Johnny Marr in Daily Telegraph (AU)

Pretty nice interview with Johnny in the Telegraph (Australia, subscription required). I find his interviews a pleasure to read. Looks like a solo album in the works for him next year?


Transcript provided by kissmyshadestoo in the comments.

Excerpts:

This year was the 30th anniversary of The Queen is Dead, next year is the 30th anniversary of Strangeways Here We Come. Yet there’s never been anniversary reissues. Is there anything left in the vaults?

There are songs in the vaults, they’ve come out on bootlegs which is a f!@#ed up really. There’s a whole slew of out takes, quite a lot of instrumental tracks that were really decent music in their own right. As a fan, myself, I’m fairly reliable when it comes to quality control. I don’t like when I get a load of crap from my favourite band stuck on the end of the CD. But I’m really happy when I hear great alternative takes and demos that are a good valid listen. I’ve assumed the role in the band of the custodian, I guess, which happened mostly when I remastered all the catalogue. That was a bit of a legal and technical and political battle. I would have been happy to have done a decent job of the remaining tracks, like the original take of There Is a Light (That Never Goes Out) before I put the strings on that really holds up as almost an unplugged version, the instrumental versions of William I Was Really Nothing and Please Please Please (Let Me Get What I Want), those kinds of things. As usual with the Smiths there was a fair amount of bullsh — in the background and people being difficult with the result that it ended up being leaked. Fans got a fairly substandard version of it. It’s a shame but nothing changes very much.

Morrissey said there’s a cover of Elvis’ A Fool Such as I the Smiths recorded in their final days. Does that exist?

Yeah. It’s a good job no one’s heard it. I never liked the song in the first place. I love Elvis, but that really wasn’t one of his better tunes.

What do you think of Morrissey’s solo material?

I’ve really never heard it, that’s the truth. There’s so much music out there. I’m forever playing catch up. I try to avoid being that guy who’s manically trying to keep up to date with every new band who’s around for two months. I’ve always been someone, one way or another, gets to hear the good stuff that’s knocking around. That’s a long way away from sitting down morbidly listening to what my ex partner is doing musically. That seems a little mawkish to me. I don’t really have an opinion on it. I remember years and years ago it sounded like my sound, that was a little weird. I don’t know what has happened in the last 20 years with his sound.
 
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Lord, but he is a prat. I mean, Morrissey's eternally in the running for prat of the year, but whenever I get fed up with him for backing Farage, exulting in Brexit, calling Chinese people a subspecies et cetera all I need to do is look at the... smug right on-ness coming off of Maher to find myself missing him, warts and all. He's so vacuous, so blandly pleasant, and so pleased with himself, how it grates.
 
To be fair, Morrissey hasn't ever commented on Marr's post-Smiths work either, except for taking some pleasure in Marr being kicked out of his pal Chrissie Hynde's The Pretenders.

Yes, he has. Sometime in the 1990's Morrissey commented that Marr was wasting his talent putting his music to such bad lyricists/singers. I guess he was referring to The The and Electronic.
 
Lord, but he is a prat. I mean, Morrissey's eternally in the running for prat of the year, but whenever I get fed up with him for backing Farage, exulting in Brexit, calling Chinese people a subspecies et cetera all I need to do is look at the... smug right on-ness coming off of Maher to find myself missing him, warts and all. He's so vacuous, so blandly pleasant, and so pleased with himself, how it grates.

You put it harshly, but I agree. His book, especially, gives the impression that he's leaving out big, significant negative experiences. Perhaps he's worried about coming off whiny and being compared to morrissey for it. But his description of his childhood is so blandly pleasant, as you put it, that I can't help wonder what he's leaving out.
 
Yes, he has. Sometime in the 1990's Morrissey commented that Marr was wasting his talent putting his music to such bad lyricists/singers. I guess he was referring to The The and Electronic.

He's commented on Bernard's singing before to which Bernard replied in an electronic interview that he was going to twat him the next they met. Personally I thought Bernard gave a funny depiction of marr in his own book. Not mean or critical, well maybe playfully with the running into the pole bit, but it was interesting to hear someone else talk about him. I think from what marrs said in the past about not wanting to focus on drama and fights in commendable but of course that sometimes leave an incomplete kinda boring story in its place. I think he once commented that he was bummed when reading a links bio and found it full of fights and bickering
 

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