“I was stumped”: Revisiting Johnny Marr’s collaboration with Talking Heads
Every song or album constructed by Talking Heads was a creative risk. As they made their way through the 1980s, their music was at the whim of any idea that came into David Byrne’s head, from the pop flavours of ‘Burning Down the House’ to the world music experiments on ‘Crosseyed and Painless’. When the band made their album Naked, they helped achieve new textures thanks to assistance from The Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr.
Midway through the album, ‘Nothing But Flowers’ features a guest appearance from Marr, who recorded the song shortly after the split of The Smiths. Marr had admired the band from afar for a long time, telling in his book, Set The Boy Free, “They’d been such an important band to my generation, and had managed to pull off the rare feat of being one of the biggest bands in the world while still maintaining their artistic integrity”.
Though Talking Heads were the ones to reach out to Marr, in the book, the guitarist mentioned only having a groove and Tina Weymouth’s bass line for inspiration when he arrived in the studio. Despite being able to conjure up guitar lines out of the air in his old outfit, Marr recalled hitting a dry spot at first, and said, “I couldn’t think of anything. Usually I can hear, if not exactly the right thing to play, then at least something, but not this time. I was stumped”.
How Johnny Marr overcame Talking Heads writer’s block?
After getting some air outside, Marr realised he was approaching the session all wrong. Although the song sounded like a Talking Heads tune, it dawned on him that they were looking for something that sounded like him. He explained: “Something occurred to me: put a riff on it, and make it a big one. I was being too precious. I needed to throw on my own sound”.
Returning to the studio after a walk around the block, Marr returned with his classic Gibson 335 and turned in the tune’s signature riffs. By the time the producer Steve Lilywhite rolled the tape for the next section, Marr knew what to do, going on to say, “The intro started, and without thinking I played the first thing that came to me. When it came to the next section, I dived straight into a riff. It was exactly the right thing. The song came to life and everything was grooving”.
‘Flowers’ would go on to be the album’s lead single, and Marr would continue to cut three more songs with them. Though it took a while for Marr to adjust to the creative environment without The Smiths, he mentioned learning the ropes with Talking Heads, and noted, “It was a learning curve, and as a learning curve goes, Talking Heads was a good way to start”.
That selfless nature of serving what the song needs has carried Marr to the present, with him saying to American Songwriter, “I’ve been on this journey from being a kid that’s happy to be in rock music, but when something tells me that I need to dig deep, then that’s what I do”.
