Slutter dagens  dækning her af guitar-es Johnny Marr’s fødselsdag med hans versionering af en af de mange så højtskattede sange fra The Smiths-bagkataloget. Og ve den stakkels sjæl, hvis hjerte ikke smelter forsvarsløst når Marr’s guldrandede guitartema sætter ind på 1:59…

Del Shannon – Keep Searchin’ (We’ll Follow The Sun) (Stateside B-side, 1964)

Johnny Marr: “The influence of [A-side] The Answer To Everything on me when writing Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want is well documented so I picked its sister record, this time. It was the sound of the house when I was little.”

The Rolling Stones – Get Off Of My Cloud (Decca single, 1965)

Johnny Marr: “The main thing I took from Keith Richards was his musical ideology; that there is a nobility in playing rhythm guitar and being the engine room and steering the ship, all these very valorous concepts which he threw in the face of guitar culture in the early ’70s.”

T.Rex – Metal Guru (T-Rex Wax Co. single, 1972)

Johnny Marr: “It’s so beautiful and commercial but slightly weird and I could not believe what I was hearing because it was so all-encompassing. It connected with something beyond my regular senses.”

The Isley Brothers – Behind A Painted Smile (Tamla Motown B-side, 1969)

Johnny Marr: “Motown provided a fantastic alternative to the rock music my mates were getting into. I ventured into this place called Rare Records on John Dalton Street in Manchester, I went into the basement and I remember to this day it was like a sea of future happiness.”

Iggy And The Stooges – Gimme Danger (Raw Power LP track, CBS 1973)

Johnny Marr: “I remember getting on the bus and just staring at the front cover in disbelief all the way home. I wasn’t disappointed when I played it because it sounded like I thought it would. It was mysterious, sexy, druggy, riffy and to-the-point.”

The Crystals – There’s No Other Like My Baby (Philles single, 1961)

Johnny Marr: “There is an unpretentiousness to it, and compared to what was passing itself off as weird in rockland with prog music at the time this just sounded weirder to me, and it seemed to come from an odder dimension.”

Blondie – Hanging On The Telephone (Chrysalis single, 1978)

Johnny Marr: “It reminds me of going to parties and really complaining that I didn’t want to hear Peaches by The Stranglers for the eleventh time and going through record collections with all that ELO shit in them and pulling out *Parallel Lines and going, ‘Alright then, let’s listen to this very, very loud!’”

Bob And Marcia – Young Gifted And Black (Harry J single, 1970)

Johnny Marr: “It was one of the records that both Morrissey and myself liked in the same way. It reminded us both of being youthful fanatics and being outside of the norm… Then, amazingly, when [New Order’s] Bernard Sumner and I started to get close we both discovered that we liked that record in the same way.”

The Equals – Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys (President single, 1970)

Johnny Marr: “Some records you wear down and you wear out but this one… I remember it from being out from when I was a kid but unlike some of the other tracks I play, I don’t listen to it for that reason, I like it because it reminds me of something shared between me and my mate.”

The Cribs – Hey Scenesters (Wichita single, 2005)

Johnny Marr: “A fantastic working class street rock’n’roll 45 that could only have come from a band in this country. It’s like, Move over, this is the new generation. The Jarmans are as hip as street musicians get from any generation.”

Paul Davidson – Midnight Rider (Tropical single, 1976)

Johnny Marr: “Aside from Keith Richards’ on Gimme Shelter, Midnight Rider contains my favourite ever guitar solo.”

The Drifters – I Count The Tears (Atlantic, 1960)

Johnny Marr: “If you were to play this to the other members of The Smiths it would remind them of being in a band with me. I used to sing and play it on the guitar when we weren’t recording and forced everyone to sing along. They learned to love it!”

(fra Mojo Magazine)

– We bonded over a lot of records, but we both loved that song in the same way at the same time. And that’s very likely to be the thing that inspired the music for Girlfriend in a Coma. We liked so many of the Trojan singles, and a whole list of other things in the glam-rock period – Sparks, Roxy Music, some David Bowie. And the Crystals we really loved, too. But if I had to mention one, it would be Bob and Marcia.

(Johnny Marr, fra The Guardian)

As I already had Raw Power and knew what The Stooges were about, it was big news that Iggy Pop was putting out his first solo record under his own name. The generation before me who were forming bands – people like Siouxsie and Lydon – had all been Iggy freaks from hearing about him via David Bowie’s patronage. As was the case in the 70s, David Bowie was the provider of all the cultural information that moulded the decade. You found out about Burroughs through Bowie, you found out about Kraftwerk through Bowie and it was the same with Iggy Pop.

There were rumours in the music press that David Bowie had been working on this record and when it came out it was a big deal. And it was amazing. Nothing sounded like it before and I don’t think anything has quite managed to sound like it since.

There is so much written about the Berlin period that there is no point in me going on about it, but I think of all the records of that time, this is the one that is most Berlin-like to me. I now know Berlin and have spent time there before it changed, and The Idiot does convey the atmosphere of being on the Berlin streets at 3.30 in the morning having been to various insalubrious establishments and looking for more action. Songs like ‘Baby’, ‘Nightclubbing’ and ‘Dum Dum Boys’ really capture that drunken, woozy, underground European atmosphere. It’s a perfect record.

(Johnny Marr, fra The Quietus)

På sin 20-års fødselsdag udsendte Johnny Marr sammen med Morrissey, Andy Rourke og Mike Joyce gennem Rough Trade The Smiths’ anden single, den jordskredsafstedkommende og slet skjult homoerotiske ‘This Charming Man’, sangen der for alvor spredte bandets navn, vægtløse lyd og specielle antirockede æstetik i et måbende stift England. Troede man det elegante signaturguitarspil på ‘This Charming Man’ var en lykkelig tilfældighed, kunne man bare vende tolvtommeren om og straks konstatere, begge b-sider bød på mere af samme melodiske talentoverskud fra det unge guitar-es. Her den mest udsøgte af de to, ‘Wonderful Woman’, hvor det er umuligt ikke at falde i svime over, hvor færdigudviklet og overskudsdryppende Marr’s så uprøvede talent allerede fremstår…

Tænk at have udført sit livsværk når man endnu kun er 23! Den situation var guitar-es Johnny Marr’s virkelighed i august 1987, da han gik ud af Manchester’s The Smiths, der på blot fire år havde skabt og kunne efterlade sig et samlet værk, der den dag i dag kvalificerer bandet til at stå blandt de 4-5 mest originale og betydningsfulde britiske bands nogensinde. Siden har Johnny Marr helt anderledes spredt sine talenter i nær og fjern; hos The The, Electronic, Modest Mouse, Billy Bragg, Pet Shop Boys, Kirsty MacColl, Talking Heads, Bryan Ferry, Lisa Germano, Oasis, Noel Gallagher, Crowded House, Neil Finn, Jane Birkin, Beck, The Pretenders, ja, man kan nemt bare blive ved. Vi fejrer Marr’s specielle melodiske touch her med en kørsel af Billy Bragg’s ‘Shirley (Greetings To The New Brunette)’, hvis musik han får til at ose den håbefulde melankoli, det levede liv, den engelske regn, det fjerlette håb og de livstruende nederlag, der var The Smiths’ musikalske dna. Happy birthday, Johnny!

På denne mandag er der nyt fra gerningsmænd i nær og fjern. Fra Frankrig kommer nyheden om, at den drabsdømte tidligere Noir Desir-forsanger Bertrand Cantat, som senest i 2013 udsendte musik som bærende del af duoen Détroit, 1. december udsender Amor Fati, sit første album i eget navn. Den oplysning kommer med en første single derfra, den ligefremme og Brexit-britiske ‘L’Angleterre’…

En tracklist på det kommende album:

Amie nuit
Amor fati
Silicon valley
Excuse my french
L’Angleterre
J’attendrai
Les pluies diluviennes
Anthracitéor
Chuis con
Aujourd’hui
Maybe I

Eno + Ferry, Roxy Music.