The best riff Johnny Marr ever wrote, according to Johnny Marr
Of all the things you could expect to inspire the greatest riff Johnny Marr ever played, it probably wasn’t a simple party hit from the 1970s.
But this was a Manchester kid, growing up in the era of rock and roll at its blistering height, who was devoted to one religion, and one religion only: the guitar. As he put it himself, “All my mates were obsessed with Hendrix and stuff,” but at the tender age of just 12, Marr had his sights set on one hero. Bohannon.
That may not be a name that you have heard before, or at least not in a very long time, but in Marr’s youthful vision, the American funk and disco pioneer represented the pinnacle of the sort of stardom he wanted for his life. As such, the riff from Bohannon’s song ‘Disco Stomp’ circulated in his head like a record on loop, never fully fading away.
Of course, as time went on, Marr discovered the real genesis that went into Bohannon’s supposed genius, which was, in fact, Bo Diddley. The man was the root of so many guitarists’ inspirations, but as soon as the future Smiths guitarist realised that the ‘Bo Diddley beat’ was at the centre of ‘Disco Stomp’ and so many more of his favourite tunes, everything changed forever.
As such, fast-forwarding to 1984, Marr found himself between the cusp of The Smiths’ debut album and the revolution that was Meat is Murder. He had written the basics for ‘How Soon Is Now?’, but as he later recalled, “While we were doing it, it got to really late at night, and there was just something, I wasn’t digging it. It wasn’t the same vibe as the demo.”
But suddenly, all his education from Bohannon, Diddley, and all the rest came flooding back to him, and he managed to crack the code. By adding a simple tremolo effect to the riff, it upgraded the sound beyond measure, and in that instant, Marr knew he had found the golden path towards a hit.
Although ‘How Soon Is Now?’ was originally released as a B-side to ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’, there was a reason that it was able to rise up and take a righteous place as one of The Smiths’ greatest songs. To this end, you could see clearly why Marr described it in 2007 as the band’s “most enduring record. It’s most people’s favourite, I think.”
Of course, this spoke to the seismic ascension of a band who would go on to redefine the fabric of British rock music as it was known. But at the end of the day, all Marr could think of was his younger self, “this eccentric 12-year-old kid who sat in the car on vacation, there and back, feeling very, very car sick, just waiting for ‘Everybody do the disco stomp’.”
To the potentially more pretentious fans out there, does it slightly let down the prestige and allure that The Smiths have always been shrouded in? Possibly. Yet at his heart, Marr knows he has forever been a musical geek, and when that led him down a path of funk, disco, riffs, and disco stomps, there was no turning back.
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