In the newest episode of Apple Music’s Origin Stories, guitar virtuoso Johnny Marr reunited with host Matt Wilkinson and renowned journalist Jon Savage to unpack his lifelong creative bond with Manchester. While exploring his Stockport headquarters, the foundational songwriter shared deep-dive insights into how the city's unique cultural mentality serves as a pragmatic anchor for his work, rather than a sentimental one.
Marr explained that his decision to base his solo career in Manchester was explicitly tied to the distinct musical heritage embedded in the region.
"The city's really, really changed so rapidly in the last sort of ten years maybe. But the one thing I do know is that lots of young people are still flooding into Manchester and creating their own culture. And all things told, Manchester seems to be doing better than a lot of places. And I, as a Manchester boy, I have to have some gratitude for that and go 'phew'. The reason I have a homing thing with Manchester is because this city makes me make music that I want to make. When the solo career started, I was in Portland and it was just after Modest Mouse and The Cribs. And I came back here, not because it was my hometown, I came back here because it's the hometown of Magazine and The Buzzcocks, 10cc, The Smiths, Oasis, and the mentality behind that music I wanted to be connected to. It's nothing to do with sentimentality. It's real pragmatism."
This geographic pull was identical to the instinct that led him to pull the band away from the distractions of London during their mid-1980s commercial peak.
"The thing that happened with ‘The Queen Is Dead’ is that I moved back and everybody moved back. And my intention was to get away from London because I felt like we were spending a lot of time in the back of cars in the company of other pop stars of the day, which was fine, right? But I felt instinctively that it would be a good decision to move back to Manchester to be with my mates. And I moved into a house where I wrote my bit to ‘The Queen Is Dead’, the music and Strangeways. Bowdon house, that was the Smiths' HQ."
During this era, an interview with Jon Savage helped Marr fully contextualize his own meticulous approach to multi-tracking guitars.
"I remember Jon [Savage] saying to me 'but it's not just guitar playing, is it? It's arranging.' And that was very gratifying for me for that to have been addressed because before I formed the band, I'd spent a lot of time making tapes on that cassette machine there, that Teac tape machine. I spent hours and hours, months in fact, layering guitars... frankly it was only when Jon used the word arrangement that I realised that's what it was I was doing. So it's a key thing that Jon pointed out, but he pointed it out to me in 1985 and it was very, very helpful. We were just about to make ‘The Queen Is Dead’. And the bar went up then, my game was raised."
Marr also discussed his legendary gear, highlighting a specific instrument that has defined his signature tracking across multiple projects and collaborations.
"I do have a favourite. My favourite is the red Gibson Les Paul that I got just before we did the Meat Is Murder album that I put the Bigsby on… And a lot of the sound that I use on records like ‘Headmaster Ritual’, but also ‘We Share the Same Skies’ with The Cribs. Bernard used that for ‘Regret’, New Order. It's actually not the most valuable in monetary terms. But I played that on ‘Dogs of Lust’, The The. ‘Slow Emotion Replay’, The The… it's been on quite a lot of records, some Pet Shop Boys stuff. The new Gorillaz album."
Listeners can stream the entire hometown interview on Apple Music and Apple Podcasts to hear Marr's full reflections on his songwriting evolution.
