Johnny Marr talks to NME for this weeks In Conversation series about his first ever solo best of 'Spirit Power', his book collecting his guitars, Billie Eilish, The Cure and more
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00:00 I wasn't going to ask you to pick your favourite guitar, because that's probably asking to pick your favourite kids.
00:04 I was going to ask you if you had a favourite haircut.
00:06 Oh.
00:07 That's a good one.
00:08 Of course I do. Do you know what? Yeah, I like it. That's Heeler's Soho in New York, that's about 2001.
00:16 Yeah, it was pretty good. I'm rocking the Dolce & Gabbana.
00:18 Oh yeah, there's quite a lot of fashion things going on in this as well.
00:21 Journey in Johnny's hair.
00:23 Yeah, there's a lot of haircuts going down.
00:26 [Music]
00:31 Hi, I'm Andrew Trendall. You're watching NME's In Conversation series. We're here with Johnny Marr.
00:36 Hello, hi Andrew.
00:37 How you doing, Johnny?
00:38 I'm alright, yeah, I'm good.
00:39 Welcome to The Social in Soho.
00:42 Yeah, it's alright. It's got a bit of a diner kind of ambiance. What did you say, it's like a ship?
00:48 Yeah, I feel like I'm on a cruise ship. I'm like the best kind of cruise ship.
00:51 That's alright. Yeah, okay, fine.
00:53 You got some good Soho memories?
00:55 Loads. Yeah, I absolutely love Soho. I've been this way pretty much all the time when I'm in London now.
01:05 It's been that way for about eight years or something, like been exclusively staying here.
01:13 I did a movie here about eight years ago and then a lot of the movie stuff I've been doing has been in London recently.
01:21 So that's why I'm here. And why go anywhere else? You can get good shoes and good jackets and get something to tweet late at night and everything.
01:31 I can't be dealing with trundling over to the east all the time.
01:35 Yeah, it's the best part of London, let's not lie.
01:38 I absolutely love it. And the obvious stuff like the history of it, the old clubs, the folk clubs and the jazz clubs and mod clubs and all of that,
01:47 the flamingo and the whole history of it is long gone. It's a bit like the East Village in New York, but the remnants of that have really gone.
01:57 So I still enjoy that about Soho, that legacy. It doesn't actually look, aside from modern cars and everything,
02:07 the actual roads and streets haven't really been changed too much.
02:11 Apart from those American sweet shops which are a plague on London.
02:17 Yeah, that's right. But you can get caffeine during the day and you can get a decent jacket during the day, so that's all right, I'll take that.
02:24 We find you and Hans Zimmer crawling around Chinatown at night.
02:28 Yeah, it has been now.
02:30 Anyway, we're here to celebrate Spirit Power, the greatest hits of Johnny Marr, ten years.
02:37 Take us back to growing up in Manchester, you put on a guitar, you're pulling some moves in front of the mirror.
02:44 Did you ever foresee that there would be a Johnny Marr greatest hits album, that you'd be a solo star?
02:50 Did you always see yourself as the guitarist?
02:53 There was a time when I had to get it together in my own head to be out front of Band OK, which was between being 14, 15 and 16.
03:02 Because I was in bands and for a couple of periods I got pushed to the front.
03:09 So that was '78, '79, '80, it was three bands in short succession.
03:18 But over that period where I had to write the lyrics and we were doing quite a lot of covers, as you do when you're that age.
03:26 Some Blondie songs and Eddie and the Hot Rods, stuff like that, Power Pop.
03:32 So in that period, it was deadly serious.
03:36 But as I say, I just got pushed to the front because that's what happens, the one with the best haircut.
03:44 So for that period, when I came to do the solo stuff, I remembered how it felt being stuck out front.
03:54 But obviously it had a completely different context to it because by then I'd been known for being a guitar player.
03:59 But really, to answer your question straightly, I think, probably not really.
04:04 Because I think, it's probably been well documented, but the reality of my ambition was to make A45.
04:14 So now that I've made, this is a best of, which is over ten years of my solo career, having already done, played with loads of other bands.
04:23 This scenario, I wouldn't have imagined.
04:26 But I do remember actually going for the mission was to do a really cool 45.
04:37 That was almost like, it wasn't like I would have been happy to stop there, but that was the first bit of it.
04:42 So when I got to do that with The Smiths, that was like standing on the mountaintop.
04:47 And then, as the old Buddhist or Taoist saying is, then you see the other mountain.
04:52 Then you get to that mountaintop and then you see the other mountain.
04:56 And that's the way life is.
04:58 So yeah, I'm just kind of riding it out now.
05:00 But the best of, it was put to me about, probably about 18 months ago.
05:08 Because my management know what I'm like and the record company.
05:11 So look, when I did the last album, Fever Dreams, we know what you're like.
05:15 Don't go in the studio and straight away do another record.
05:18 Yeah, slow down, Johnny.
05:19 Bit like that.
05:20 And take stock and celebrate the ten years of the solo career and all the gigs and everything.
05:28 So now that time's come and when I had to put it together, I was pleasantly, not surprised, but I was satisfied with it.
05:39 It's a good listen, I think.
05:41 Because I mean, that's a great hits is kind of, it's going to be an entry for a lot of people now.
05:46 Yeah.
05:47 You know, how Changes won Bowie, to some people that's the only Bowie album they need.
05:51 Right.
05:52 It's going to be the gateway to Johnny Marr.
05:54 Yeah. Well, that's a nice thought actually.
05:57 If it does that, I'm happy with that.
06:02 Someone asked me about it the other day and they were like, well look, it's a double album full of bangers.
06:06 As a, you know, being an artist or songwriter, you kind of, you know, you sort of go, what does that mean?
06:12 But on reflection, I think a double album full of bangers is nothing wrong with that.
06:18 Yeah.
06:19 Some of you mentioned Changes won Bowie because it wasn't my entry point to him or me and my mates, but it was still a really good, another really good listen.
06:26 You know, it's a great album, you know.
06:29 So if it's got anything about that, about it, spirit power, then oh man, I'll take that all day long.
06:36 But yeah, when I say it's a good listen, it was because I was sent the test pressings to listen to and it was time sensitive, as we say in the business.
06:48 So someone said to me, can you check the test pressings and let us know within the next few hours.
06:57 And it was actually, I just got back from Glastonbury playing with the Pretenders. It was that night.
07:01 So it was late and I'd been traveling all day. And so it's whatever, one o'clock in the morning.
07:07 Take your wellies off.
07:08 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Took my guitar off and dutifully sat at my turntable listening for Pops and Crackles.
07:16 And because I was listening to the tech, I don't know whether this is interesting, but because I was listening to the technicalities of it,
07:22 I wasn't sitting back going, oh look, I'm listening to my greatest hits.
07:27 And as each track went along, I thought, oh, OK. So I texted all the band and said, you know, we've made a really good Best Of album.
07:36 So I was able to hear it with certain kind of objectivity because I was listening to it in a different way.
07:41 And then with Distance, did you learn anything about the journey you've been on over the last 10 years in revisiting this material, in putting all your babies in order, basically?
07:51 In all honesty, I think, yeah, I think the thing I learned is that I put myself under pressures to make singles, I think, with very little let up.
08:06 I've got enough about me when I'm making albums to realize that if you've got a lot of up-tempo songs, it does give you an excuse and an absolute need to do a deep song.
08:19 So every album, normal albums that I've made, the four solo albums, I've got a kind of atmospheric or moody or slower or cinematic sort of song.
08:30 But it's almost been like a bit of light and shade to all the bangers, I think.
08:36 You know, you do get reflected and you go flipping, oh, that 10 years has gone by really quickly.
08:41 And because when I started with my own band on the first record, my intention was to keep the tempos up and do something that sounded like, I mean, you know, we talked about it with 2014 or something.
08:58 Make music that sounded really good in the day. I had this sort of mission about it.
09:03 And now I hear it all as a best of, I think. Not only did I achieve it, I might have maybe even done too good a job of it.
09:11 I don't mean that in a modest way. I mean, flipping out doesn't let up. It's like, bam, bam, bam, bam.
09:16 Well, that's it. For instance, Easy Money is what you'd call a jukebox record.
09:20 A hundred percent.
09:21 You can imagine going to Bradley's around the corner, Easy Money coming out, jukebox record.
09:25 Well, I was thinking about my jukebox, literally I've got a jukebox, and I was thinking about that one, upstarts, Easy Money. So you're right about that, yeah.
09:31 Well, let's take us back to pre-2013. What kind of, before The Messenger, what kind of gave you the compulsion, having been, obviously you'd done a lot of cinematic stuff and you'd kind of enhanced a lot of bands.
09:42 What gave you that compulsion to say, right, it's Johnny Martinez?
09:45 So, when I was working with The Cribs, we were touring, I was on the bus and in dressing rooms and I was like, Dynamo, yeah, I'd really like to have a song called Dynamo.
09:55 That went on the second album and then The Messenger, the words for The Messenger came and another one called Word Starts Attack, which was on The Messenger.
10:05 I thought, I had that title. So all these different ways of writing, that used to be the way I used to write when I was in bands when I was younger and I used to write words, eh?
10:14 That popped up. I've always kind of written words anyway, and with electronic sometimes I sort of made that kind of contribution.
10:21 So yeah, I found myself after The Last Cribs touring cycle, having quite a lot of songs, so I said to the fellas, I've got a bunch of songs here that I want to finish and it's my mission to write a whole load more.
10:35 And because they're my mates and they understand that when you've got, when someone says they want to write 30 songs, you're best to go, well go on then.
10:46 The songs just started sort of coming under my fingers in dressing rooms and on tour buses and I sort of knew when, you know you're always writing, but I knew when I was onto something I think.
11:00 And then the next thing really was that I didn't want to give the songs to someone else to sing because I didn't need for someone else to sing them.
11:12 The demos sounded pretty good and the people who were listening to it and management at the time and members of the band were just like, well don't re-sing it, it sounds really good.
11:21 So me and my band got a sound then. So you know, running bands from being a kid, you sort of know when it's happening I think.
11:31 And did it feel like a challenge, because it's one thing to write a riff, it's another thing to write a song, but then when you take on an album you're kind of forming these entire worlds.
11:39 Especially on some of the records where you're imagining these utopian cityscapes and stuff like that.
11:44 How do you approach that challenge of saying right, this is me on my own forming an entire world?
11:50 The thing was I was really inspired. So things like with Playland, I got this idea from this book, Homo Ludens, which we talked about back in the day, about the adult kind of society.
12:04 And then all the concepts that have been around the albums, because all of them have had a sort of vague conceptual thread running through them.
12:13 Call the Comet, I got back into science fiction, a bit of an HG Wells kind of thing about it.
12:20 And that sort of suited what was going on in the political climate at the time.
12:24 If I feel like my idea, my feeling, my inspiration is 60% a good idea, then I will apply myself to create the remaining 40% in the process.
12:39 So that might be getting a load of books, going to a library, do you remember libraries?
12:44 Which is something I still like doing, it's a rarity, but I did that on Call the Comet.
12:50 If I know it's a really good idea, that gets me infused and then I apply myself then to the process.
12:58 You were talking about the ideas there, and obviously a lot has been written about how the 80s and everything that was going on, the cultural backdrop was rife for the kind of music that kicked back against it and stuff.
13:08 But I don't think people have realised the decade of change we've just had.
13:13 It's been the Brexit age, it's been the digital age, it's been all of this stuff.
13:17 And so I think the last decade has arguably been just as rife for creativity, and I'm sure you'd agree that you've got either something to kick against or something.
13:24 A lot of your music is quite escapist as well.
13:26 Yeah, I was thinking about that recently. Because people know that I went through that time in the 80s, and I suppose maybe Damon and Graham get asked about the 90s.
13:43 Because if you've made a big noise in a certain decade, you tend to be attached to that.
13:53 It would be easy for me to look back and go, "Oh, the miners' strike and Thatcherism."
13:59 And I have actually been in that situation, and you do have those conversations.
14:04 And it was recently, as I say, that what you're saying did occur to me, that we're in such a time of turmoil and uncertainty and rapid change and rapid dialogue.
14:22 That doing what I do, which is not so much comment, but observe as much as I can socially, get ideas from that, it is a pretty rich thing.
14:36 It's funny, because going back to the pandemic and fever dreams, I was deliberately going, "I will not make a record about the pandemic."
14:43 A lot of what I do is about perception, because then it can tip over into regular human consciousness and how I'm seeing things.
14:52 It's not just a political situation, or you're not just singing about this or singing about that.
14:57 You're trying to inhabit, in a way, you're trying to inhabit the mind of your audience in some ways, because then it becomes relatable and they're interested in it and all of that.
15:10 You can't escape doing what I do. You can't escape but either reflect or comment on the world around you.
15:19 Now, that might sound really, really obvious, but there's plenty of songwriters whose impulse and their job is to sing their inner world.
15:29 They get up in the morning and maybe sit there with a dressing gown and with the acoustic guitar or look out and whistle.
15:35 I don't mean to demean it, but that isn't my bag, really. I see a lot of people doing that on stage at festivals and everything.
15:44 If I was in the audience, I'd be done after two songs. I want something that's got a bit more... It's less about people's inner world.
15:54 Is that what fascinated you about working with Billie Eilish, because she could only exist now?
15:58 Some pop stars you see, I can imagine you cropping up at this time, but Billie Eilish is very much a product of now, isn't she?
16:03 The thing is with Billie, it's an interesting one, because like all people who are great, I think her and Phineas could have existed in any time.
16:10 So I would disagree with that. But her form and her sound is extremely modern.
16:17 I think that's why she's so relatable to particularly young people, boys and girls, which is really what great pop stars do, isn't it, really?
16:30 It doesn't really matter. There's loads of men in her audience, boys in her audience. Huge.
16:39 But she is completely modern. And the process and the sound is really modern and her influences are really modern.
16:46 What it is though is that her and her family are just so musical. You see her when she picks up a uke or she's come out to song like that.
16:55 She's just one of those musical people. It was a privilege being around Billie and Phineas.
17:01 It was a very short project, a couple of days in the studio, but quite insightful I think.
17:10 I remember you telling me once that Bernard Sumner described a lot of what you do with music as bittersweet.
17:17 Yeah. And I think she's got that too. It's a darkness that's always trying to lift you up and it's something you can't really escape.
17:25 I think the best artists and the best writers, including novelists in my world, have got that.
17:32 We can talk about bands as being exactly the same and obviously there's a big part of the Smiths that is about that musically for my part.
17:40 And Bernard, there's plenty of New Order and certainly Joy Division music that's got that kind of human beauty in it.
17:51 I heard Perfect Day by Lou Reed this morning, which is an evergreen staple.
18:00 I mean I defy anyone to say you have to be made of stone to not like that song, but is it a happy song?
18:07 Not really sure, but it's called Perfect Day. Feed animals in the zoo and the sound of it.
18:13 That does this thing that I'm interested in, that bittersweet thing.
18:17 It's achingly poignant but hopeful at the same time.
18:22 You kind of do imagine a sunny day but it sounds like it's got this real gravitas to it.
18:30 And there's quite a lot of Billy's stuff, don't you think? Billy's got that in abundance I think.
18:36 Much as we might not like to admit it, but I think that's one of the things that attracts human beings to other human beings who are expressing it.
18:47 Because all of us have got stuff that we all know what it's like to... it's tricky being a human being sometimes.
18:54 No matter how long you spend in the gym.
19:00 I remember once you told me about your admiration for Robert Smith, because he's got that in spades as well.
19:05 He kicks off when you call him a goth, "Listen to the music, it's joyful."
19:11 So much of the cure stuff that appears to be dark is very beautiful.
19:23 Disintegration is an amazing record. But I saw him when I was a kid, I saw him when 17 Seconds came out.
19:29 I just thought it was beautiful and modern.
19:35 Which again, it's funny, Billy's got that American... definitely coming from an American sensibility, but I think it's got a similar kind of vibe to it.
19:47 In a way, it's funny that. Modern version.
19:51 I can imagine when I was 17, 16, 17, 18, whatever, really being into a record.
19:59 What can you tell us about, in a similar vein, why did you choose this Depeche Mode track for the record as well?
20:04 With I Feel You, it's become a little bit of a live staple, which took me by surprise.
20:12 The sort of shows I've been playing over the last couple of years, in the States with The Killers,
20:20 and we did an arena tour with Blondie here.
20:24 When I'm on stage and we go into it, you can feel the audience half-recognising it.
20:31 "Oh yeah, right, okay." And then when I start singing it, this happens.
20:37 They go, "Oh yeah, I really like this one." And halfway through they go, "This is!"
20:42 Plenty of people do know it, but I'm surprised how much it takes people to click to it.
20:48 They know they like it. So I've kind of kidnapped it, in a way, over the last few years.
20:54 It's a little bit of a tribute as well, I guess. I think me and my band do it in a way that delivers, I think.
21:02 You're giving a bit more aggression, I'd say.
21:04 Yeah, we turn it more into a guitar track.
21:07 But I think maybe, when I think about that, it's because now I'm feeling, in any way, like,
21:14 with the release of this record, it is a marker of the momentum, I'm going to say it, journey.
21:26 But then, perhaps I'm instinctively feeling like you go somewhere else after that.
21:32 A lot of people, as you say, may get into this record as an entry point to my solo stuff
21:39 but they don't know that I actually did "I Feel You" for Record Store Day.
21:44 So now they know I've done it because it's going to be in the past, I think.
21:49 Now I think about it, that's probably why I did it.
21:51 And also the priest, Maxine Peake.
21:54 That's my track, yeah.
21:56 Otherwise it would have just floated away into the ether.
22:02 I think it's a valid, one of the best things I've done.
22:08 That's the shorter answer to "I Feel You" as well.
22:11 It's a best of album and that's one of the best things I've done, I think, in this ten year period.
22:16 Speaking of the best, we have to talk about this book, Mars Guitars.
22:20 I'll hold it up to the camera there, if you put it on your Christmas list.
22:23 Beautiful object.
22:26 I'm guessing this has added to the spirit of Reflection, looking back.
22:30 I wasn't quite expecting just how reflective I was going to be about that.
22:40 I did an autobiography in 2016 and I assumed there would be some catharsis and reflection.
22:48 Everybody was asking me, "It must have been cathartic for you."
22:53 And I was, "Where the fuck is this catharsis? When's it going to come?"
22:57 I was so deprived. Maybe I'm just good at processing it or maybe I'm just good at putting stuff really deep down.
23:03 Bury it.
23:08 I felt a little bit cheated by that. I'm still waiting for it.
23:13 I do talk about it in the introduction to the book that when we were doing the shoot, which was...
23:19 First off, this book's been an absolute mission.
23:22 As you might probably know yourself, anything that you do takes a lot of your energy and a lot of time.
23:29 When it's done, if it's done and you think, "Right, we've got it right," I've got a real feeling of achievement.
23:39 That isn't just on me because I've got some great people around me who I wouldn't have been able to do it without.
23:46 So it's a bunch of us, but I had the vision for it and everything and the energy to pull it all together, but it was a lot of work.
23:54 As I say in the introduction, I explain this.
23:56 When we were shooting 100-and-odd guitars, that involved getting some back from mates and getting them to look right,
24:05 getting them in decent condition, and the shoots were a lot.
24:11 When I was playing them and reconnecting with them, it really put me back into the place I was when I got them.
24:20 I'm talking about the '80s and the '90s, early 2000s.
24:24 So obviously some of the Smiths guitars, when I got them, I remembered, "Oh, Boy With A Thorn in His Side," and I remember doing the video.
24:31 There was something about holding these objects, these instruments, that I've got a close relationship with
24:39 and pretty much reminded me of where my head was at in those days.
24:45 That was very poignant. It is as you might imagine it.
24:52 It was like having a high school reunion with myself and I remembered all the records that they'd been on.
25:03 Consequently, loads of stories came out about each guitar.
25:10 That wasn't really my original remit. I wanted to make an art book that just happened to be about guitars.
25:15 So the idea was that it would be a guitar book for people who would not normally buy guitars because the photos in it are just so beautiful.
25:24 Pat Graham, who's my friend, is a photographer. He's pioneered this technique from a while back now of taking photographs of people's instruments
25:33 where you get this abstract photograph that's absolutely gorgeous and you think,
25:38 "Well, it looks like an industrial complex in Stockholm or something, or Iceland in the middle of the night."
25:45 So I said, "What's that part?" He goes, "Oh, I just saw the way the light went on this scratch, you know, this scratch at the pickup
25:52 or all the rust that's gathered over the years on an old '50s guitar or something." He really goes in for that.
25:59 So initially I just wanted the book to be just loads of abstracts.
26:03 But then in the process of doing all of that, all these stories came out about my life from being a kid.
26:13 So there's three different layers to the book. There's the beautiful art abstract photographs
26:19 and then there's all the stories about when I joined the Pretenders or when I wrote Meet His Murder
26:27 or on this particular guitar or when we did the Top of the Pops or New Order using my guitar for Regret.
26:38 I'd forgotten that Radiohead used a few of them.
26:41 Yeah, I was surprised to learn that.
26:46 Franz Ferdinand used one of them and now Rodgers gave me one.
26:50 So there's loads of stories that came out. I'd forgotten that I played with REM quite a few nights.
27:01 It was only when I saw the Rickenbackers and the picture of me and Peter Buck that it all came back.
27:06 So that's the second element of the book. And then the third one is just a straight portrait.
27:11 Even though it's different because usually guitar books look like watch catalogues.
27:20 It's all very dark and sexy and trying to make everything look as expensive as possible.
27:24 Yeah, where they're supposed to be battered and thrown around.
27:27 Mine is in my studio, in my environment.
27:31 I had to fight for that but that was a bit of a brave move at the start because once you start
27:36 and then you're going to have 130-odd guitars and you're going to spend two years making a book
27:40 then you have to see it through.
27:43 I was like, no, I want it to be in my environment and I don't want it to be like a regular guitar book.
27:50 So it's ticked all those boxes and now it's come out. As you can tell I'm really proud of it.
27:55 Well I was going to ask, sorry to get superstitious, but do you think the guitars have a spirit?
28:00 When you get a guitar from Noel Rodgers or Brian Ferrier, whether you give one to Noel Gallagher or Radiohead's Ed O'Brien,
28:06 do you feel like they're on your record or somehow you're on their record as a result?
28:11 That is definitely, you might look. I can tell you it's a fact that if you have a guitar, even if it's a new one,
28:20 and you give it to someone, loan it to someone who is a good player and a good person and they really love it,
28:31 if it comes back two weeks later, it feels great.
28:35 Back in the day when I was younger you'd lend a guitar to one of your mates and if they were not treating it too well,
28:45 you'd have to fix it up. I once asked this acupuncturist, old guy in Los Angeles years ago about chi and about exactly what it meant.
28:57 He was amused by my line of questioning because I wanted to know whether guitars had chi in it, you know, life force.
29:05 He said something interesting to me, he was explaining it. He said, "You know when you leave your flat or your house to go away on holiday for two weeks
29:16 and then when you walk in the door and you come back in, the house feels really odd because it's got no chi in it?"
29:22 This is a whole Taoist thing, look at the Tao Te Ching, the idea of the force of life that makes a plant want to reach towards sunlight,
29:32 in water and all the things, all the elements. So I'm already on board with that anyway.
29:38 Or similarly this guy was saying if you walk into a room where two people have been arguing and no matter how good they are, that's what chi is.
29:47 So he said, "So yeah, your guitars have got chi in them." I was like, "I knew it, I knew it!"
29:52 So my Les Paul Customs still, I think it's still got Pretender's chi from Glastonbury, I'd say that, yeah, without a doubt.
30:01 All my Smiths guitars from certain records have got that kind of chi in it.
30:08 Bernard Butler's got my, what was my 12-string 335 that I used on loads on the Last Smiths album and on Sheila Take A Bow I wrote on that.
30:19 I used it on the Talking Heads album. Bernard will tell you that thing is like bursting with chi.
30:26 That could have been the name of the book, bursting with chi.
30:29 Well I wasn't going to ask you to pick your favourite guitar because that's probably like asking to pick your favourite kids,
30:33 but I was going to ask you if you had a favourite haircut.
30:35 Oh, that's a good one. Of course I do. Do you know what, yeah, I like it. That's Heeler's Soho in New York, that's about 2001.
30:45 Yeah, it was pretty good, I'm rocking the Dolce & Gabbana. Oh yeah, there's quite a lot of fashion things going on in this as well.
30:51 Journey and Johnny's hair. Yeah, there's a lot of haircuts going down.
30:55 Do you know what, I'll take that one, the Heeler's is pretty good, I think I rock that one pretty well, yeah.
30:59 I'll call that a feather cut, yeah. Feather cut, yeah, 2001 I think. I was going to say very Camden.
31:07 Probably was, yeah. So, next ten years, what's going to happen?
31:12 Oh man, that's scary. I've been doing this now, man and boy, people have got used to me being around since 1983,
31:23 so they've probably got another few years of me yet, I think. I want to say what all musicians say, I'm not any good at anything else, really.
31:35 But maybe more film music, I think that'd be good, because I've given quite a lot of leeway, especially when I work with hands,
31:44 he just lets me do my thing, really. Whether it's a big film like the Bond film or Freehold or some other little thing I'm doing in the background,
31:57 it's all the same to me, I work just as hard on it, I'm still in the studio at four o'clock in the morning and then I wake up the next day and think,
32:04 wow, that was brilliant. So that's a buzz for me, really. Today, I suppose, I want to write some more bangers.
32:12 It's not to be sniffed at, really.
32:14 Start working on the Spirit Power part too.
32:16 Yeah, that'd be good, wouldn't it? That'd be great.
32:18 The red album that blew up.
32:20 Yeah, give me something to shoot for. Yeah. More bangers, I've had the same band for ten years, great musicians,
32:28 and good people around me and all that, so it's a good time, it's a nice time, it was a coincidence that the book happening at the same time is the best of,
32:38 and it does feel like a reflective period. But I'm always looking forward, I've got a couple of new songs in the set that are on,
32:47 that's the other thing on Spirit Power, a couple of new songs, they're pretty upbeat as well. I've set this thing now for being a three and a half minute up-tempo thing.
32:59 And in terms of movies, just because we've mentioned it on a few video interviews yet, you said you kept getting movie offers for Drug Dealers, you said you wanted to be in Killing Eve.
33:08 I'm still waiting for that, yeah.
33:10 Are we ever going to see Johnny Moore on the big screen?
33:12 I'll do, doesn't even have to be the big screen, yeah, I'd do that. We're talking about acting.
33:19 Yeah. Corey cameo.
33:21 I'm not in the mood for that. No, anything but a soap opera, I'm not into that stuff. But you know what, that's because of Maxine, right?
33:32 Yeah.
33:33 Because she's like, "You want to think about it, you'd be good at it." She's so encouraging. So once she said that I was like, "Really, do you think so? Really?"
33:43 Me?
33:44 But I'd do that, yeah. It would definitely have to be some nasty Eastern European drug dealer not to reinforce a cultural stereotype. I say that because I don't want to do a Mankunian. I want to stretch out a little bit.
33:59 Yeah, yeah.
34:00 Stretch out. But yeah, as long as it's some nasty swine then I'm game. This nice reputation's got a bit too much.
34:09 Yeah, we'll do it. We'll cancel that. Let's get Johnny Marr cancelled. Well, see you further down the line. Cheers, Johnny.
34:15 Okay, yeah.
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