Johnny Marr is having a moment. The auctioning of his guitar collection has led to a kind of festschrift in honour of this national treasure, with a love letter from Andrew O’Hagan and a face-to-face with Krishnan Guru-Murthy. But the Marr moment is also tied up with the flickers of optimism that have surrounded Andy Burnham’s power-grab, a coup that was heavily fueled by convivial Northern swagger and an image of Englishness - football, The Beatles, pubs - that brushes awkward questions of the Labour Party’s class base under a cultural carpet.
Burnham has proudly introduced journalists to his gold disc of The Smith’s ‘The Queen is Dead’, which now hangs in Number Ten North. When he visited troops in Ukraine and picked up a guitar, it was The Smiths’ Rusholme Ruffians that he played. Britain is now governed by what The Economist recently described as an ‘indie establishment’:
When David Cameron appeared on “Desert Island Discs”, where the British establishment pick their favourite songs, he chose tunes by the Smiths and Radiohead. Samantha Cameron, Lord Cameron’s wife, was such a fan of 6 Music that Downing Street press officers monitored the station’s news snippets to hear what she might mention to her husband over dinner.
Marr has given Burnham his seal of approval, praising his “Manchesterness” and likeability. Marr himself is intensely likeable, coming across as generous, warm and at ease with himself, the same on-screen qualities that made Burnham a breath of fresh air once he’d toppled his predecessor.
There’s a comforting story about Britain or England lurking in all of this, in which Marr is the kind of favourite uncle, who provides continuity between the feel-good 1960s, the feel-good 1990s and the present (one of his guitars was famously handed down to him by Pete Townsend, and he then passed it on to Noel Gallagher). He is frequently seen hanging out, watching football and performing with Gallagher, but he exudes none of the Thatcherite bitterness or aggression of the latter, merely endless good vibes.
I guess this is the fate of some maths geniuses, poets and sports-players, but what always strikes me as most remarkable about Marr is that his greatest years were between the ages of 19 and 23, an age when many of us still felt barely even adult. For reasons I can’t know, the innovative sound and the technique were already there at the beginning, and the subsequent 40 years has been a slow dissolution into generic britpop soup. How a teenager without any guidance, YouTube tutorials or access to the instant musical archives of today was able to reinvent the sound of a guitar, even of a pop song, to that extent is a marvel, and not something any of his subsequent guitar-playing football pals and peers got close to. People hark on about How Soon Is Now (recorded when Marr was 20), but the previous twelve months also produced Girl Afraid, What Difference Does it Make and much besides, all perfectly formed as Marr’s unique sound. I loved Electronic, but not particularly for Marr’s guitar-playing, which was anyway marginal at most.
What is odd about this now is that, as he has been turned into a kind of post-Brexit national treasure - capturing a set of values that conveniently transcends liberal-vs-national culture war - his place in the ‘rock canon’ has made him appear like another Gallagher type, rather than someone who was actually doing something unusual, even disruptive, when he first appeared fully-formed in 1983. Marr has done nothing to discredit the image of him as a typical mod-haircutted Northern good bloke, and its associated story of timeless Manchester values, perhaps because he’s just too nice. But there’s something a little too cosy and presentist about all of this. What are we not talking about when we talk about ‘the North’ or ‘England’ or history when in this mood? One thing we’re not talking about is Morrissey.
The whiff of violence
Viewed from 2026, with the ‘indie establishment’ in power, but Nigel Farage looming large, there are two phases of Morrissey’s career: the years from circa 1983-92 when he was a poet spinning tales of romantic rejection and sexual frustration (Good Morrissey), and the years since when he steadily descended into flag-waving nationalism, with occasional outbursts of racism (Bad Morrissey). The use of an early Smiths song about romantic longing in a John Lewis Christmas ad cemented the idea of Good Morrissey in the nation’s memory. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out has become a kind of national anthem. Of course hints of Bad Morrissey had been there all along, with controversial comments ("all reggae is vile”), dubious song topics (Bengali in Platforms) and an obsession with images of 1950s white working class Englishness (he famously tried to become a Coronation Street script-writer at one point).
What gets eliminated from both is Morrissey’s furious, far less flattering depictions of England and Manchester, which betray a mixture of fascination and fury with the lurking possibility of violence that he saw laced through English society. The first Smiths debut album was withdrawn from the shelves of W.H.Smiths, Boots and Our Price when it emerged that the final track was about the Moors murders. Barbarism Begins At Home (generally remembered as the moment when Andy Rourke was liberated to throw off his singer’s suspicious hatred of funk, and let rip with his bass-line) was about disciplinary violence against children.
My favourite Smiths song, The Headmaster Ritual was about corporal punishment in schools (aside from Marr’s outstanding intro, I’ve always thought the opening lines represent one of pop’s great moments of lyrical vengeance, to rival Bob Dylan’s She’s Your Lover Now and Pulp’s I Spy.) This Night Has Opened My Eyes tells a story about the drowning of a baby. Immediately after the Smiths split, Morrissey was fantasising about the execution of Margaret Thatcher.
What do we do with all of this? It would be hard to say that the author of these lyrics loved England very much. On the contrary, he presents it as founded on sadism, especially against children. These kinds of songs betray a rage (and revenge fantasies) that is far more potent and aggressive than ‘Good Morrissey’ is generally remembered as, and far more complex than whatever ‘Bad Morrissey’ has become. If there is a genealogy linking this lyrical preoccupation and the explosion of English nationalism thirty years later, it may lie in the central question of corporal punishment. We know from surveys that Brexit voters held views that were significantly more likely to include support for caning of children, the death penalty, and whipping of sex offenders. This can be interpreted partly as a statistical effect of age.
Now aged 67, Morrissey is in the demographic sweet-spot of Reform sympathisers (the over-70s have not abandoned the Tories in such high numbers). Violence against children was not merely a topic he turned to as he was running out of ideas from the 1990s onwards, it was one of the first things he wanted to vent when he was granted a public platform in 1983. Those who grew up in the 1960s and 70s experienced the final flush of institutionalised sadism against children, and the complete absence of systematic child protection against sexual abuse, which teachers, scout leaders, vicars, sports coaches and Radio One DJs exploited to the full. They have since watched as society progressively and systematically drove violence out of schools and parental norms, which is of course not to say that abuse does not persist in the shadows and the margins. ‘Progress’ came just too late for them, no doubt leaving many in a state of profound ambivalence regarding its desirability. The insult posed by ‘woke’ (for which read the reactionary depiction of it) is that someone might feel violated and harmed by nothing more than words.
As many have observed, on learning that Far Right riots frequently feature men in their 50s and 60s, some of the violence returning to Britain’s streets is due to men who developed a taste and skill for it over forty years ago, on football terraces, nights out and perhaps at the hands of family members. These same men are also more likely to dish it out in the home (where Barbarism Begins). Psychoanalysts must have things to say about the heightened significance of sexual violence against white girls in the imaginary of the contemporary Far Right, that speaks of more than just hypocrisy (though there is undoubtedly plenty of that).
The Morrissey that depicted a world of normalised sadism and abuse was not ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’ but he was honest and disturbing, perhaps more than we’re entirely comfortable with. This is not to suggest that we must all 'hug-a-racist’, as Cameron once suggested of ‘hoodies’. But if we’re looking for a national story, with working class Manchester and indie music at its heart, the current Johnny Marr/Andy Burnham cultural love-in only tells one side of it. The blend of sixties and nineties nostalgia that Burnham and Marr have come to express is a feel-good one, especially for my generation (Gen X) and some younger. It’s canny politics to lean into this as a vision of community and conviviality, allowing ideas of ‘working class identity’, ‘England’ and ‘Britain’ to become owned by decent, generous, quietly liberal people.
There is, however, a national id that has been repeatedly pushed down, but which was blasted out of the radio by Morrissey’s unique voice circa 1983-84. It now forces its way out through the corrupt grinning neo-fascism of Farageism, which promises a restoration of violence at the borders, at sea, in the welfare system and - who knows - even within the education system. Marr is now on the opposite side of the culture war from Morrissey, as he stated clearly at the time of Brexit. We must hope that there are more Marrs than Morrisseys in society, and that they prevail, with or without the Burnham premiership. But we shouldn’t forget that for a short while, the angriest and most thrilling guitar band of the 1980s channelled all of these forces, depicting toxic and romantic sides of England side by side, telling some truths that have still not produced any accompanying reconciliation.
Great stuff. The second half of this also brought to mind Red Riding, from the other side of the Pennines
A wonderful piece. I was born and have grew up in Manchester, from a working-class family (mum a nurse, dad worked in the post room of the building his dad worked in), and I was also the only person in my family to attend University (in Manchester) and ridiculously ended up becoming a university lecturer.
There have always been a number of things that fascinated me about the Smiths, and then the working-class cultural politics that surrounded 'Madchester' as I watched it evolve around me. Non of this is well organised, but as ever, you made me think some stuff that is fun to jot down...
The first is that if you went to school in Manchester in my generation - I attended both a 'County Primary' then a bog standard Comprehensive - any notion of history of where you grew up was dominated by the story of Industrial Manchester and Dark Satanic Mills. It's no wonder why a Labrador wearing a Red Rose would win Manchester central for Labour in any election! But this always had two hidden tensions. First, that there was something laudable in that history for some people. Yeah, having your arm chopped off by a weaving machine was a bit of a problem, but the experience of everyone on the terraced street knowing where each kid lived, and gossiping over walls (in the way Les Dawson - from Collyhurst in Manchester - made famous in his sketches with Roy Barraclough - from Preston in Lancashire) was something valuable that had been lost. It makes me think of the anachronistic appeal for some of Reforms old fashion idea of 'good work' (which also exists within the MAGA world of 'blue collar factory jobs' and tallow fat fries and other such nonsense). Of course, missing from all this is race and gender, which is another post really.
This kind of gets me to the Smiths and another dynamic so many outside Manchester observers miss. Pre the 2000's historically Manchester was never a city centre that people lived in. Everyone was in the suburbs (some closer to the city than others) and it has always been a city that is hard to cross, (it's still over an hour to get from Altrincham from one end of the Tram to Bury on the other, but pre tram when I was a kid the other side might has well have been Leeds). This meant that only 20 years or so ago, one's cultural identity was often defined by the suburbs you lived in. I was from North Manchester. When I grew up, around me was far more appreciation for Joy Division, New Order, The Fall and Buzzcocks than the Smiths (there was always more Northern Soul clubs in North Manchester than South).
This cultural leaning had nothing to do with musical quality, but instead some sort of suspicion that people from around Didsbury or Hulme were somehow more soft or inauthentic, than the north or east side. My take is that this goes back to that old industrial history, Martin Hannett remarking that the music he produced had something linked to the mill's, railways and factories (often abandoned) that he saw as a kid in Miles Platting (it's an historical fact that the factories that fed Manchester's boom were in North Manchester, and Salford). I remember knowing one family member who hated the Smith's simply because they worked at Salford Lad's club and "those gobshites never took one step inside". You'll still find locals who point out, as a criticism of the hagiography, that Tony Wilson was not from Manchester (he was from Salford and went to De La Salle Grammar in Salford) and was another inauthentic type; Jesus College Cambridge, and Tony Wilson, Anthony H. Wilson, or Antony Wilson depending on the audience.
Also, it's worth noting the North was FAR less Irish than the South of the city. Manchester has always had religious and racially divided communities, I grew up around one of the largest Jewish communities in the UK in and around Sedgley Park - my schools would empty on a Friday and this was just normal - but also there was very little Irish culture around me (and the reverse could be said for where the likes of Morrisey and Marr grew up).
All this inchoate rambling reminds me of another bit of cultural output that I think is quite accurate, something that nicely represented the clash between 'new' and 'old' Manchester, and the North and South. Paul Calf. Particularly Paul's pathetic attempts at to seem 'ard and tough, while hanging around with his arty University friend, while also dismissing 'shite' 'highbrow' culture. In my life - apart from amongst university staff - I have known so many more Paul Calf's than Andy Burnhams. It also still makes me laugh that when Coogan got the part of playing Tony Wilson in 24hr Party People, Peter Hook remarked "Manchester's biggest Twat is being played by its second biggest Twat", and he was saying that with some fondness.