Happy birthday Johnny Marr!

Happy birthday to a fellow Wythenshawe native … which reminds me that I should swerve photography and stick to comics … and how I helped bring A Certain Ratio's DoJo back down to earth with a bump!

Happy birthday to the great Johnny Marr, a fellow native of Wythenshawe, my home town in Manchester, England!

I’ve featured both Johnny and his former band, The Smiths, a few times over the years in various comic strips, going all the way back to “The Diary of Rock & Pop” in 1987.

Most recently, Johnny was the subject of my “Biographic” comic, which is syndicated to various clients, including the New York Daily News and The Boston Herald. This ran in newspapers on August 25, 2024:

I should say from the off that, although we both hail from the same place and have a lot of friends in common, we don’t actually know each other. Johnny is a decade younger than me, and by the time he emerged on Manchester’s scene in the mid-1980s, I was far less involved with the music business and concentrating more on my career in newspapers and comics. Plus, within a year or two, I’d moved from Manchester to the United States.

However, we have met a couple of times. The first time was in the summer of 1990 when I was back in Manchester for a month with the family to see relatives, do a bit of networking with UK clients … but mainly to watch the World Cup in my mate’s pub!

I‘d featured New Order in my “Biography” Sunday newspaper comic (the forerunner to “Biographic”) and had brought the original art with me to give to my friend, New Order manager Rob Gretton. It seemed like a good idea to take the opportunity to get a photo so that the syndicate that distributed the feature could do a bit of promo. Rob told me that New Order frontman Bernard Sumner was recording at Johnny Marr’s house and suggested we drive over there and get a pic of the two of us with the original art. Great idea! So we headed off to Johnny’s place in Bowdon, where he and Bernard were recording tracks for their offshoot project, Electronic.

Now, the only hitch was that I hadn’t brought a camera over to the U.K. with me, but a pal of mine in the pub said I could borrow his. Sorted! It was a brand new, fancypants digital model, very state of the art. He showed me how to use it and off I toddled. Unfortunately, that brief demonstration must have exhausted whatever tiny spark of life was left in the batteries. So 30 minutes later, there I was on Johnny Marr’s sofa, with me and Bernard clutching either end of the artwork, while Rob tried to take a photo with a camera as dead as a doorstop. The bloody thing wouldn’t even turn on. Cue a very embarrassed McGarry, who I assume was viewed by Electronic as an idiot who came 6,000 miles for a photo op but didn’t bring a camera. Harsh, but fair.

Having said that, both Bernard and Johnny were very gracious. They took the time to show me around the home studio, had their engineer play a track or two for me, Johnny introduced me to his wife, Angie, and then we all chatted for a good while. The conversation was mainly about the new-fangled Apple Macs we were all just beginning to use … them to record the album, me to create comics strips. They asked about the music scene in Los Angeles and I reported that Depeche Mode were huge, not even realizing that Electronic was scheduled to support Depeche Mode at Dodger Stadium a few weeks later.

The second time we met was backstage at a Doves concert at The Wiltern in Los Angeles in 2009. Pop Noir, the indie dance rock outfit that comprises my twin sons Joe and Luke, had supported Doves on some West Coast tour dates, so we went backstage after the show to pay our respects to the lads. Johnny was there and we chatted for a while but, strange to say, the world-famous music icon had no recollection that we had met briefly 19 years earlier. Obviously, then, he must have serious memory problems.

Anyway, before we all went our separate ways, it was time for a quick photo. The quartet of Joe, Johnny, Jimi Goodwin and Luke lined up and ace cameraman McGarry sprang into action. No battery problems this time! Unfortunately, I’d been way too cheap to upgrade my phone and the resulting pic from my primitive device is a bit on the blurry side. Well, okay, a lot on the blurry side.

Now, there’s a postscript to this story. A year before the Doves dates, A Certain Ratio drummer Donald Johnson and his wife were staying at our place in California for a few days. He and I have been close friends since the early days of punk and we’ve watched each others kids grow up. While he was in California, he offered to do some recording with Pop Noir and, as they had a show coming up at venue in Fullerton, sit in on drums for the gig.

The night was a huge success. As you can see from the video, the club was packed to capacity - 100 people having a blast. So, after the show, we were all sat around basking in Pop Noir’s glory and Dojo was in reflective mood.

“It just struck me that it must be 18 years since the last time I played in Los Angeles.”

“Was that with Ratio?” asked a younger McGarry.

“No. Electronic at Dodger Stadium, supporting Depeche Mode. 60,000 people.”

“See, I told you, Don,” said I. “Stick with me and you’ll wear diamonds.”

BTW: Check out Chris Zappa’s excellent Zappagram. He has a post about Johnny’s birthday today: