Johnny Marr | Full Q&A at The Oxford Union

[Music] so we are yeah okay thanks for inviting me nice a beer you said you'd been here before yeah I've been talks for junior before yeah in in the Smiths play there we played the Oxford ball in 1983 450 pounds which was more than we'd ever been given at any time so that's why we came and it was a pretty interesting night carnage I'm sure it's calmed down and there's nothing like that now I'm sure it's much more sophisticated but yeah it was a summer's start of summer and we came we it was really early in the band's career and you know it was fascinating to come and see to see the place and and but yeah we were on really early and everybody was already completely soused so it was a great it was a great gig or yeah I was right to start my career and that's the only time I've been to the Union thing but I never played in Oxford a lot of the years I played at plate so quite recently they at the academy have played a couple of times I was like I was like coming here yeah that's good well thank you so much for coming back yeah what that what I noticed earlier as we were coming into the event is the reaction you get from your fans it's really intense did you enjoy that yeah well it's funny actually intense is an interesting word for it unknown I think I'm known for primarily I'm known for what I play rather than for what I say or what I've said and that's a nice thing that was something I was that was my intention to be known for what I play the reality is is that so thank you realities that people particularly in in the UK and the United States say they've quite a lot of people think that feel now that I've because I've been around a long time people feel like they know me and so you it's quite unusual as as as unusual as it sounds to be walking down the street and strangers just got hi Johnny hi Johnny and and it's it's a lovely thing it's a lovely thing that's generally my the reality of you know my situation really if particularly in the UK something happened oh I have no idea what in about two thousand four and five where I just got became more well now I don't know why that is because I started off in 1982 and but it's generally it's a very very nice positive you know sort of relationship I got with with of my audience and I think also I started putting solo records out in in 2011-2012 and that created a different kind of relationship with people who come and see me the people who already used to come and see me when we were all younger when they were young when I was you I'm going to say the Smiths or the the and you go back to the eighties with me there's they're still not they're still around and then there's a sort of younger generation of people who came and maybe in America know me from modest mouse and then believe I'm not but anyway because the solo thing is it's all about is me my words so you know the videos and me that more importantly the lyrics and me it's my world view it's a we have a new thing and because the songs are sometimes not always about our about Meis and I think also if you've been around a long time you've been interviewed so so many times if people are interested they they tend to feel like they know yeah so I have a very really privileged I think really privileged relationship with with people who would be following me I hopefully it's been mostly positive tonight but are there any instances where you get kind of a negative reaction from people who know you not negative very rarely I mean you want it to be I'll be totally honest with you about an hour ago tell someone to off because they're out in my face which is which is unpleasant and very rare but occasionally some people think that they know you too much and and someone was getting very personal and and and now obviously that's that's something that that happens very very rarely but I gotta be honest with you you know now and again you know particular people are drunk you know it's a picnic you have to you know you I just tend to treat people if someone gets outta line I tend to treat people like you would in a pub you know it's just got to be a real person about it and just be like well you know but it's so it's so rare only want to come to Oxford University do you ever find it difficult to behave like a real person because you are so well known I try and behave like a real person you know I it's to be might sound a little weird but I I've always tried to behave like a musician like an artist and like a musician like a creative person so if you're talking about Fame then you just try not to be a dick you know you know with Fame comes a massive amount of privilege and responsibility and and it's not everything it's not all it's cracked up to be I think a big thing that comes with some people I've been around here incredibly famous is the maintenance of Fame that's something that's never really interested me however I kind of in a way a bit I've so got my cake on and I eat it because first and foremost is very first in the cell I'm known and famous for what I play that was always that I'm not famous for falling out of nightclubs I'm not famous for brawling I'm not famous for extremely controversial statements yeah but I'm you know but because I've always valued and and and honored what it is to be a musician which and that might sound a little pretentious or highfalutin so what you know I'm pretentious but the the life creative life in my case playing the guitar and being in rock bands was something that I grabbed a really really early age and a little bit like a life belt to be honest you know at sort of ten or eleven twelve I started to be aware of the idea of a musician being a a job for life or a vocation I'm sure there's quite you know there's probably some people who know how that feels here tonight if not all of us I've been a passion about something my case it was records and playing the guitar both those things were said came at the same time I had a knack for playing this toy guitar and making it sound not like a toy and and and then started to write songs at the same time that I I realized that rock culture and pop culture and the business of making records was just something almost mystical and I'm really you know and and I just put all that together when I was about eleven twelve and decided first and foremost I wanted to be an expert I wanted to know everything there was to know about it so I watched every single tell him crappy back in the seventies this well as crappy television program the comedians and light entertainment nonsense because they would always have a band on I didn't discriminate whether it was a pop band and new seekers or brotherhood of man at work drew alignments of stuff but if they had a band playing they had musicians people miming holding instruments okay that's a sunburst Les Paul that's a fender precision bass that's you know that drum is not really playing they look like plastic cymbals and completely analyzing the hell out of it and so it was a super passion and running parallel with that was this relationship I had with the electric with the guitar that so it wasn't just about you know wanting to be rich and famous or wanted to make a load of dough because when you're that young ten eleven me really kind of startled oh you're younger eight or nine come from a musical family of musical obsessives where I saw this obsession in my parents particularly my mother for records when you're that young gay or nine you thought you're not thinking I'll do for fame or I'll do it for dough or do it to attract the opposite sex or whatever it's something else you know it's a vocation so I was pretty unusual in that regard and then the thing that the relationship had with the guitar was and was great because it was something that I used to fetishize and and and love and still do but it also was a way of me having my own sort of private a little bit like a the way people did Diaries and journals so I was able to be like a fairly typical working class boy in a city boy in the seven is and play football and be out outgoing and be a bit of a street kid but because I had this thing about playing the guitar it was satisfied a a side to me that is very quiet and sensitive even and and intense and introspective so I you know whenever I meet people and they ask me about playing the guitar well particularly playing the guitar you know I I can say that well one of the things about it is that it's picking it can make friendship sixth great for being sociable you can find friends but that when you've had enough for them you can just off and play the guitar on your own and be really private and it's also a portable thing that you can take around with you so it meant the what playing the guitar was and could be was all of those everything I've just explained that and more really it was so it's giving me a really amazing life and get back to your original question about how I behave I sort of there's a big part of me that tries to honor that journey that I went on and I see myself as being particularly fortunate because it could have turned out that no one wanted to listen so in there where they have been in that journey you are obviously very talented and very passionate from very young but were there moments where it seemed like you wouldn't be able to make it like you wouldn't be able to fulfill its dedication oh yeah I mean I remember vividly what it feels like to be growing up in the United Kingdom on a Wednesday in November aged 14 15 with nothing to do not much money don't want to be in the house with your parents it was the sakes of Wednesday night in you could be in you could be in Glasgow you could be in Lincoln you could be in Liverpool you could be in Oxford you could be in Portsmouth it could be you know growing up in the UK as a teenager particularly a teenager with a a very inquisitive and curious personality can be can be pretty challenging I think a lot of is to do with the weather lobbyists to do the economics a lot of its to do with the vibe of the place that thing can really fire your creativity and you know I mean I'm asked a lot about over the years I've been asked a lot about why so much music comes out Manchester not just music comedy and writers and actors but particularly musicians and a lot of it is to do with the fact that when you you know if you come from I think this replies to a lot of the United Kingdom you know if it's rainy and dark and even in four o'clock in the afternoon you need you I think humans need to be to put some beauty and color in your life and an excitement and creativity so you have to kind of create it yourself really so that's one of the advantages of growing up and on this weird interest in a little island the thing not a lot of great rock bands come out of Switzerland or Australia for that Mario outside from the bad you know at the birthday party in the Bad Seeds one or two of the bands book and so I think there's something to do with the environment I mean aside from the history and the the inspiration that you get for me in my case growing up in Manchester the Buzzcocks have been famous and we're doing stuff around the corner and then you know and then obviously they're a big influence on when I fall in the smiths and then the Smiths got big in there and the four were around and new order and there they in turn then you know generation of bands the Mondays and James and the Roses and all that much just a scene they'd seen us do it and then in turn then young nascent Gallagher's and badly drawn boys and doves they saw the Roses do it and so the that's a big part of it as well like you use you get there's a history of it's just I guess it's the same for an actor as well or actress you know you inspired by the people who've come before you there's a history of that of great rock musicians come out of at the UK I mean I imagine it's a very simplistic thing but I'd imagine if you were growing up in Oxford in the 9 is Radiohead are going to be quite a bit of a beacon for you or Supergrass you know ride you know you have all these little things that go on in the United Kingdom incredible for such a small place but anyway so there's all that which is quite positive but if you if you're in the suburbs and your skin and you've you've wondering where you're going to find a bass player or where you're going to find a singer or where you're going to find somewhere to rehearse it can be it can be it takes a lot of resolve you know and and so I I had plenty of on paper you know on paper my life is when I rock my autobiography a couple years ago I wanted it to be positive and I wanted it to reflect a certain kind of magical and fortunate aspect to the way I'd see the way my life turned out both but but I didn't wanted moaning about it too much but but there was yeah I mean I'll answer your question there was there's definitely I know what it's like to be a very first to be a frustrated teenager thinking wow you know am I gonna do it but you know I got a lot of Hotspur and I know and a lot of desperation you know I've often when when the story the Smiths is told out I went and knocked on Morrissey's door and put this band together I've strangers who learnt to love each other very quickly when when you read about it it all seems to have you know come together so easily or fortuitously or magically but but one of the reasons why I went and not some irises door and one of the reasons why the two was really really stuck in and dug in and wrote songs one of the many reasons was the pure desperation to not only to fulfill your dreams and try and you know get to this journey where you want to want to be where you'd get to learn your craft and no no not be famous and rich that yeah that's that's there but there's more to it than that but there's massive amount of desperation that you're gonna not be a jump on the lifeboat you know and you just gonna be stuck in the suburbs or in a crappy job or in a call center or unfulfilled and not be a to fulfill your dreams I think so I remember what that felt like how important has collaboration with people like Morrissey but also others been in your career well collaboration it's been really really important in my career primarily when I first started because I just wanted to play the guitar so in the case when I put this myth together with Morrissey there was a collaboration the I knew I wanted a songwriting partner and that's a very specific an important collaboration whoever I would have done it with because I didn't want to write the words at that time I'd done that I'd written words on the front it bands as a teenager I started off being a musician a professional musician out 15 that was when I was first in but I was in bands with adults when it was worse 15 and why I was actually with 14 but why I'd consider 15 being when I started properly you know as a real full-time musician was because I stood then I used to go to a rehearse with a band in Manchester who were adults and it was scary scary dudes and they made made a record and they just made it being that this band I was 15 so I lose that I felt was a slight freakshow element to it but I went with the intention that I would learn out I would learn much shorter trade anyway they stereos in there in the red light district in Manchester and that was in 1979 and and it was scary and you know and it was it was dangerous so I just go and do that I started doing that at 15 and so by the time I came to put the Smiths together when I was 18 which is very young I'd already been in quite a few different bands and I so sometimes I used to have to be the frontman in Shirley because of my haircut was so good but she's very very important and so I was shipped to the front and learned to do it but I didn't want to do it at the time so when I came it would get the Smiths ago I just want it to be a expert guitar composer and producer of the band and do that so that was my role so collaboration was always there and then pretty quickly I started collaborating even at 1920 while the Smiths was growing up collaborated with Burnitz Sumner from new order and then Kirsty MacColl it was a genius singer-songwriter in the 80s and suddenly no longer with us and Billy Bragg so I was I started to collaborate with a lot of my peers I was asked to to play on people's records quite a lot and I did that because I wanted to expand my horizons and I wanted to learn how other people did it and I and also to it's an amazing thing to be asked to put your sound on someone else's record so but so back in the eighties I played on a lot of people's records and that scent continued throughout the nineties people like Beck and a shot boys and then loads of other people then in the 2000s then started to be more with people at hand Zimmer in the film world and I got really spoiled with first movie I did was was this film Inception which was it was like a real big success so then then I got into some movies for a bit and right ROK's with Pharrell Williams and Alicia Keys and people like that people outside of the regular indie world you know so I don't so these days because I'm I'm so busy writing my own songs I tend to I don't know whether I put out the vibe a little bit that I'm not collaborating too much more but I you know I play with Noel Gallagher on Anees records and and continue to play with Pet Shop Boys and maybe do some more movies but soyeah collaborations been massive massive part of what I do I always I always relate it to a few years ago I wouldn't mention this but now Rodgers has become so well known now in in the UK he was always like one of my heroes from my sister was a big disco fan so in 1978-79 I got really super into now Rogers I mean so much so that when my son was born in 92 I named him after now Rogers and one of the reasons why I really relate to now Rogers would be because he used to work with all these different of work Madonna rework with David Bowie with INXS he would you and I ran with down a brass and in the eighties and nineties when I was working with all these different people I related to Niall but I never told anyone because it would have thought I was completely insane but now it's become part of my story and young now and I really good friends and we play together and all of that but you know I was on a little bit of a mission to try and break the mold really for the indie rock guitar plays because there's a thing that goes on in in in rock music which is that there's no way around it so you're famous for what you first known known for if you're looking off to get well known that is I don't mean for it to sound like a complaint and and there's a things you know so over the years because I got known primarily and always will be known mostly for being the guitar player in the Smiths there's a thing in Y in white rock music American and the UK where you if you you are never really supposed to break out of those same usually for white guys in the same jackets and haircuts you're supposed to stay der and so with the Z so with bands like you to have been the four friends for 35 years arguably the brief the biggest band of all trot band of all time the Rolling Stones that's still doing it in their 70s to an extent even Coldplay now there is that paradigm that people don't want to it all started with the Beatles we've never ever got over the breakup of the Beatles and so it's a strange one for me because if you're looking off to be known for standing around leaning up against the wall with three other geezers and people love that then that's what you're known for and I was very and very very privileged and still feel very privileged to have been with the Smiths who have been part of a band who a rock band do people still really love and revere and like so I'm genuinely privileged and grateful but I never wanted to look at the same base play for four years in fact actually Andy is the one guy I do look up he's he's East ilmenite but I never wait to look at the same drum of 30 years don't look at him for ten years and that's not personal I just I just saw my future differently I remembered the questions about collaboration so I've had this sort of unusual career because I'm known for being wrong I'm gonna say watch out I'm gonna use the I word known for being this iconic band Hey and but I always saw my future is working with loads and loads of different people and look I'm doing loads and loads of different kinds of music so in some ways it would have been better if I'd hit on the biggest band I was ever going to be in when I was in my thirties instead of nineteen bought it taught me a lot breaking out having the it was a sad it said the way it came about but having to I mean the the determination and the vision and the tenacity and the balls to to break out of it and believe in what what I sort of first started to be attracted to when I was 13 14 which was this idea of taking the guitar into different areas of pop music and you know 30 odd years later I'm still known for being in the Smith but for people who've they were really interested in going a little bit deeper all the other bands have been in there particularly in electronic and cribs and Modest Mouse people who get it they get it you know but comes out a little bit of a price when you were you you know use a bit of a sort of mixed blessing when you when you were known so young for being in a band that got bigger and bigger and bigger you know it's a strain it's a strange thing but luckily I'm sort of fairly philosophical about it and I really love the music and then so I love the legacy so so words out okay I think people are probably quite keen to jump in so if we want to take some questions from the audience yeah just stick your hand up over here right yet right there microphone will come to you just stand up ask the question you can sit down and after that just from behind hi thank you so much for coming this is wonderful um well I'm a really big fan of your work and I'm an aspiring songwriter myself so I was wondering what kind of what advice do you wish somebody had given you when you were just starting out with the craft [Music] I'll be serious I'll tell you seriously I think it's better to be a starving artists and be skinned and doing what you love then giving up on what you love and working in a shitty job I mean you just gotta like fun there's flatmates and work out the economics of it I think whether I genuinely believe that whether you become successful at it economically or otherwise you've got to do if you create your person you've got you've got to do it you've got doing and you don't give up and you just find a way and all right if you have to have a part-time job whatever I didn't I didn't really need to be told up because I've got I was very fortunate but but I'll tell you that because I think the greatest thing about being a songwriter and I think this applies to anything but particularly in the creative world is a life of trying to be an expert because when you're an expert at something that's what really counts when you put your head on the pillow at night I think anyone who is really great at what they do you know whether that's John Lennon or Jimi Hendrix or Bob Marley or or Rihanna or and anyone they're an expert what we do they don't they didn't pop I'm sure you know David Hockney or Andy Warhol or Tracy I mean I'm sure you know they fancied quite fancied the idea of fame and fortune as as did I but that isn't that that didn't come first it was what it was trying to do trying to be great trying to be great you know what you do you know so I think I I believe if someone wants to be a photographer you just domain just be try and be a great photographer if someone wants to be a botanist trying to be absolutely the greatest botanist still wants to be a philosopher just be the group just work at that and the other stuff is use cross your fingers really because a life of learning you craft these great is that's my experience and that's why I still do it I don't do to maintain Fame I mean you know I've got responsibilities and I like those responsibilities you know i'ma have to run a business but I've doing it to be to do there's always something great the promise of doing something great around the corner so if you're a songwriter that's what's what I'd focus on writing that those great songs so I wish that's the best advice I can give really no worries I have another question then right right here in the red jumper yeah just over here hi Joe thanks very much was really interesting to hear you mentioned earlier about your success with collaborations has there ever and the songwriting process has there ever been a time when you have maybe brought something to the table and someone else has had a completely different idea for it so what I thought was one of my favorite Smith's songs is some girls are bigger than others we asked quite a strange title and a strange message but I think it's actually one of your most beautiful yeah Meli's behind it it was the Everett in maybe in the case of that song in particular or otherwise there are time when you have an idea for a song and it's changed by a songwriting partner yeah I missed a little bit of it it's a slightly ham-fisted way of pointing it but the quickest work and explain this is it the way I used to write with not only Morrissey but Kirsty MacColl Berners Sumner from New Order's well collaborate with few people I would I would present I would have a completely finished load of music so I'd ever instrument an instrumental track and it's a little like if you paint a landscape of I don't know Dover Cliffs of Dover or something okay and then someone comes along and they go oh okay yeah that's a landscape of like the British coastline okay right I'm gonna write in the front of it I'm gonna paint a camel and you go alright okay I've got can't think of a Smith song it sound like a camel bore but it's that it's that unexpected it's unexpected and it's great it was great and he was same used to happen with Kirstie as well and then you worked then it was my job to then adapt because I had to make it sound like her like it was intentional right so I mean the technicalities are you know it's a so I would write an intro like oh right there's the intro alright his voice is gonna come in now this one here we go I need to be there like this vocal didn't come in and then I'd be like alright he's not singing over the verse right here's the bridge bit where the guitar that great guitar locket he's singing over the guitar bit okay well he's alright well therefore he'll stop in the chorus no no he's not stops he's carrying on Wow okay all right all right so my brain was like mine behind the mixing desk going right so I've got to now make that intro sound like that that whole first verse sound like it's just one really long intro a really good example is a headmaster ritual it was great that unorthodox unexpected yeah a surprise really I looked it I loved it it's great I love that we were on our Orthodox and it put me on the metal the song some girls are bigger than others right is is interesting because it's such a pretty tune and the lyrics so fast and quite depending on on how you feel about things quite comedic right the probably boring answer is at that time Morrissey was my best may and we loved everything that each other did and I was just we both thought everything we did was brilliant and it was only when someone in the music press was like saying I wonder how Johnny Marr felt about that that I started to go yeah that's really weird what he's just done so nicely but the thing is it's it's got the line in as Anthony said to Cleopatra as she opened to create a veil oh I say some girls are bigger than others I thought that's pretty funny so you know what you win some you lose some and I've got this brand new song which came out only on Friday by the way it's on Spotify but you know this comes to mind because I wanted to write about at least feeling to write a song about the ecology and Armageddon and and this then the the Seas rising and and crank crank you know one of the lines is we spend a lot we're spending all our days cranking up emissions and gassing and ignoring and I really wanted I really felt I was inspired to write that song so I married it to a really kind of upbeat this girl party track and it worked because that because it had I'd written something like a sort of very earnest very very very earnest beautiful sincere musical kind of background it would have just turned into kind of a big pity pie in my mind ed Sheeran is very good at it right fair enough there's loads of people who want that experience but I just it it's way my craft works I was like no no no no no it can't just be this exposition in in misery you know so and I think that's one of the things I've learned not just from the Smith's book from Pet Shop Boys as well you know if something's sweet put a bit of salt with it and that excites me that the technicalities in the craft of songwriting excites me I wouldn't have completed the song if I'd had got into this sort of downbeat thing but I thought this is pretty clever and that made me want to finish it so all of these things you know that there's there's all that you know writing songs is it's it's a fascinating puzzle like a lot of things in life you know in the creative arts you know sometimes things just amount just so many people have said this before me but some things just come out and you just go with it and then there's other times you have to roll your sleeves up and it's a real craft and that has its own rewards I think so you know with me with you know collaboration I'm always looking for that I'm actually looking for that the opposites like I was telling someone before we came in here on I did I did the spider-man film a couple years ago it was brilliant it wasn't it was terrible but but I wrote a couple of songs with Pharrell Williams and that was really interesting because it is a R&B musician from the United States and indie rock musician from Manchester England the guy who wrote heaven knows I'm miserable now with the guy real happy and and it's an interesting thing because aside from the fact that he's supremely talented and he's a he's a nice fella the two of us understood with it we don't it you know we don't need to go out to dinner because he's a serial collaborator as well we just got on with it straight away and and and it occurred to me while we were doing that it is a little bit like the two of us you're in a rowboat it's like being in a rowing boat and the horizon is what's coming out of the speakers and you're both ears trying to get there and it's an amazing experience when it's um you know but particular I've got to work with so many talented people but just doing something with a stranger because of your reputation something that you're both very passionate about is he's fantastic it's scary as well you know it's great you know it's exhilarating you know and I think you know maybe because I mean I university but I won I did a talk under many talks but when I was a deal lecture when I went that Salford University several years ago and for mostly for music musicians music students and I just I just my idea was to encourage them to seek out people who you look kind of different you know like if you if your thing is the Chili Peppers try and work with someone who's into electronic music and vice versa you know if you it's kind of an interesting environment like somewhere like this is great because your was University's a famous for famous for collaborations but Manchester University for example is where the young ones started is for big comedy scene in the 70s here this room so Kumari early there's a there's a footlights sixties big big comedy scene in Oxford Oxford uni and it's it's a and famously in the sixties Newcastle University he had a lot of collaborative musicians Brian Eno okay Roxy Music all that anyway it's a whole other thing but I think when my son was he was a musician when he was at the age to go a uni I was just pushing him and pushing him but got a uni not to get a degree but to find a bass player could engage degree which FLE have time for one more question if we want to take it over over here hi thank you for coming I wanted to ask what Smith's song has the most sentimental value to you and and yeah what's meant about ya know it's easy to answer it's a really easy question once which may mean that's a boring and supported so there was a light that never goes out because because the song went first off when you want to sing it people people some people get tears in their eyes and there are so many people who've got they've got it tattooed on him I mean over the last sort of ten years or so tattoo culture is you know has been on the rise and the amount of people that I've met who who've got such a in love for that song and it means so much to them I've sung it so many times now it's the first Smith song that I had a song I didn't want to do any Smith's songs for years and years and because firstly I just felt that no one should and secondly I was up about it and now I learn and not be up about it and to be alright with you passed and and it was the first first time I ever I have a song Smith so and it was there as a light and it was in New Zealand and the place went completely berserk and I realized in that moment that it's one of those things where it doesn't belong to me it it belong it just belongs to everyone I'm like I'm just like the kind of choir master in a way when I sing it and I doubt I'd ever be I do a a concert where I don't sing it it's one of those things where you know people use it for their first they their first dance when when they get married and it means so much to people so there's a light something to do with the we want the title for star the sentiment of it and the and the melody in the music was was just such a perfect marriage of poetry and music I knew it worked the first first time we ever played it and when it came to when it came to rap my autobiography right right in the right in any book it was only very important that I wanted to write book it's very important that I didn't have a ghost writing that I wrote myself and I never actually done a dissertation but I could imagine what a dissertation is doing a dissertation is like because I wrote my own biography it was like every single bit of homework I never did when I was playing learning to play the guitar all came back and and some of it was difficult some of the craft of writing was difficult but when I came to write about when Morrison I wrote there as a light never goes out and then we went in the studio to record it but words were just flying out I'm now couldn't I couldn't write enough about it it was just really really easy to write because the memory of it was really magical you know and I've also been asked there over the years why some of those songs particular Smith songs but not just Smith songs one or two electronic songs as well but why those songs are still popular and there's a bunch of reasons that I want I I don't know but I do know one reason is because there's loads of emotion in the recording the almost almost every single Smith song has got loads and loads of emotion in the record because even if it's just from me I can't speak for the other fellows but because when we were recording it I felt like I was three feet off the ground because I loved what I was playing and I loved the situation I was in and I loved my life and what I was doing and it was cysts unbelievable high that is imbued and infused in the recordings I know enough about recordings for that not to be mystical mumbo jumbo if you can have a great great song it's not necessarily a great record and you can have really really great records aren't necessarily great songs you know and with most of the Smiths things they were both and there is a light please please please as well but are there's a banh chiao him it's not actually my favorite song of the Smiths the my favorite song is last night I dreamt somebody loved me book the one that's the most sentimental which was your question is is there a lot errors alike for all those reasons so I might have time for one very very very quick question if we want to go right over there in the back that's not him he's the one I taught for coffee no joke joking not yet yes so we have a you mentioned a little bit I mean you're not as a guitar borracho ver oh so for good reasons but you've also dead a lot of electronic work with electronic and a lot of the dance music you've been going on so we have this idea called rock ISM in pop music which is you know that on the guitar based sort of for rock and roll music is it's good and disco sucks etc so obviously that's very gentle so I mean we're talking about these sort of guitars the phallic symbol disco is being feminine but for you you mentioned about your guitar work has been a way to express your emotions and be sensitive so I guess I wanted to get your thoughts on masculinity and then of course lastly just your thoughts on the way that the backs of negotiations are going oh man that was that was nearly the greatest question in the world until the end okay it's it it's a really good question I think because so as I said at the very start of all this I had a natural or supernatural attraction to what the guitar was and that was in the early 70s as a child okay first guitar I ever was five it was a toy I was obsessed with this getting this toy that I carried that around for a couple of years painted it with household paint so it looked like electric guitar and then when I sort of outgrew it my parents just sort of took pity on me when he's really outgrown that guitar and and and then a I've got one that could actually properly play that wasn't a toy so I've always been like totally obsessed and the the seventies as it as it unfolded was that was where you know guitar culture started in the 50s rock and roll let the birth of electric guitar throughout the 60s with a beat group movement and guitars became affordable and desirable at that time usually for young boys to play for some reason a lot girls were sort of excluded from the electric guitar sort of scene although the people I'd Joni Mitchell proved everybody wrong she's amazing but anyway so throughout the 70s I'm 10 11 12 on the one hand I'm absolutely fetishizing everything there is about guitar culture so I'm 10 11 12 13 14 but I grew up very very close to my sister who's only 11 months younger than me I think that's something to do there also some by the time my generation I felt that when I got to 1617 I felt that a lot of the messages certainly from rock music that a lot of the imagery was really corny and old-fashioned you know without gate simplifying it being too reductive for example if you went into a guitar shop they might my type 15 in 1978-79 you would see a picture of a guy he was knocking on a bit with a shirt wide open and a hairy chest and his foot up and they may have even been some adoring chick you know I mean that with a snake right it was like the rock culture was getting like that I'm not talking about all the stuff people say white punk happened because programs about the music talk about the iconography so on the one hand I loved and still do love it was too late for me to stop loving all the great things about electric guitar culture which I could believe me I could stay here for three hours and tell you all the great things about it but interestingly enough you know 15 16 17 quite rightly as is the case with most 15 16 17 year-olds you you becomes very intolerant of which is I think one of the prerogatives and one of the great talents and benefits of being 14 and 15 it's kind of tough being 1415 but you don't have spot and you see in your teachers and you see in your parents and you see in your older siblings and you see in politicians and you see in society it's great and and I start to see in guitar culture plus all the abominations that would I was actually hearing in guitar shops and and on rock television of course punk rock came out and supposedly liberated everybody but luckily for me because I was young when punk happened I got kind of the benefits of it being 14 15 everyone had decent air cuts all of a sudden the songs were sure there was amazing music from the Ramones and the pistols and all the stuff that everybody you can read in all these books but I my mates it was 1718 they were got the clubs and they were digging it and there was some venues that I wasn't able to get into and that was good because my generation when we started the Smiths when we invented Indy when I invented Indy was after that and as much respect quite rightly that I maintained for punk rock magazine John whoever all those bands I thought that I didn't consider punk and I think I wasn't alone in this I didn't see the considered Punk as being this is just a peculiarity in mine you know it's this is my theory I didn't see it as being the letter A in a new lexicon I saw Punk has been the letter Z in the old lexicon and that was because I was 16 17 and on one you know and I was writing songs and I was then decided to amp my songs would be feminine big part of that was because I'd spent all my life up to that point very very close from her sister it was a smart girl and then I met my then girlfriend when I was 15 who's now my wife and we were inseparable from the minute that we met and it remains so to this day ah but right so I had these very very super tight relationships with very very smart girls and plus my mother was 17 when I was born so I she was kind of more like a mate so I had a natural suspicion on the one hand was a typical manchester boy but I had a healthy observational quality to natural nonsense and the more then I want to started to acknowledge it I started to really dig it so this is before dismissed when I went to form the Smiths I was doing I just promised miss knowing that I wanted to make music that sounded in my mind like the shangri-la's I was obsessed with the shangri-la's and I was obsessed with the rawness and I wanted to turn myself visually into one of the Ronettes which I did when I was able to well it I was able to not get away from bus stops where would have been beaten up for doing so all right and because I was I'm straight but I'd never had any issues with my sexuality and I grew up around loads of gay boys and The Smiths very first gig we did a song called I want to boys for my birthday I'd was just like tick tick tick tick and one of those boxes that I was ticking was that my generation of boys are not sexist morons right and amazingly when I put out the solo record first solo record in 2012 I found myself being interviewed by the broadsheets and realized that a lot of political personal political party political questions are put on me and that's because of the times that I came out of and I looked round I was wondering about my peers and I realized that there was not really a lot of his left because my peers were George Michael Billy Bragg Billy Billy Bragg still around and he's still doing really following his path not a lot of other musicians who were still around all right and so I was I was asked a lot about politics and it occurred to me how proud I am post-90s poster ladies room and Ledet ism and all of that business where it seemed to be okay to stand in the audience that when there was a girl on stage and shout out nonsense that would that was unheard of in 1981 82 83 the original indie scene would have never ever ever put up with that you would never have shouted some to a girl on stage you would have never ever done it now obviously my experience as a guy I'm not getting abused or groped I you know it's all very won me up in my idealism and you know and I try and be balanced about these things and go okay you might be looking at things through rose-tinted spectacles somewhat however the musicians who came out of that original and indie scene at our politics down absolutely down and some of the questions some of the things that I have to answer in interviews I can't believe that I'm even I'm going to say into in in 2018-19 now I don't mean to be you know self-righteous or anything like that but what the hell happened in the night is you know where it just it became alright you know and and you know you mentioned disco and not again that was a big big big part of it you know the American or Canadian yes American yeah because you know coming from the United States you will understand the inherent homophobia that was in the disco sucks movement and within the UK we just don't have a a sense of it really but because Manchester had such a thriving still does I've absolutely vibrant and very very important gay scene I used to just go where I would go wherever the music was good I don't give a and and where people dress great so at that time the best the best time you could have was in the gay clubs and and as I say you know when when the Smiths very first when we first formed we were in fact we were so in the very very early days when it was probably just even in Morrissey we we had to almost rein it in we are we are to maybe take a step back and be a bit more palatable we would have probably been a much more radical band the first few shows we after the first couple shows you will uh okay we want to we want to break in at the mainstream but look at our first single look at the first single cover and it's one of the things I'm very very proud of and one of the things I was always very very proud of Marissa's contribution was they are con Agra fee which is genderless and and modern and and and completely free of all those silly old paradigms and you know what more can I say it sort of amazes me that that my you know I really felt in 8283 when I look round and there was you know ice tech camera and everything but the girl and lo whoever loads of us fell and just loads of that original indie scene I really felt that sexual politics were just gonna go forward absolutely forward and we're right now that's all we have time to our society so we're right now is rubbing to re-identify it up and everyone's doing a great job of it so there you go so say don't drive that's almost funny can everyone please join me in giving a final round of applause to dynamite you

Channel: OxfordUnion

Views: 165,567

Keywords: Oxford, Union, Oxford Union, Oxford Union Society, debate, debating, The Oxford Union, Oxford University

Id: iJZJSLybPiU

Length: 66min 11sec (3971 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2019