1. The SmithsThe Queen Is Dead
I loved The Smiths growing up. I’ve got a brother who’s a couple years older than me. I would hear The Smiths’ first album coming through the bedroom walls when I was 14, and so I heard that through him and just fell in love with them.
I still remember when The Queen Is Dead came out. And that video to the title track! What a long song, isn’t it? And that particular song, like the way all the different guitars and the sounds on it, are so different, I think, to anything else I heard at that point in my life. The Smiths were just a profound influence on me, and that record, I think, is pure genius and everyone could hear it.
They were good at doing their pop stuff as well. I remember being glued to Top Of The Pops every week. Around that time you had The Smiths, Echo And The Bunnymen, Siouxsie And The Banshees, and The Cure and Top Of The Pops was kind of my lifeline because I was a grew up in quite a small village and was definitely the only goth in the village, which is always quite entertaining! But I was quite isolated in what I liked at school and had ‘The Smiths’ written all over my books at school. And that was the first thing that Neil Halstead noticed because we had a biology class together, and he was like, ‘Oh my God! There’s somebody that likes the same stuff as me!’ And that’s how we got talking. I guess, in a roundabout way, The Smiths were the spark that got Slowdive going.
And there are funny stories that are linked to Johnny Marr later in life after Slowdive split up. Neil used to have a blonde 12-string Rickenbacker and he had to flog it to a pawnshop in London. And who bought it? Johnny Marr went in and bought this 12-string Rickenbacker. It was still in the case and it had ‘Slowdive’ written on it.
I was at a mutual friend’s birthday party a few years ago. Johnny had come to see Mojave 3 a couple of times over the years, but it was only at this this friend’s party that really spoke to him in depth. I think we were the first people to arrive, so we were chatting and talking a little bit about Slowdive, and I talked to him about my love of The Smiths. Then he mentioned this Rickenbacker, and he said, ‘Didn’t you used to have blonde 12-string Rickenbacker?’ I said, ‘Yeah’ and he said, ‘I bought that for my son!’
I checked with Neil and he was like, ‘Yeah, I did have to flog it to a pawnshop for money.’ Johnny’s just released his book about his guitar stories about his guitars and that guitar is in it! That’s quite cool story really.
