Questlove Supreme: Johnny Marr

You'll be pressed to find any band at least worth their grain of salt that has been formed that at least you know, doesn't name check our Guest as a major influence on their creativity. Of course, he has most notably co founded The Smiths, but he has played and collaborated with such luminaries as of course Modest Mouse. I have so many questions about you and Portland like my all time favorite self right, the Pretenders, of course the Cribs, his supergroup with Bernard Summer and Pet Shop Boys.

a pretty comprehensive home studio. When I moved out and I moved into this kind of old factory building in twenty sixteen, I ran around to everybody saying, I've seen the light. Get out of your house in the morning, drive to work, go and do your day's work. Drive home. Don't you know, get out of the house, don't we'll have a home studio. Well, now I have two studios. I have one in the house and I have one

in a separate building. But this room was kind of modeled on one of the rooms that I was working with when I work with Hans In. I just had a spare room in the househouse isn't particularly big, but with technology being the way is these days, you can have a pretty decent mixing room. So I spend all the time that I'm supposed to be at home with the family a sort of spending this room.

If you can do that, if you're fortunate enough, because I think it gives you that kind of window of time when you want to because look, we're all human, as inspired as we may be, you know, I know sometimes you get into these crazy deadlines and twelve hour,

fourteen hour whatever days. I've in that window of time when your subconsciousness is saying I need to make these decisions now because I'm going to get in the car and drive home at nine o'clock, nine pm or whatever it is, and try and be like a human being. I think that's good for the work.

kind of get on board. They wouldn't have it any other way.

But it sort of felt like there's got nothing to do with the fact that they were a big band and I was known that managers weren't involved or any of that. I was studying a room with a bunch of strangers three thousand miles away, and we found myself making music that felt really good that I couldn't identify the one band. You know, It's like when you're a musician, you can hear you can hear bands, and you can

hear their influences. You know, you can hear a certain band and you go, you go, Okay, well, the singer's doing Tom York or she's doing Shaka Khan, or the bass players doing Flea or why you know whatever. You can hear these influences and it's all good. But with Modest Mouse, I had no idea where they were coming from, and I got the invitation from Isaac and it was enigmatic and kind of a funny kind of invitation, and

I said, okay, well we'll go. I'll go over there as an experiment for ten days and it was a whole of the story. But it went really gangbusters straight out the gate when we started writing, and it was inspired and I've got enough about me and know when it's really happening. But to get back to the point, I found myself just really loving what we were doing musically. I've had no idea what to call this music or

any frame of reference. It just made me feel good in the way that when you're fifteen you kind of go, I don't know what it is we're doing, but it feels good. It really was like that. But my family were getting off on my enthusiasm. You know. My wife was like, well, Johnny's buzzing. He's calling me from Portland and you know, he's digging the place, and I'm hearing about all this music they're making. And I was sending over.

My son was a fan of the band, and they heard my enthusiasm and they were kind of like, Okay, this is what we're doing for now. Then, so my life sort of, I guess because the people that I'm involved with and because it's my living. You know this, when we get back to this idea work life boundaries, I try to live, you know, as an older person a little bit more humanely now and you know, not be too crazy. I mean, you know, not be too

sleep deprived. But everything we do is led by the music and what I'm doing really by by what Dad is doing and he's doing. So I'm very, very fortunate that I don't really the work life balance thing. Work is my life.

making a really good noise. We all like each other straight off, and this brotherhood happened. And this is What's happened in a few bands that I've been in that there was exactly the same. And from the outside it may look like I you know, I've I've joined the band,

I've quitted band. But I'm more of a serial joiner than I am a serial quitter because those projects, when you get involved with people in your an album, you get so invested and you talk about it so much, and you're on the phone talking about the tracks, and you're getting together and you're caring about it so much. By the time we finished recording The Modest Mouse album, I was still a guy from England, but it just

would have been too weird to bail. I just wanted to see it through and I cared about the songs. I cared about the guys, I cared about about the record, and I cared about how it was going to go.

one chord and like for like twenty five minutes. That helped my songwriting because I then sort of said, Okay, note to self, when you come to practice tomorrow, bring a couple of riffs, or bring some chord changes, or bring a direction. And then that sort of fell on me then too, and it helped me out as a songwriter. Was I mean, I love writing songs, but it was kind of a bit of a practical thing too. So I can jam with people, but as I said, in my career, haven't really been called on to do that

too much. But in modest Mouse, where it's collective, like six people happened to be six guys in that band with really different influences. Each member of the band would thought they were doing and thought the band was something different and so inspired.

as important as the musical chemistry. So my role in all the bands have been in has usually been the same and in a way I think, on the one hand, alpha is an interesting way describing it, but my role is to let the singers think that they're off about really I'm running it.

which is obviously amazing. But I'm happy with my role in all the bands that I have been in, which is in a way, is that the great enabler if I can be. And I have such respect for the craft and the talent of the front men and women that I've been involved because I learned so much from being in the Pretenders with Chrissy Hind. It was a short stint between eighty eight and ninety one, but I learned so much about front in a band from Chrissy.

But the singers that I've worked with, you know, also I grew up in the time in the mid seventies. I was getting a lot of my ideas together about what a guitarist was. And you learned so much from there was an archetype, if you like. I mean, I know in the States there's the archetype to say, Joe Perry and Steven Tyler, or there's you know over here there's like maybe Jimmy Page or and Robert plant in

the rock vibe. Right, It's the same the world over with guitarists, you know, without getting too cliched, a lot of musicians are a type. It suits. A lot of the bass players I know are very similar. A lot of the drummers I know have quite similar personalities. They go crazy if they've got nothing to do. You know, if you give a guitar player, like a you know, a couple of days off with a movie camera, suddenly

he's making his arty movie, you know. So I was very typical of that, and I just worked very well with certain kind of singers, obviously Morrissey being one, Matt Johnson, Isaac Brock. I mean, there must be something in it because I've done it with so many of them, and I learned so much about them. But I was so serious. I took it. I took the business of my apprenticeship trying to form a rock band or be in little bands.

When I was a kid fourteen fifteen, sixteen seventeen, I mean, I left school, I left high school early to be in a band with adults when I was fifteen. I took it so seriously that a lot of the lessons I was trying to learn when I was a teenager proved to be correct. You know, a lot of stuff that I said that I was learning before this, myths, you know, I was studying, like, serve the song, the sing is the most important thing. Lock in as a rhythm player with the drummer, and make the bass player

fit in, don't sit on top. These are all things that served me. I was right to study that stuff, you know.

hard living, you know, young music freaks. Well, certainly my earliest musical memory is watching my mother and my dad's sister play a forty five like fifteen times over and over again, and luckily for me, I had guitar on it. It was the Everly Brothers record. But watching these two young women stand at a record player and just play it with this joy and I was sat on the floor with his joy and then play it again and then again. And then I kind of grew up with that.

And my mother and father are still still around now. If I go around to the house now, I have to build in an extra forty minutes because I know my mother's going to be showing me these songwriters on YouTube that she's really into. So I grew up in I grew up around that kind of musical obsession.

were into a lot of country music. They're into like people like George Jones, a lot of the Nashville thing. But then there was the pop music, like bands like the British bands like the Hollies, and they liked they liked Elvis Presley and that was a real Irish thing, you know, from the country, So there was a lot of that kind of It was all American except for some of the pop music that was coming out of Manchester.

So it was all about buying records, which was a real working class thing, and then I got into buying forty five's when in the UK what we call glam rock is a little different from what the Americans are called glam rock. That's kind of hair metal and the la scene. But in the UK it was all the early ce Rex yeah, exactly, t Rex Bowie, Sparks, not the whop all of that.

as well. So all of these people had their own entertainment. So in the sixties, Manchester had more clubs per capita than any other city in Europe. So there was comedians, there was bands, there was the beat movement, and it was a place that all the bands, you know in the swinging sixties, well, you know, you had everyone You've got Cream and Jimmy Hendrix and Brian Auger and whoever. And before that the jazz scene and the blues scene.

It was the second place everybody came after London because there was so many different It was so diverse and working class. So you know, Sunn Terry and Brandon McGee came in the early sixties and that was a game changer. And the famous footage of sister Rosetta Tharps standing on the train station that and in Manchester and then the Blue Yeah, and then the Blues boom, and it goes way back before Oasis even.

more about the rhythm and chord wise. But were you at your essence consider yourself in terms of your guitar work, And also wanted to know, like in early Smith shows before you added a second guitarist, like how would you figure out the vision of labor inside yourself because obviously, like a lot of your work, you have to overdub chords on top of chords and parts on top of parts.

you know. So I learned to play guitar by playing along with forty five's like the old way, and my little brother, who was nine years younger when he was a toddler, his job was to put his finger on the record to slow it down, which he loved that. So I learned play from records, and of course I had pals who were in bands, and I was in bands, and then I went through that phase work we all did, where we're all listening out for guitar solos and we're

listening to rock music and all of that. But why I mention this too, because this is why, for the longest time I thought myself as a pop guitar player, because the pop music for me meant he's real, banging, great breath died quite quirky, eccentric, forty five's. Of course I love all kinds of music, but that was my

introduction to it. And I still the way those records were put together and that the guitars were on those records by the Suite and on Roxy Music, they're unexpected and they're kind of hooky, and they're dazzling and they're really exciting. So I always harnessed that, and in a sense, quite often the studio I still do, especially when I'm listening to playback and I'm wondering what I'm going to do with overdubs, I think that's my job, hooks and

preferably something a little unexpected. So it's not about playing amazing scales or solos or anything like that. It's making these, like in my way forty fives. So then when I came to start being able to put my own bands together, say fifteen sixteen, and certainly write my own songs. So this was the late seventies, a new wave was starting to happen. I realized that quite a lot of other guitar my friends, who some of them were great, great guitar players, A few of them they would listen to.

Whoever it was, Jimmy Page or Bert janch or you know whoever in my case now Rogers. But they were listening to this and they'd want to play like that, whereas I wanted to play like the whole record. I would play the whole record, so the whole big picture. So I kind of approached the guitar. I didn't go, this is what a guitar does. I kind of went, what does this record need, We'll do it on the guitar. That's why there's all like high lifey riffs.

like that. But if you listen to all the overdubs that were being done, the overdubs that were being done, that was me sort of trying to go, oh, well, that would be a string part, or that would be a piano part, or that would be So that was stuff that I learned off these glam rock records that I try to do on the guitar. So I'm very lucky that accidentally. You know, I can talk about this now like fifty years later, because you know, I've had plenty of time to think about it and you start

to know yourself better. But at the time I was just that was the way I learned to play, trying to play like a forty five, trying to do everything, not just being in my lane. So I would hear these melodies backing up the vocal or intros and stuff like that, and I would just go, how do I do that on the guitar because we didn't have a keyboard player, so that was my approach. And then because it worked, I guess now that I'm older, if I do sessions with people, really that's what people want me

to do. You know, it's one thing being at a describe it. That doesn't make it say you can automatically do it. But for quite a number of years in my thirties and forties, I think maybe I was trying to kick against that a little bit or do something different to that. But then when I got old old, I went, you know, what's kind of cool to have

a thing that people know you for. I'm all right with that now, and if people you know, if I get invited to play on someone's track, I think I know kind of what they want me to bring really, and it's not like they just want me to play, oh you know, make it sound like what difference does it make? Or make it sound like this German Man, but they do want something that you notice, maybe.

and I don't really know them. But generally, when I've been invited to play with people, I guess the answer. You know what. Question of the answer is, I can't. I think they're kind of too cool to say that. But now I'm older, I kind of go. I want to deliver what they what they want. I think the main thing, though, is like when I was talking earlier about some of the lessons that I learned as a kid,

this thing of being appropriate to the song. I know with you guys as musicians you go well obviously, but actually, in guitar culture in the in nineteen seventy six, thirteen year old guys didn't give a shit about being appropriate to the song. A thirteen year old year old guitar players did not give too shits about the song. It was like, how quick when do I get to be loud and as fast as I can possibly be? So when I came across that from reading a couple of musicians,

I was like, huh, okay. So when I do sessions now, I think I'm trying to find the balance now of being there and delivering something that is noticeable, because sometimes in the past. Maybe twenty years ago, I got too shy, maybe my ego got too small even or maybe I was insecure or paranoid, or in the last twenty years or twenty years ago, maybe in my thirties or something. I did plenty of stuff where I was just playing

too down. I was just being too look. So when I did Inception, I'd worked a one movie before in the late eighties, Dennis Hopper movie called Colors, which was amazing with her behind. I didn't score it. I played on it, Okay, yeah, with Charlie Drayton.

little bit too careful. That's what I mean that. So these days now I've tried to think the most recent Yeah, so The most recent I think record that came out was what I did on Noel Gallagher's last album, which is a great album. I love playing with no because Nole is forward thinking and it kind of answers your question really because he wants me to do my thing and be recognizable, but also he knows I will also want to do something. I don't want to just be

a throwback to forty years ago. But on his record, I delivered something which really stands out. I'm not saying it's amazing. I'm just saying it jumps out from the track. It doesn't sound like another one of his band members. So these days I'm kind of more comfortable in my own skin, really.

about me. He's just a really, really nice guy. And he kind of gave me that direction where he realized that, look, you know, this is Johnny's first big movie, and he's been too polite once he gave me that permission off a when And then there was a couple of other movies where like on this the Spider Man movie, we were working on the music for that for a couple of weeks, and I mean a lot a bunch of us all doing different stuff, and I just came up

with a riff that unlocked the whole thing. I didn't know it, it was just it was a Wednesday, and we were all trying to come up with stuff, and I thought lots of music was being made, but that was because of what he told me to do an inception, which was be you and turn up, be you and be loud. But still, if we come back to it's interesting what you were saying about your approach, I'd call that just being tasteful. And there does come a point where you kind of go, hey, look, I can do

all of this. Joe Boat your stuff. While I'm on the subject, So guitar culture is changing. It's always changing and always evolving. I love guitar technology and I love new guitar players, but TikTok and I don't know whether it's the same for drums, but TikTok and Instagram is really changing a big part of guitar culture. And you've got these like amazing children sat in their bedrooms just being crazy, absolutely amazing, and it's kind of mind blowing

without sounding like some old git about it. Though. I do wonder if the trick is to sit in a room with three other people playing and make it sound like music, and because that is just such a solo activity, playing as flash as you like, I like stuff that sounds like a group. There's a place for that, and

I applaud it. But my I get I don't know whether the values is too much of a pompous way of saying it, but I have my I do have my values, and a lot of my values were as all of us, it kind of baked into you when you're starting out. I got to play some in my life now where I want to keep evolving and I'm working, you know, thinking about my next record, and you crossed your fingers that you've got to be inspired. And it's always quite a big journey. And as I've said, you know,

my family get involved. It's a big deal. But I don't repeat myself. But I kind of like the values that I've got, you know. I like the way my band sound. We have a very and I think that's something that comes with age. It's not about success, it's about doing it for a long time. You go. You know, I don't I don't know. I want to evolve, but I don't really know whether I want to. I don't

need to be TikTok, you know, I just don't. It'd be nice to be on there and all that, but yeah, well, thank you, But I think a lot of it is to do with your own personal taste and maybe you can call that values or it's just what you're into you, you know. But luckily for me with what I do, I said before that I used to describe myself as a pop musician in the smid stays and electronic and I've played a lot with pet Shop Boys and they

like that. I'm a guitarist who likes pop music. But I have to say, in the last sort of ten years, in this genrefied world, that you can't escape genres. I now even I can hear that pop definitely sounds like something else. Now pop really does sound like a certain thing, So I have to then if I have to put a label on it, I'm going to go the easy

route and say what I do is I'm a rock musician. Well, I'm okay with I used to be okay with being a pop musician because I liked the eccentricity of all those records that I grew up trying to play.

like you know, jump out, you know. First time I heard King Sonny a day like mentioned was in that article and highlight realized like, what the hell's highlight guitar?

each other. Like whatever was that now more than thirty years ago to talk to another guitarist that I know about that article, because I got so much shit for that article in the United States.

I think I was called the anti hero. Then, you know, it's an interesting thing. Look, hey, the guitarists are not. It was amazing when this when the Smiths arrived in the United States, we arrived at eighty five tour and so were the tour was sold out. We'd been known and doing pretty well. We were a big enough band in the UK and getting kind of well known in the States. So we weren't we haven't busted into the

charts or anything, but we were. You know, we're playing the Fox Theater in Detroit, I remember, and we're playing the Arragon in Chicago. So we were playing at maybe two and a half thousand and three thousand people, and then on the West Coast some bigger crowds and stuff. So we arrived with an audience. It's kind of interesting because our audience they were kind of like get us, and there was all these kids who were like they

were given us this thing. Wow, you've liberated. I didn't know what a jock was until that tour of nineteen eighty five, and then when I was meeting fans and they were like, yeah, we hate the jocks too, We're really anti jock. You guys really pissed the jocks off. And I was like, what's it, jock? But I'd say there was a movement of bands. It wasn't just a Smith. I think depeche Mode did that, and The Cure did that,

New Order Echo and the Bunny Man. So we were part of this wave of British boys mostly who and it was cool.

my mind. But I was very nervous being a guitar player because I have a huge part of it. I used to get so nervous before shows because I did because of the guitar culture. I thought, these people America

is not going to get me. This is coming back to I'm remembering the mindset when I did that article, because they asked me to do that article you're talking about beyond the cover of the first it was the last one of the decade or the first one, and I was like, I don't know whether guitar playing America understands me.

the Midwest, if you will, sort of affect that. So I always wanted to know what the concerts look like because it.

this day. To this day being sampled. It's amazing. And yeah, and the audience, I mean my own audience as well, it's it's pretty it's pretty cool. But you know this, we come from a city that it's a whole different sub I guess, well, maybe it's related. But in eighty one eighty two Manchester had this really strong relationship with

New York and the electro scene. And really we have to thank Factory Records and therefore New Order for that whole thing, certain ratio, and these were all my pals and I hadn't had a record deal yet and I was born in the Smiths but everybody, everybody knew everybody else. And you know, the first ever Smiths show in America was a dancetyria.

We were buzzing that we were at Downceeteria, and the myth goes people say, this is true, but I should know this, but that Madonna because she worked there, that she opened for like a twenty minute set. I know, it's spending a couple of books and it may actually be right, But that was that was crazy that that that happened. Yeah.

way that you think. So I know Factory Records because around like eighty nine to ninety kind of when a second wave of hip hop is starting, some independent record labels got wise to the fact that you know, of the old records that were sampling and whatnot to come up with compilations, and so of course they were just instead of you having a rummage through shit at the Salvation Army, you know, and find doubles, you could just

buy a compilation and have it all on there. But then Factory Records would take it even further and not even just put the song on there. They would just put the brake on there. So they would they would just look like sixteen bars of a reticular break do that for five minutes.

under the thing and the NPCs and stuff. I mean everybody the first nine yeah, yeah, you know, everybody was everybody was making music with those with those things. I mean it was the center of Manchester, as in eighty well eighty seven, but definitely eighty eight was the center of house music in Europe. It wasn't Berlin, and it wasn't and it wasn't London. Everyone knows it was Manchester. So it is brilliant that you have those kind of you have those connections that music can do that you know,

it's amazing. Yeah, yeah, you mean like your dad liking yacht rock. You know, everything's fair game. But I think a lot about that to do just plainlist, to do with our age and where we are in If your musician a certain age now, it tastes should be eclectic because we grew up with like fifty years of all kinds of people doing really interesting things. And if you're just someone who likes music, you're like a hook in this song, you like a groove in that song, you

like the way that person sings. It's all fair game and the way the technology has served us all. I think it's a really beautiful thing. You know, it's an Zim has got this great story about meet and for l writing on Spider Man. He always says, I mean he was watching the guy who wrote Happy writing a song with the guy who wrote Heaven Knows how miserable. Now that's a good story, right, nice, it's a good story.

But but it's that kind of proves my point really, like everything's a mix up now in pop, which is kind of amazing. You take something like Billie Eilish with Billy a few years ago on that Bond film and her and finished a great examples of modern musicians. You know, So I feel how great I look at I've got the best guitar gig of all time, playing with all these different kind of did people from different genres of music. It's just great.

But yet, you know, Kirk, I don't know if you know the story, but how old were you when Vernon Reed gave you his guitar?

give this that. Because my brother was out in town a.

this new other album. And my brother, who Noel had known for a while, said, oh, yeah, my brother's on that record. And Noel was like, what what do you mean your brother's on this record? What do you mean? He said, he's playing guitar on it. So and then no was like, hang on a minute, what's your what's your last name? And he said, oh, mom, Ian Mars. Anyway, that's how that's how that came about. And that's kind of a long story. I won't go we're going to

be here all night. But my brother gave me the tape of an early Oasis demo and then the next thing, I saw Noel in the in the rain in Manchester one day and I gave him a ride in the car and we went and talked and I just really liked him. And the thing is I went to see his band. The story really short. I went to see his band a few days later, and I swear there was eleven people there max and the show was just for my benefit. They were on it like seven this

is no this is in Manchester. It's way before that, okay anyway, he so I went and watched him. He did like five five songs. But then when he called me the next day asked me what I thought I'd made a point of saying, well, look in between numbers, you take a long time tuning up. His guitar was so shitty he kept going out of chin. I only said that because he asked me, do you have any advice?

And I said, well, you know, you really could do with a backup guitar, And quite rightly, he said to me, well, that's okay for you to say, mister indie rock star. I'm on the doll I'm on the benefits. So I was like, oh shit, okay, yeah, good point. And I thought he needed a guitar, and I can't give him a crappy one. So I gave him a guitar that I did a lot of smith stuff on. That was I did panic on and a whole bunch of stuff, and it blew his mind.

He and my manager just really hit it off and they've been really tight. They've been together for thirty odd years throughout the whole journey, and me and Noel are closer than ever early thirty years later. But and you know, he's done plenty of good stuff for other people too that is less well known. I guess. So's it all kind of comes you know, what goes around comes around, you know.

way you mention it. No, I haven't I got very because when after this Charming Man came out a lot of people were writing that the guitars were very high life, and as Kurk mentioned, I had no I didn't know what high life was now in the UK, in the sort of underground station everyone knows, you guys don't know about John Peel. He was such a seminal guy.

in the underground. But I just played the way I played, As I said, I was just looking for melodies and I had a kind of unusual way of playing. I think, playing that real clean sound m h. And I mean if you want to know about that as well, that was It's funny how these things come about. But I was almost forced into a clean sound, which really suited me.

It was great because of the way fashions music fashions go, so because of punk rock and the sex pistols playing this very overdriven, let's say, like a Ramones kind of sound in the In the US it was short, sharp, very distorted like that, because that had happened after punk everyone was looking for their own thing. You might, you guys might find this interesting in Manchester because we're young. You know, quite often young people define themselves by what

they're not. So if you're kind of hip in Manchester or but probably anywhere in the UK and maybe the States, not too much the States, but seventy nine eighty eighty one. For guitar players, there was a whole lot of thou shalt not so it was thou shalt not play pentatonic blues licks, thou shalt not sound like Freebird, thou shalt not sound like and it gave us. So there was a lot of As a guitar player, you know, you want to be modern and you want to be contemporary

and cutting edge. So in my case, for me, my took this stuff very seriously, like distortion was out, a lot of effects were out, except for Charlie Burchill from Simple Minds. He did it well. A guy from Killing Joke did it well. But there was a whole bunch of guitar players, and in my case, what all I was left with was clean, no effects, and I was the one guy playing melody in the band, and the Factory Records guys all went towards funk, so a certain ratio.

You hear it in New Orders Records. So obviously now Rogers was real Big Nile's thing, because if you've got no distortion and no sustain when you play guitar coord it disappears real quick unless you're going in the game thing, unless you're playing a lot of funk. Now, I mean this was very deliberate on my part. There was a few bands who were doing that very well, who were on the John Peel Show, and I was able to

do something else. I was able to play very melodic, and I was able to play our pedgios, and I wanted my own thing. So bands like you hear it in Orange Juice and some of the What Postcard records where they've got this anemic very low fi approach with James Brown Beats because it had to be non rock, that's the thing, non rock, non rock, so funk was kind of a thing, but still it had to be lo fi. I think in the US the closest to

it would have been ESG, you know. So it's this minimalist lo fi almost amateurish cool thing, and so the guitar version of that, and no one was doing what I was doing. So my point being that I was left with a few sort of very only a few things left that I could do. And I think that's a really good thing for art. I think if you've got just a few options, particularly in this day and age, when you can sit in front of a laptop and you can just pull down loops orchestras, choirs, anything you want,

any kind of plugins. But then may as a guitar player I was. I was left with just a very very narrow set of options. So it made me play in a very hyperactive way. And that's where this high life ye kind of king Sonia day thin comes from. Because I didn't have a whole load of echo hanging around or a load of distortion, and I was very melodic, so I was kind of just really getting busy.

he's all right, And then I met him. What a beautiful guy. Was absolutely beautiful guy, but no one needs me to be in that area. And it was just it's kind of a funny thing, and you know, I had forgotten that. I almost wish that I'd remembered that when when I wrote my book. But I think knowing what you were about well but still hoping to surprise yourself is where I'm at. But I love technology. I'm my pedals crazy and but I've got it down now, and I think it's a whole other thing. But I

think the technology is finally now. Maybe it was a number of years ago, but finally actually caught up with the musicians. If I'm not careful, I can spend too much of my time pressing buttons. I love programming pedals. I love it because it's I say it's programming. I say it is producing with my feet. Yeah.

Trojan Horse. That's the book I'm trying to That's my way of getting guitars into people's houses who would not normally have a guitar book.

else at all. Correct, while I'm in here, I just I wanted to ask, we got the pleasure of playing with Nil Rogers at the Roots Picnic in New York a few years back, and he mentioned your son, Nile that plays ye mentioned you know how great he was at guitar, you know, hearing your story about your you with your parents and just the effect of seeing you know, your playing the record over and over and just music

made in spaces. I'm getting the feeling that there wasn't much of a feeling of what's that noise that Johnny's listening to? Like your parents were listening to the noise of the day, it seems as well. And wondering what the dynamic was with Nile growing up. Was he ever into music that you were saying, oh that's shite or was it a similar dynamic that you had with your parents or.

really I think he's really good. He's made a few solo records and now he's got a new band called Share And but because he put these records out, he was he'd done interviews, and he knows he's going to be asked about me some less polite or call or consider it rather interviewers are gonna ask him about me right out the gate. And he's a smart guy, but

he's you know, he's okay, he can handle it. There was one time I was doing something and a podcast came on and he was on it, and I was hearing him being interviewed, and I was like, oh, I don't know whether I want to hear him talking about his childhood. What am I going to hear? And he's a funny guy, So it was weird. It was it

felt a little like eaves dropping. It was I shouldn't really, I don't go out of my way to avoid it, but I was a little like, I don't I want to listen to the being in if you don't want him to do his thing. But in the interview they asked him about growing up in the house. Now. The thing is, he said, well, straight away, the people that because our house was a recording studio, it wasn't like

we had a studio in the house. The house was a studio that we lived in really, so there was ants in the rooms and they were miked up for certain rooms. Sounded good because I had a big studio in the outbuilding outside, so there's a lot of musicians around. So he grew up with his sister in that environment.

And his answer was that the thing that growing up in his house with me as his father, that the first thing he saw was that my famous friends, whether in Radiohead or New Order or whatever, that he saw a serious work ethic, not just from me and his mother, but everyone. He saw that successful people really work hard, which was nice, but then said it was unusual being in a house where where when he was playing a record he had to explain exactly why he was listening

to it. And and I said to his sister, I went, he's got easy exaggerate. Is that right? Is that a thing? She was like, oh yeah, it was like so I was like, well, really, I used to go in there and he'd be like listening to Pink or Ave Levine. I've got what said she listened? Tell me why I know you're six. I know he's six, but tell me exactly why he's turned me onto a lot of music and vice versa. And yeah, So it was a similar dynamic to my household. It was this thing of I

guess it's just like all of us. Really, it's learned behavior. I think of, Okay, you've got to be musical anyway, because his sister isn't in a band. She can sing like great, but she chosen not to be in bands. And he is a talented musician. But it's that thing of loving music. And I guess he saw how it can be your living, how you can take it seriously, how you can take it almost too seriously. I guess I say this quite a lot with the Irish thing

as well. But in my house, seriously, when I was going to music was really was like a religion in my house. And I get and it's it's kind of like that in Ah. It's probably been like that for my kids. But they turned out okay, so it's all right. But so you know, it's an interesting thing. Well, he's named after Nol Rogers and he's happy about that. Yeah, and know Nile's happy about it. Yeah.

He came out and for the Smiths on our US tour, that tour I was talking about earlier in eighty five, and he was such a great opener because it was just him and his guitar, and he would he was so fearless, he would.

had heard based on Drumson, and we went on. We sounded really huge. But what was great was he got the audience kind of antsy in a way. He was funny and he was thought provoking, and they'd never seen anyone like him, So Billy's whole thing. Back then, he used to say, when he sings a song, he wants to sound like all of the clash, which was kind of what he did. He used to really go for it, so when you would come on, we definitely felt like

he'd built a vibe. So we got to be pals, and I played on the Talking with the Taxman about Poetry album, did a couple of songs with him on that, and then we just stayed to be friends and we wrote Sexuality together, and then I became like he's kind of producer during that period, and he came to my studio and did a few songs there for the album called Don't Try This at Home. He's someone who'll feels as stayed as a kindred spirit really politically, ideologically, I think.

And it's nice when the good guys stay as the good guys, you know, it's really good, very heartening to see.

him because of this story. When I was in The Pretenders, Christy who was a very generous person because behind her first single was produced by Nick Low, the first Protect single, and because you knew I was a fan of Nick Low, when we went in the studio to do the only recording that I did with The Pretenders, we got Nick Low to produce it. So I eventually got to work with Nick Low on a couple of songs great man, Oh cool, So let's stop your sobbing You're on that?

the companies. So it start like they're ripping the companies offer anything right right?