Johnny Marr learned a lot from Damon Albarn ahead of making his new solo album.
The former Smiths guitarist – who will release his fifth LP, The Age of Everything, later this week – worked closely with Damon on Gorillaz’s latest record The Mountain, and the Blur frontman made him look at how to be “open-minded” and not to “force anything” when it comes to writing songs.
He explained to NME: “I learned to be open-minded, let some things happen naturally, keep your work ethic, don’t be waiting around for things to happen. Don’t force anything – just chill, really.”
Johnny had a “real sense of purpose” with the 10 songs on his new album and found it helpful to play them live before getting them down in the studio.
He said: “There was a sense of: ‘If you’ve got your own sound, do it and do it loud’. There’s definitely a time for that. There are other considerations that come into play when you’re about to go into a new phase. There’s reinvention, doing something you’ve not done before, and I’ve done it several times throughout my career.
“I’m usually quite deliberate. I went into this record with a real sense of purpose; that’s why we played eight out of the 10 songs live on the road.
“Pretty much every band I’ve been in, and most of the guitar bands I’ve been around, have at one point said, ‘You know what we should do before we record the next album? We should gig the songs’. It never happens, but once I get an idea that I think is a good one, I’m a little like a dog with a bone.
“I remember Brian Eno is the same in that. I’m not terribly impulsive, but I am decisive. Unless something comes along and knocks me off that course, then I pretty much see it through. Damon is like that too.”
Johnny enjoyed embracing the “challenge” of writing upbeat songs because being introspective comes more easily.
He said: “With my own records, I started out with an agenda to have some energy. It’s almost too easy to write introspective, reflective songs and a challenge to write something upbeat. That challenge suits me.
“I almost feel like every one of my albums sounds like a first album. That isn’t a boast, and to some people it might sound like a criticism. A friend said it to me about this one, and I took it as a compliment because I know what that means: it’s got that energy, there’s a lot at stake, and things are catchy.
“I’m able to write catchy tunes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There will be times for me to write my acoustic opus where I get miserable.
“I’ve taken the liberty of sounding like other things over time and I always get, ‘Oh, that sounds a little bit like what you were doing with Electronic’ or, ‘Oh, that’s a bit Smiths-y’, but really it’s no more complicated than, ‘Why wouldn’t you?’”