“He was so romantic”: The musician Johnny Marr called the heart of guitar playing
Rock fans weren’t supposed to like disco music; that much was for sure.
Both genres represented different ends of the musical spectrum, with the latter somehow threatening the sanctity of authenticity that rock fans felt as though they had ownership over. The rivalry culminated on one of music’s darkest nights, July 12th, 1979, when over 50,000 rock fans descended on Comiskey Park stadium in Chicago to burn whatever disco records they could get their hands on.
Thankfully, this antiquated rage was left in the ‘70s, after music fans realised how limiting their view of one progressive genre was. Great music wasn’t secular; it overlapped across various influences to help push whatever era of music they existed in forwards, and in the ‘80s, a whole host of new bands were doing that.
Stateside, the new wave movement was being spearheaded by Blondie and Talking Heads, who stripped away all the masculine bravado of traditional rock. While in the UK, one band were navigating the contemporary space with unrivalled ease.
The Smiths became the biggest rock band in the country for their ability to leave whatever traditional rock meant behind. Johnny Marr’s angular style of guitar playing, married with the obscure whisper of Morrissey’s voice, redefined a model that was slowly growing tired. But how did they stumble upon that sound? Well, there was an embrace of the genre that traditional rock fans warned us to stay away from.
For Marr in particular, it was the guitar work of Nile Rodgers that helped pave the way for sonic innovation. He claimed, “Nile was a big influence on me, from really from about ‘78, ‘79, even though I was like a lot of people my own age, at that time, you know, I was into new wave and well, everything really, all kinds of guitar music. I guess I was unusual for a guitar player in that I really was into disco, but particularly Nile.”
He continued, “You know, everybody knows Nile’s distinctive kind of chunky kind of scratching funky rhythm thing, but it was just as much as what he was doing on the left hand that really snagged me because he was so romantic and so symphonic and pretty. I always say with Nile, you know, you can hear his soul in the right hand and you can hear his heart in the left.”
You could see how Marr adopted that same style, particularly on a track like ‘How Soon Is Now?’. While the overall landscape of the song was dark and brooding, the pulsating riff was inspired by a funky disco-style rhythm that gave The Smiths’ song that melodic edge.
It’s one of the many reasons that Marr and The Smiths became such beloved names in music during the 1980s. It was a decade of overwhelming, albeit much-needed, sonic and cultural change. Through his music, Marr built something of a bridge between the past and present, and signposted the way for sonic innovation that took influence from a catalogue of different sounds that historically had been kept apart.
