Johnny Marr on “the only record” that’s been a constant in his life
One of the most beautiful things about music is the way it comes to define our lives. Certain albums float in and soundtrack a season or a moment. No matter what the artist themselves might be singing about, their work could forever sound like a new home, a big heartbreak or the start of a new love. They’re also, typically, beautifully fleeting. You listen to a record on repeat during a distinct period and then maybe never listen again, allowing it to exist as a relic of only that time. But for Johnny Marr, there’s one track that has stuck around as a rare constant in his life.
Very little could be described that way for Marr, a man whose life has been hectic and changeable since his early adulthood. The guitarist was only 13 when he first started playing his instrument, changing his life already as he abandoned his ambitions to be a professional football player to instead be a musician. He was also 13 when he moved house and met Andy Rourke, and the pair started their first band during their school years. Back then, the soundtrack of his life was The Rolling Stones and Thin Lizzy as he played their songs at street parties and school fairs.
Then his life changed again, in a big way, at age 19. A friend of a friend told him about a singer, and Marr went round his house to suggest starting a band together. Meeting Steven Morrissey shifted his life totally.
The birth of The Smiths would then define not only his early adulthood but also the rest of his life, as the guitarist would become part of one of the UK’s biggest and most beloved bands. The band was relatively short-lived, staying together only from 1982 to 1987, but its impact was, and still is, insurmountable. For those years and decades after, the soundtrack to Marr’s live was undoubtedly The Smiths’ songs.
From then on, his life has been all change over and over. The nature of a solo project means that everything comes from one individual, with the music following nothing more than the whims of their influence and inspiration. Marr has also worked with plenty of other bands, including The Pretenders, The Cribs, Modest Mouse and more, meaning that the sound of his life has changed again and again.
But amongst all that, there’s one record that’s held on as a constant throughout his busy and dynamic life. Calling it “The one constant in my life,” Marr shared his love for ‘Midnight Rider’ by Paul Davidson. Released in 1976, the guitarist has been holding onto the 7” record ever since he was a teenager. “Through all the flats and houses I’ve lived in, the only record that has stayed with me is this 45 that came out on [ska label] Trojan,” he said.
While Marr is connected to the alternative music scene and Manchester’s well-known indie history, his love for the track shows just how broad the sound of the city was. “There was a lot of this stuff around when I was a kid: a Jamaican appropriation of an existing pop ditty, which married an unusual, hooky style of playing with great melodies,” he explained.
But then, beyond his teenage years, the track also sounds like his adulthood and the early years of The Smiths as they recorded their debut album at Eden Studios in Kingston upon Thames. “It sounds like it was recorded in two hours on a sunny afternoon in Kingston before the band was kicked out of the studio to make way for someone else, and I like that kind of immediacy and vitality,” he said.
Sometimes, it’s not even about the song; it’s simply about the memories attached to it. After all those years of loving the track, Marr is the first to admit that his actual knowledge of the artist doesn’t match up to his love for the music. “I have no idea who Paul Davidson is,” he admitted, “It was years after first hearing this that I discovered it was a cover of a track by the Allman Brothers. I was horrified – the original version is terrible.”
But the version he heard, first as a teenager getting into music and then as an adult starting to make it, lives on in his heart as a soundtrack to some of his fondest memories.
