And buried on a b-side. Incredible.
Showing posts with label Johnny Marr. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Johnny Marr. Show all posts
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Monday, November 18, 2013
A Good Day's Work
Here's how the story goes:
One Friday in June of 1984, Johnny Marr decided to write a song, as one is wont to do when one is the 20-year-old musical mastermind of The Smiths, for Morrissey to later add lyrics and a melody to. It'd been a week or two, perhaps, since their last single, so it was high time.
He thought it should be something up-tempo, and he had a little portable 4-track, so he went to work. A bit over an hour later, he had this:
That same night, he was alone and feeling a bit melancholy. So he decided to write another song, a slow one this time. He came up with this:
The next day, he went into the studio with the outstanding Smiths rhythm section of Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce. Believing it's a good idea to write songs in groups of three, Marr thought he'd see if they could maybe recreate the swampy vibe of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through the Jungle"—a difficult task, made exponentially trickier by the fact that he'd never actually heard CCR's recording, just The Gun Club's cover of it. Undeterred, the band jammed for a few hours and, intoxicated by the results—even then, they already had a pretty good grasp of what they were creating—nailed the basic track. That night Marr added roughly a billion guitar overdubs later, this was the result:
Really, that's not a good day's work, or a good weekend's. It's not a good month's or even a good year's. That's a pretty sweet career, right there. In about 36 damn hours.
One Friday in June of 1984, Johnny Marr decided to write a song, as one is wont to do when one is the 20-year-old musical mastermind of The Smiths, for Morrissey to later add lyrics and a melody to. It'd been a week or two, perhaps, since their last single, so it was high time.
He thought it should be something up-tempo, and he had a little portable 4-track, so he went to work. A bit over an hour later, he had this:
That same night, he was alone and feeling a bit melancholy. So he decided to write another song, a slow one this time. He came up with this:
The next day, he went into the studio with the outstanding Smiths rhythm section of Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce. Believing it's a good idea to write songs in groups of three, Marr thought he'd see if they could maybe recreate the swampy vibe of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through the Jungle"—a difficult task, made exponentially trickier by the fact that he'd never actually heard CCR's recording, just The Gun Club's cover of it. Undeterred, the band jammed for a few hours and, intoxicated by the results—even then, they already had a pretty good grasp of what they were creating—nailed the basic track. That night Marr added roughly a billion guitar overdubs later, this was the result:
Really, that's not a good day's work, or a good weekend's. It's not a good month's or even a good year's. That's a pretty sweet career, right there. In about 36 damn hours.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want
I have such a crush on Johnny Marr.
I think it's almost certainly unwarranted. As with other gunslinger prototypes like Keith Richards and Jimmy Page and the Edge and Peter Buck, he's probably not nearly as cool as he comes off. (In the case of Keef, that's unquestionably true.) He's probably nearly as prickly as—or maybe even more than—the lead singer. I mean, in this case, he's the guy that broke up the band, breaking the hearts of the other three in the process. But by dint of his literal and figurative position in the band—hanging back, partially in shadow, cool composer/creator of the musical tapestry as the frontman dashes around, trying to engage the audience, the attention-seeking sod—the guitarist is the cool one.
I know this. And yet. I still have such a crush on this most unlikely, unusual of guitar heroes. And now that he's finally started singing, some 30 or so years later? And he's not bad?
I mean...the beauty of that composition (oh, major 7ths, you are so lush and so lovely), the delicacy of the intricate picking, the odd changes, the soaring, searing countermelody that only enters in the final 30% of the song, the musical asceticism...the bastard's like a Britpop Debussy of the electric guitar.
Swoon.
I think it's almost certainly unwarranted. As with other gunslinger prototypes like Keith Richards and Jimmy Page and the Edge and Peter Buck, he's probably not nearly as cool as he comes off. (In the case of Keef, that's unquestionably true.) He's probably nearly as prickly as—or maybe even more than—the lead singer. I mean, in this case, he's the guy that broke up the band, breaking the hearts of the other three in the process. But by dint of his literal and figurative position in the band—hanging back, partially in shadow, cool composer/creator of the musical tapestry as the frontman dashes around, trying to engage the audience, the attention-seeking sod—the guitarist is the cool one.
I know this. And yet. I still have such a crush on this most unlikely, unusual of guitar heroes. And now that he's finally started singing, some 30 or so years later? And he's not bad?
I mean...the beauty of that composition (oh, major 7ths, you are so lush and so lovely), the delicacy of the intricate picking, the odd changes, the soaring, searing countermelody that only enters in the final 30% of the song, the musical asceticism...the bastard's like a Britpop Debussy of the electric guitar.
Swoon.
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