The guitar performance Johnny Marr said hasn’t been equalled: “A beautiful darkness”
While musical icons quite often share an appreciation for one another, there are some unwritten categories in which they exist. I mean, although the Gallagher brothers regularly confess their undying love for John Lennon they sort of embody very different eras of rock and roll. And stood next to the Gallagher brothers in their world is the mod-cut Johnny Marr.
Crucial to the emergence of Manchester’s late 20th-century musical dominance, Marr defined a new era of indie rock in the 1980s. His jangly guitar lines and penchant for arpeggios brought a somewhat cleaner aesthetic to the otherwise dingy world of rock and roll.
The decade before The Smiths’ domination was a relatively stark contrast to their style. Crunching guitar riffs and brutal rhythm sections soundtracked a world of scantily clad performances and sweaty long hair as prog-rock, glam-rock and punk-rock all reigned supreme. It was a decade dominated by many, but one particular artist who left an indelible mark on the decade was Iggy Pop and The Stooges.
He was a fierce vocalist and an enigmatic performer who epitomised the sense of unbridled hedonism that was rife in the 1970s. So it’s surprising that for Marr, a more clean-cut, song-led artist, Iggy was cited as an unlikely hero of his.
“When you inevitably are asked about your favourite record,” Marr told The Quietus. “You can scratch your head and go through a list because your taste changes from year to year or through different periods of your life. However, I have always been able to say that Raw Power is my favourite from the moment I first heard it, and I don’t think it has been equalled since.”
It’s an album that has since been heralded as laying the foundations of punk rock. Iggy and Co upped the ante and squeezed out every ounce of energy a single instrument could muster while pushing the boundaries of lyrical nihilism. Ultimately, it’s a far cry from the compositional work of The Smiths, whose songs were packed with a different, more ethereal kind of texture. But it wasn’t so much a sound that Marr was inspired by, so much as a feeling.
“What first struck me about Raw Power was a beautiful darkness to it, a sophistication almost. It delivered exactly what was on the cover: other-worldly druggy rock’n’roll, sex, violence, but strangely beautiful somehow. From then on, I just climbed into a world with that record,” Marr spoke in reference to the essence of its influence on him.
For a then-adolescent Marr, who spent his time in the darkness of a bedroom honing his guitar skills, the sense of liberation Iggy Pop and The Stooges showcased on the record would have undoubtedly informed his soon-to-be experimental style. And, of course, Marr eventually found his frontman, who would similarly punch the face of world music with shock and awe. Not with shirtless debauchery but with a disturbing and compelling storytelling style that, like Iggy, tapped into the discomfort of the human condition.
