Set the Boy Free

If you are a serious fan of The Smiths, you will find much to like in Johnny Marr’s dutifully accurate memoir Set the Boy Free. You first have to get through the opening 100 or so pages that trace Marr's childhood and early adolescence, and are filled with banalities like these: 

I’ve no idea if music is something that you’re born with or is bred into you, but the fascination I had with music was something completely personal and natural, and I knew that if I wanted to be the real thing then my wooden guitar would have to be electric, or at least look like one. I carefully took the strings off it and laid it down on the concrete back-room floor. I got a tin of my dad’s household paint and painted my guitar white with a huge old paintbrush, and then I stuck two beer-bottle tops on it to look like volume and tone knobs. I got white paint all over me and most of the floor, but I felt like I had stepped up a level and I thought it looked fantastic.

But around the time that Marr visits the home of a sensitive neighborhood teenager named Steven Patrick Morrissey, his book becomes much stronger as it recounts the band's thrilling and almost immediate rise to stardom:

I followed Morrissey up the stairs and noticed his clothes. He was wearing suit trousers and a buttoned-up shirt with a T-shirt underneath and a baggy cardigan. His hair wasn’t a quiff but was short and fifties-like, and I thought his look was similar to the older guys around the Factory scene like A Certain Ratio, more bookish and intellectual than street. There was a life-size cardboard cut-out of James Dean from the film Giant on the corner of the stairs, and I noticed a typewriter as I walked into his room. I was wearing baggy 1950s Levis with bike boots and a sleeveless Johnson’s jacket. I was also wearing a flying cap and had a huge quiff dyed different shades of red. I sat on the bed and Pommy sat on a chair on the other side of the room, and then Morrissey, who was stood by his record player, said, ‘Would you like to play a record?’ I walked over to a box of 7-inch singles that was on a dresser and inspected all the Decca and Pye labels until I came to a Tamla record by The Marvelettes which I liked, called ‘Paper Boy’. I took it out and Morrissey said, ‘Good choice,’ then I flipped it over and put on the B-side, which was called ‘You’re the One’.

We got talking and I commented on his collection of rare Tamla 45s. He asked if I’d ever been to America, and I raved about Dusty Springfield’s ‘Little by Little’. He played me Sandie Shaw’s ‘Message Understood’, which I hadn’t heard before, and then ‘A Lover’s Concerto’ by The Toys.

Talk turned to Billy Duffy and his ex-girlfriend, Karen Colcannon, who we both knew, and I asked him about what had happened with The Nosebleeds. ‘Nothing happened,’ he said, ‘it was just a lot of waiting around.’ I explained that I didn’t have the other musicians for the band yet, though I had a couple of people in mind. I thought I might get back in touch with Si Wolstencroft, as he was a good drummer and he looked the part. Morrissey and I were both very much at ease with each other, it wasn’t a difficult situation at all, especially considering that I was explaining my hopes and dreams to someone I’d never met before, in his bedroom. It felt totally natural, and although he was a few years older than me there was an immediate understanding and empathy between us. He knew I was serious and that I could back up what I was saying. While all this was happening, Pommy sat in the corner just taking it all in. He could tell that something special was happening right in front of his eyes. He was completely silent, with a smile on his face.

When it was time for me to leave, Morrissey–or ‘Steven’ as I was calling him–gave me a few sheets of paper with some words typed on them. ‘Songs,’ I thought, ‘that’s what it’s about.’ I folded them into my jacket pocket and suggested that he call me on the X-Clothes payphone at noon the next day. We said goodbye, and as I went out of the gate and into the sun I thought to myself, ‘If he calls tomorrow this band is on.’

The next day at noon the phone rang. We talked for a long time about records and bands and he asked if I’d looked at the lyrics he’d given me. I had. They were for a song called ‘Don’t Blow Your Own Horn’, and I’d kicked around some chords for it but what I was doing wasn’t really knocking me out. I didn’t consider it to be a problem though, and after some more talk we arranged to get together at my place to start writing some songs. A couple of days went by and then an envelope landed through my door. Inside were a cassette tape and a photocopied picture of James Dean, and on the cassette was a compilation of songs by The Crystals, The Shangri-Las, The Shirelles, Sandie Shaw and Marianne Faithfull. I thought it was a good sign.

Marr also has some other good anecdotes; I liked this section on his encounter with Paul McCartney:

The first thing that I noticed about Paul McCartney was how much attitude he has as soon as he picks up his bass. You can see his total command of the instrument. I heard it too, and at deafening volume, as he stood looking at his amp and went BWOOOMFV! with one note. It was the best bass sound I’d ever heard, and the loudest. We kicked into ‘Twenty Flight Rock’, which I’d managed to work out the night before, and it took every bit of resolve I had not to shout, ‘Holy fuck! That’s Paul McCartney, singing right there in front of my face! Does everybody else realise that that is Paul McCartney . . . standing right there in front of my face?’ Luckily I held it together enough not to do that, and just tried to make my playing sound as authentic and fifties rock ’n’ roll as possible. At one point Paul asked me if I knew ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, and I tried to keep a straight face as I said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ Then he asked me matter-of-factly if I fancied singing the harmony. A voice in my head started screaming, ‘You mean John Lennon’s part? I’M . . . GOING . . . TO BE SINGING . . . JOHN LENNON’S PART?’ But I just nodded and said, ‘OK . . . I’ll give it a go.’ The next thing I know, me and Paul McCartney are facing each other, singing, ‘I saw her standing there.’ I couldn’t really believe it was happening, but I made the most of it. I got brave and suggested ‘Things We Said Today’. He counted it off and away we went. I thought it sounded very good. 

My experience of playing with legendary musicians is that without exception playing is really what it’s all about. There’s not much sitting around talking and doing nothing. I played with Paul McCartney all day. When we eventually took a break, we sat together and Paul and Linda asked me about what was going on with me. Linda was a nice person, funny and engaging, and genuinely interested in what I was doing. She asked about The Smiths splitting up, and I was honest and told her that it was hard as everywhere I went people didn’t seem to want to let me get away from it. She listened intently and Paul was nodding. The subject changed to general musician’s talk, and sometimes Paul would interject with a ‘yeah, The Beatles had that in Japan’ or ‘that happened to us once’, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, which to him it was, as he was just talking with another musician. It was nice hanging out with them, and then it struck me that I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get perspective and insight from a man who actually knew my situation. A man who had been defined by his relationship with his songwriting partner and whose band’s break-up had hung over his every move, regardless of his immense personal and professional journey. If anyone could hip me up to some wisdom and insight, it would be this man in front of me. So after recounting the basic details of recent events, I held my breath and waited for Paul McCartney to enlighten me. He paused, I waited, and then he paused again and said, ‘That’s bands for ya.’ That was it, the sum total of his evaluation: ‘That’s bands for ya.’ Over the years I’ve found myself in a similar situation when a fellow musician is recounting his tale of woe and the predicament with his band. I’ve thought of different things to say, but in the end the best thing to say really is: ‘That’s bands for ya.’ I got that from Paul McCartney, and he knows a thing or two about bands.

But too many of his actual musical insights are bland and unenlightening. Here is how he explains the creation of one of the band's most famous singles:

When the sessions for ‘This Charming Man’ were finally being completed, I sat behind the console and listened to our new single in awe. I was impressed by what we’d done, but more than that I was really impressed by the band. The vocal was fantastic, the bass playing was completely original, and the drumming kept it all together perfectly and was right on the money. The approach to the guitars was really innovative, and I dubbed it the Guitarchestra. With ‘This Charming Man’, John Porter had taken what I could only dream of in my bedroom and made it a reality. I thought my band were the best. We were eccentric and subversive, and we were about to gatecrash the mainstream.

Or check out this section on his collaboration with Talking Heads:

I flew over to the studio in Paris to meet David Byrne on the first day. He kindly vacated the apartment he’d been staying in to let me and Angie have it while he moved to a hotel. When I got in there, I noticed he’d left us some earplugs on the kitchen table. I didn’t think anything of it until the nightclub kicked in below us at midnight and blared full-on disco music until dawn. Steve Lillywhite, who was producing the album, was in the control room when I arrived to start recording, and it was good to have someone there who I knew. I wanted to get straight into playing and I got my sound going quickly, using a Fender Strat for a suitably funky Talking Heads approach, and told him to roll the tape. Steve started the first song and said, ‘This is a bit of a blank canvas.’

I listened to the sparse percussion and drum groove for a while, then Tina Weymouth’s bass line came and a couple of guitar chords, then . . . round and round it went. I was expecting a song that sounded like Talking Heads, and this was just a groove, albeit a pretty cool one. ‘OK,’ I thought, ‘relax.’ ‘Give it to me again, Steve,’ I said. I scoured my brain to try to conceptualise an approach to the track that might travel from my fingers. ‘OK now . . . here we go,’ I thought. Then . . . nothing. ‘What the . . . ? Huh?’ 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. I really didn’t want to freak out. There was only one thing to do: get out of the studio and get my head together. I walked out on to the Parisian street. ‘What are you doing?’ I said to myself. ‘You’ve lost it.’ I walked around the block and then around again, and 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–that was, after all, why they wanted me in the first place.

I walked back into the studio, plugged in my Gibson 335 twelve-string electric and told Steve to roll the tape again. The intro started, and without thinking I played the very first thing that came to me. Steve gave me a smile and a thumbs-up, and when it came to the next section I dived straight into a riff off the top of my head. It was exactly the right thing. The song came to life and everyone was grooving. After that it was plain sailing. David added his brilliant lyrics and vocals and the song became ‘(Nothing But) Flowers’. It was the first single off the album that was to be called Naked, which I suggested they call Talking Heads: 88.

That is all Marr has to say about such as astonishing recording experience?