Interviews
James Doviak from Johnny Marr & The Healers talks to Britsound
Interview by Rob Quicke, July 21, 2006.
RQ: How long have you been playing with Johnny Marr?
JD: For about three years, we did about six months of touring, when I joined we were touring the Boomslang album, I guess we finished that about two and a half years ago and we’ve been writing since then for the next album.
RQ: So how did you get to meet Johnny Marr, do you remember the first time you met him?
JD: Yes, it was through a mutual friend who’s a member of Alpine Stars, a very good Manchester band. Yes, Johnny had asked him originally, he bumped into him in town at one of their venues and they were chatting about guitars and I was doing some at the time, and I’d been helping him out doing some touring and he suggested me for Johnny, and literally we got together and started jamming. The next thing we were out on the road a month or two later so, it's pretty good, very fortuitous, and we got on pretty well straight away.
RQ: OK, let me ask you what it was like playing with Johnny Marr, did you think, ‘this, is the legendary Johnny Marr of The Smiths fame’? You know, "the guy who wrote songs with Morrisey"?
JD: Yes, a little bit of that. I was concentrating on other things at the time, it sounds daft but, you know it’s in your mind especially in Manchester, because he’s a huge figure in Manchester especially by people who are maybe not sort of teenagers anymore, but he’s an iconic figure so most of the people I know, most of the bands that are in Manchester, revere him. So there was an element of that but it wasn’t too bad, you know. I had a fair amount of confidence at the time and he was fairly easy to get along with and have a laugh. We just started jamming and going through the stuff and it gets to that point that if we’d had problems he’d have tried to find somebody else, but it seemed to work out pretty well.
RQ: Is it a good or bad thing, the weight of The Smiths history behind him?
JD: Well, it’s a good thing from the point of view of a first time band going out as we were at that point really, you get more than ten people going to the shows! But, of course, he’s never ever going to be able to escape The Smiths comparisons, and to me its never a burden, for Johnny, I can’t speak for him. I can’t even say if it affects the writing because we’re fairly focused on what we’re doing now so I don’t know if it’s a problem but at the back of the mind psychologically, knowing people are going to compare it to The Smiths and compare things like singing to Morrisey, one of the things he’ll tell you is you can’t ever live up to something as legendary as that, you know, it’s a mythical thing. He can create another myth, but he can never kind of match that, what the hard core Smiths fans love about The Smiths. But I don’t see a problem in the writing that we’re doing now, and a lot of the guitar playing is not dissimilar because obviously it's Johnny playing, but its definitely a much fresher sound.
RQ: Do you think The Smiths will ever reform?
JD: Its doubtful, but I’m really not in a position to comment, in terms of the fact I just couldn’t tell you. I honestly couldn’t tell you one way or another. From my personal point of view, I don’t know if I want them to, a lot of friends of mine who were big fans of The Smiths would rather they didn’t, in they'd like to leave it as that kind of unfinished memory. But at the same time, I’m sure a lot of people would love to see it, a big audience for it if they did, but unfortunately I can’t give you a comment. I just don’t know. There’s no plans, you know, that I’m aware of I’m sure.
RQ: But in your live music you play Smiths songs, don't you? Do you plan to continue playing Smiths songs?
JD: Yeah, before the last tour we didn’t play any Smiths songs, so we’d certainly play more because we’ve been rehearsing a couple. We did a charity gig in Manchester at the end of January and we played two Smiths songs then, and it was a home crowd as well. Yeah, they’ll be incorporated, we’ll be incorporating some of them into the set. I don’t know how many, it's not a Smiths set by any means, maybe we’ll do one or two at a gig. Yeah, so we played How Soon is Now and Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want.
RQ: This, is the second album you’re now writing, how involved have you personally been in the writing sessions with Johnny?
JD: Yeah, fairly involved. I mean it’s the first album I’ve actually worked with him on. Yeah I’ve been pretty involved, I mean there’s tracks he’s written by himself, you know he’s pretty much done the whole thing by himself, it's great. And we’ve pretty much gone in the room and started jamming as you do, and stuff’s come out that’s been kicked around and refined and then there’s a couple where me and him have just done it together, and there’s really no kind of pattern or formula to it. We’ve just been...whatever’s been happening at the time - we might just jump on a couple of acoustics or Ewan or David the bass player or drummer may have an idea on something else or whatever. It really is like that. Or there's a sample or a concept, you know, it's fairly involved. It's been great, I’ve learnt a hell of a lot. It's been a good thing to sort of challenge and push myself as well. I’m lucky in the fact that you don’t normally get in the position were you work with somebody who’s got so much more experience and is incredibly talented and just pushes you forward by leaps and bounds.
RQ: You played some incredible gigs with Johnny, haven’t you? You also played the Manchester charity gig earlier this year along with New Order, Doves, Shaun Ryder and other Manchester luminaries. What was it like playing on the same bill as those other bands, particularly New Order?
JD: It was great, I mean, Doves are mates anyway, so that’s good fun and New Order - they’re a fantastic band. They did the Joy Division set, you know, Joy Division songs and I didn’t really see hardly any of it which is shame because it was fantastic. They’re doing a DVD of it so I may watch it on that. I don’t know when it's out, but I mean it was really great, great experience. It was the first time we’d played a big gig to a home crowd and we also had a couple of new songs in there from the next album which, I don’t know if they’ll be the same as that, but nobody knew them so that’s great. It was kind of a risk but I think it went down great trying these tracks out, and, obviously people loved the two Smiths tracks we played, How Soon Is Now is fantastic, and Andy Rourke came on and played bass with us for How Soon is Now, so that was pretty exciting, he is a great bass player.
RQ: Let's talk about the Manchester tradition, because some great bands have come out of Manchester, including obviously Oasis and New Order, and Joy Division - some great Manchester bands; where do you feel that Johnny fits into that tradition?
JD: I’m not truly Mancunian but I’ve been up there myself half my life now, I can only speak the way I think of it, and something about a lot of the good Mancunian music, about all these bands you mention - there’s a kind of a weightiness, there’s a heaviness to it, even if the music could be considered light, there’s a kind of gravity to it. It's not so apparent now, but maybe with the older bands it is - and it comes from living in a place that perhaps has seen hard times. There’s still an element and kind of a thread of that runs through all that music which is probably why it exports very well and people can relate to it. Especially in areas that are a bit harder but not necessarily that, but areas that love music. There are guys in Portland or LA sitting there in that lovely weather loving this Manchester music about rain and tower blocks sort of stuff, you know, the things people are trying to escape from in Manchester. And they probably see it as a fantastic place to go, and kind of hang out and be depressed and write great songs. But then there’s an element of truth to it, because I think people are writing to escape. You know Manchester is not a bad place now, it was never a bad place, but now it's not such a rough place. But the people who grew up there back in the 70s and 80s were desperate to get money and get out, although obviously a lot stayed there.
RQ: Are there any plans for the future, would you ever write stuff on your own, solo material?
JD: Yeah sure. I mean, I always have been really, writing. I haven’t got any solo material released or anything, but it's all years of stuff in pieces, but at some point I’ll collate the lot together. At some point I’ll probably do a bunch of tracks and stick them out online and see what happens, see if anyone’s interested, but the focus at the minute is stuff for Johnny. And you know, there’s a lot of stuff within the new album which I’ve come up with, or collaborated on very closely, so I feel as though I’ve got a good input on it. So at some point it would be great to be writing all the time really, I love doing it.
RQ: What is the name of the second album, and also do you know when it’s coming out or is that to be decided?
JD: I couldn’t give you a name at all. I mean there’s a few we’ve run through, but unfortunately I can’t tell you, nothing at all decided on yet. Because it's not going to be out yet, probably, I would say until Christmas. It's mostly done now, we’ve been on hiatus for a couple of weeks because Johnny’s been playing guitar with Modest Mouse and he’s been doing a record with them in the States. So that’s taken a bit of time out but we’ve got very close to finishing our record. But he’s back very soon and we’re going to literally finish it off, maybe just kick a few tracks around as well, ‘cos we’ve got a lot of really strong material on this one, its really good stuff. So, because its very good stuff, we don’t want to rush it out. That’s why we’ve been sort of hanging on probably six months longer than we’d liked it to have been, because of how we feel about the material - it's well worth doing it and getting it right. It's not the case we’re kind of "over redefined", in this case it wasn’t over refined. A lot of the tracks have been knocked together very quickly, some of the tracks we’ve done in a couple of days, 90 percent of them, and then just tidied them up a bit. But it's about getting to a place, because we’ve had a new drummer and a new bass player. Because Zak Starkey is now playing with Oasis or The Who or whoever it is, I think he’s touring with The Who at the minute, and because Alonza Bevan is living in London and everyone else is living in Manchester, its just about convenience. And Ewan from down here started in Epping and is essentially a full member of the band and we’ve only had those guys in for not much more than a year, so you know a new band you want to get writing together. We want to get to the standard where we’re competing with a lot of other very good bands out there, so it's going to take time for everyone to settle in to be writing and playing. It's never been the case of Johnny Marr and a bunch of session guys, I don’t think, you may see it as that, but I don’t think Johnny sees it at all like that. It's just a bunch of mates who get together and jam, so it takes time to kind of function as a band unit, it's a lot of communication. It's like 90 percent of communication is not what you’re saying, it's your hands and gestures, and I guess there’s a degree of that in a band where there’s almost, when you get to the right level, a kind of telepathy about it. I remember reading about some sort of drug in the Amazonian rainforest and these guys take it and then play music together. And they see visual shapes and colours in front them and afterwards they talk about the shapes, "oh I liked the yellow bit, that was great when it got really yellow and big and this cube came out!" and I think there is a degree when you get to the right level in music where there is a sort of openness, where there is a level of communication which isn’t just "oi! play this chord" and when that’s happening, I think it's usually pretty good.
RQ: Let me ask you a final question then, what British Bands are you excited about and which you think could make it big in the future, are there any that you can think of?
JD: There’s a band called The Real Dolls, they’re not even signed yet, they’re a fantastic kind of hip hop thing, there’s a guy called Stephen Fretwell who’s a kind of Dylan singer/songwriter who’s good, kind of old country guy. Cherry Ghost, Beats for Beginners is good, he’s a friend of mind on his second album. He’s pretty, sort of loose chaotic fun electro pop, pop rock stuff kind of heavyish. TVH3 another friend of mine, who does really dark weird chaos, angry disaffected youth, brilliant!
Links:
