Morrissey-solo
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posted by
davidt
on Thursday February 06 2003, @11:00AM
Dagenham Dave writes:
This story has been done before but here it is from the Chicago Tribune: Johnny Marr's genius undiluted by Greg Kot, Jan. 23. Excerpt: "Even though I was very young, the decision to quit the Smiths was not impulsive," Marr says. "Because I had absolutely no idea what I was gonna do when I left, I had to consider the worst-case scenario, which was returning to obscurity. That was preferable to the situation I was in, so I have no regrets. "If it's all about drinking from the fountain of youth and fame, you'll be a pretty poor musician. I just followed the music. The Smiths had a great run, but there were other things I wanted to do, and I found that in my hometown there was a revolution about to start in information, culture and music technology, and I didn't want to stay in the old boys club the rest of my life. I wanted to feel like a 23-year-old music fan."
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Bloody Great!! (Score:1)
(User #7276 Info)
Translation (Score:1)
Johnny talks like he is ashamed of having been in The Smiths. However, the more he tries to belittle his past, the more we are given access to his insurmountable guilt about his horrible decision made years ago.
Message to Johnny: It's okay to admit you were wrong. That is the first step in moving on...
(User #2326 Info)
Oh God, Johnny, don't point that gun at me.... (Score:0)
(User #7529 Info)
Boomslang reviews from the UK press (Score:2, Informative)
"Marr's vocals are in tune, but are also devoid of character. This is bad news when your lyrics come from the Gallagher School of Meaningless Twaddle (school motto: "Will this do?"). "
Alexis Petridis
full review [guardian.co.uk]
Independent on Sunday
ROCK BY NUMBERS 2 stars (from 5)
If you believe, as I do, that The Smiths were the greatest band who ever lived, it's hard to accept that a key member could make a record as lacklustre as Boomslang. Johnny Marr's once-shimmering fretwork has solidified into turgid blues-rock. He's no singer, and he's no lyricist: it's all cliched rock-ese. It's proof that even a musician as talented as Marr would never have made it without a lyricist as extraordinary as Morrissey. In 20 years, the boy Johnny has come from giving the world something it needed badly to giving it something it's got more than enough of.
Simon Price
The Sunday Telegraph
Terrible things are being written about Johnny Marr's first solo album and you wonder whether this owes more to inflated expectation, or pique that he never made enough Smiths records, or spite that his bass player is from Kula Shaker and his drummer is Ringo Starr's boy Zak. But it's not nearly as bad as they say. Maybe the vocals are a bit underpowered, the lyrics are certainly complete twaddle ('I'm all new/kinda know it somehow/whirling around') and stylistically it's stuck somewhere between the shoegazing and baggy eras. But what exactly were people expecting: hip-hop- and country~infused gabba? The point, surely, is that it contains lots of nice guitary bits sounding very like Johnny Marr (the opener is redolent of What Difference Does It Make?), mellow, hippyish tunes and a general air of stoner rusticity which refugees from the late Smiths/Stone Roses era will find very pleasing.
James Delingpole
The Times
Marr has taken longer than most guitar heroes to get around to singing, yet his bluesy, weatherbeaten vocals impress. The music is rather fine too and while the album contains enough echoes of his former band to render Smiths diehards unusually cheerful, it actually has more in common with the funky, Day-Glo sound of the Stone Roses. The single, Bangin' On, a more rudimentary take on the Electronic (the band in which Marr plays with New Order's Bernard Sumner) sound, is particularly effective. Sorry Morrissey, but that reunion looks even further away. (4/5)
Mark Sutherland
The Sunday Times
DOOMED to be identified as cogenius in one of the greatest bands of all time, Johnny Marr has cut a rather forlorn figure since disbanding the Smiths. As a gun for hire, he has worked with Bryan Ferry, The The, Beth Orton and Bernard Sumner, among others. With Boomslang, Marr finally sounds relaxed enough to enjoy himself on his own terms (his confident if unremarkable vocals attest to that), and forget about the weight of history. The bad news, though, is that Marr, like so many other Brit-rock leviathans (see also Ashcroft, R; Gallagher, N; Squire, J; et al), has come under the spell of the JooJoo man: for Boomslang sounds almost entirely (Down on the Corner and Another are lovely exceptions) like those cringe-making jamming sessions that open Later with Jools Holland. And, as Mozza once put it (albeit in another context): "That joke isn't funny anymore." One star
Dan Cairns
The Independent
Link to a review [independent.co.uk]
by Andy Gill.
(User #7241 Info)
Credence Clearwater Revival? (Score:0)
Give me substance, and give me meaning (Score:1)
(User #7664 Info)