Stuart B sends the link:

Gold Smith by Will Hodgkinson, The Guardian

Excerpt:

"There's a sad song by Del Shannon called The Answer to Everything that my parents used to play, and it struck a chord in me because it sounded so familiar. That song was the inspiration for [the Smiths'] Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want. I tried to capture the essence of that tune; its spookiness and sense of yearning."

Over an afternoon of coffee-drinking at his Manchester home, Marr goes some way to explaining what it is that drives him. The legacy of the Smiths is growing as the years pass - last year NME recently voted them the most influential band of all time, and Morrissey has returned after years in the wilderness of the Los Angeles sunshine - but Marr looks unlikely to revisit his old band, or the orchestral, multi-layered music he created with them.

"I've had enough of smoke and mirrors, both literally and figuratively. So I've been listening to Melanie, Donovan, Davy Graham, Joni Mitchell's first album... I don't want to hear music that uses a large vocabulary to say nothing. My attitude now is: why use a lot of words when fuck off will do?"