"Johnny Marr felt like Yoko Ono" - excerpts from interview in Q Magazine (Dec. 2016)

Johnny Marr felt like Yoko Ono - The List
Johnny Marr thinks the only person to have had as much a "hard time" over a band splitting as he did is John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono.

Full interview in Q (Dec. 2016) - info / digital download

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interesting stuff, knew the name sounded familiar. Found this for others but I'm sure you know already.......


Andrew Berry shared a rented house with Marr, a house belonging to Joe Moss, the first Smiths manager. Andrew used to be around all day, sticking his oar in and making cups of tea through the writing of ‘Reel Around the Fountain’. “Andrew used to sit between me and Morrissey when we were writing songs,” says Johnny. “No-one else was ever allowed to do that. He and John Kennedy promoted our first gig and, in fact, people first took us seriously because of our Andrew Berry connection.”

Andrew is also a music maker. He’s currently working in the 24-track studio Johnny has built in his home. Johnny works in there too, of course, most recently doing the guitar sounds for Mind Bomb, The The’s LP, and working with Bernard from New Order on his “solo” LP. Neil Tennant has also become involved, after spending a weekend in Manchester and completing a song from scratch.

Working in a home studio is a different kind of thing from rehearsing and gigging with a band. “Things have changed. All those House records from Chicago, there are some great records made by just one person with a little bit of gear.”

Dave Haslam – NME 24 June 1989


You can’t underestimate the importance of Andrew Berry. He was one of the DJs at the early Hacienda and he knew everybody. He still does. He furnished Bernard Sumner with his haircut, which was very important, and then he would do mine and eventually Morrissey’s. He decided that his salon was going to be in the dressing room of the Hacienda . . .

One of the crucial things Andrew brought in was that he played absolutely up-to-the-minute electro at the Hacienda – up-to-date, early electro. That’s why in ‘How Soon Is Now’ the harmonic lick is from Lovebug Starski (Bronx-born electro/hip-hop pioneer): that was me getting one up on the journalists, putting a lick from a hip-hop record into a Smiths song. All the Bobby O releases were amazing stuff. Andrew, from the late seventies, had been very very involved in the Manchester gay disco scene. He brought into my life an awareness of what was going on in the gay scene in Manchester, whether it was Bobby O records or the fashions . . .

Very importantly, Andrew brought me into gay clubs, and very important to me and the Smiths was a club called Manhattan run by this fantastic guy called Dennis. It was a little club, and me and Andrew would go in there at seven when there was no one in there. We would go up to the DJ booth and play the records we wanted. We liked gay clubs – the people who ran them were funny and there was frankly no alternative apart from Corbieres; that was all right, but aside from that it was clubs and pubs, which meant football fans and dickheads.

Johnny Marr – The North Will Rise Again – Manchester Music City 1976-1996


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