an audiophile and the mind bomb won the first it was the first george martin engineering award i mean it's an amazing sounding thing so that was very much an audiophile and the Mindbomb won the first George Martin Engineering Award I mean it's an amazing sounding thing so that was like oh right okay

we're spending three days on the drum sound right okay God it was intense and then working with Bernard Sumner we're programming synths for days and days and days he has that patience, I learn it and that's why New Order's records sound better than the people who try and copy them for days and days and days. He has that patience. I learn it.

And that's why New Order's records sound better than the people who try and copy them because he really gets in there and does it. So those things that I was doing, oh, I was in seventh heaven. They were my favourite rock band. I was the guitar player. Bernard Sumner was my favourite electronic musician and I was a big New Order fan.

We'd become partners. Chrissie Hynde kind of came, almost rescued me, really, psychologically and emotionally after The Smiths. If you're going to have someone pick you up and tell you what's what and give you a few good songs to play while you sort your head out, Chrissie Hynde's as good as it gets, really. And then I had Keith Richards stay up a few nights with me, laying the law down and giving me some really beautiful advice

about staying true to yourself. And it was incredible. I was so lucky. Was he someone that you knew already? No, I met him through Kirsty McColl, you know, and he checked me out. Mick Jagger had come and, you know, while I'm dropping big names, Mick Jagger had come to check the Smiths out first. Yeah, and I'd met Keith Richards through Kirsty and Steve, Kirsty McCollum, Steve, Lily White, her husband.

Steve was working with the Stones, and that was amazing because he's an amazing fella. So that all happened after the Smiths, and then Paul McCartney called me because he wanted to jam with me, and that was eight hours of Beatles songs and all rock and roll songs and everything. That must have been extraordinary. I wasn't expecting any of that to happen when the Smiths split.

Or this, you know, just being still doing it, writing a new album and having an audience. So I think it's all worked out OK. You know, the narrative that people want to wallow in sometimes about break-ups and fallouts and nastiness and all of that is unfortunate, but it's not stopped me doing my thing, and it's never going to stop me doing my thing, really. I'm glad it all happened, you know.

Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional. I love browsing your videos and pics, and I don't want to stop. And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop. These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace.

Just visit squarespace.com slash Buxton for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code Buxton to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. Continue. Hey, welcome back, podcats, quartermasters, however you identify. Hope you enjoyed that conversation with myself and Johnny Marr. I'm very grateful indeed to him for his time.

It was a really lovely day. Johnny came and picked me up from the station. Actually, if you're a hardcore listener to this podcast, then you may have listened to the Christmas special I did with Joe at the end of 2016, in which I detailed a confrontation I had with a employee at Euston station about my bike, leaving my bike unattended when I was picking up my tickets. It was a shameful confrontation for me. I did all the wrong things. Anyway, you can hear about that if you listen to that Christmas special with Joe.

But that was the morning that I went to meet Johnny Marr. When I got to Stockport Station, Johnny came, picked me up, meet Johnny Marr. When I got to Stockport Station, Johnny came, picked me up and drove me to his studio, that old school industrial building, large concrete floored spaces, brick walls, big windows. It was a lovely place. In one room he had all his guitars on racks. Over a hundred guitars were there and he told me a little bit about some of them. In fact, we recorded some rambles before we sat down for our proper conversation. And once the Adam Buxton app is properly up and running, the Adam Buxton app is properly up and running, I will see if I can edit some of those bits of chat and post them there beneath this episode of the podcast as a kind of bonus. I think that's the idea. It's going to take a while for us to figure out exactly how the app

works when it finally does emerge. But the idea is that there will be I hope bits and pieces of bonus audio that will go along with podcasts on occasion oh it's the wise old tree how are you wise old tree yeah all right not too bad quite windy today so I don't like that so much what's your problem with the wind what do you think the problem is? It blows all my arms and shit off, doesn't it? Yes, of course. I didn't think of that. No, you didn't.

You look down there at that bloke across the way. That very old oak? Yeah, that's right, the old bloke. Last time it was windy, his arm broke off and it split right down the side so he's just got this massive gash down the side now. I assume that he'd been struck by lightning. No, it's wind. It's just wind.

You get to a certain age and like a big gust comes along and that's it, your arm comes off and all your guts and shit fall out. Yes, I sympathise. I feel as if I'm reaching that age myself. But it must be nice feeling the wind through your leaves. Fuck off. Yes, all right, sometimes I close my eyes and just imagine I'm moving at eye speed down, well, anywhere really, just moving.

Yes, I feel you. It's nice as well to get a breeze going through your acorns. Sure, who doesn't like a breeze through their acorns? Because then they can get blown off and distribute your seed far and wide. Okay, well, listen, lovely to speak to you again, wise old tree. Take care. I'll be all right. See you.

Right then, Rosie. We should head back. Thanks very much indeed, once again, to Johnny Marr. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for production support. Matt Lamont for edit assistance. And thanks most especially to all of you, whoever you are, wherever you are. Thank you for downloading this podcast.

I do hope you enjoyed it. I went serious there. I was doing a kind of advertising voice and then that seemed a little insincere because I genuinely do hope you enjoyed it. Take care. I love you. Bye! Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when my bum's up. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when my bum's up. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pint, put me thumbs up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pint, put me thumbs up Like and subscribe Like and subscribe Like and subscribe

Like and subscribe Like and subscribe Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pint, put me thumbs up ប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប Thank you. Bye.