“Okay, Hans, no need to hurt my feelings!”: Johnny Marr reveals the brutal but helpful expletive-laden advice he once got from Hans Zimmer
Back in 2010, legendary composer Hans Zimmer roped in Johnny Marr to feature on his latest film project – that’s how The Smiths legend wound up performing a 12-string electric on the Inception soundtrack. Zimmer was so impressed that he’s enlisted Marr for plenty of projects ever since. However, things could have ended at Inception if Zimmer hasn’t given Marr a stern pep talk.
Despite being a renowned axeman, Marr used to be pretty coy about his guitar skills. When first faced with Zimmer 16 years ago, the guitarist was too reserved – and Zimmer wasn’t having it. Sensing that Marr was holding back, the composer quickly knocked some sense into him. “When I was younger I was too reverential,” Marr admits in the latest issue of MOJO. “Hans Zimmer had to tell me that – ‘I got you in to sound like Johnny Fucking Marr, so get on with it!’”
READ MORE: “I was just up my own arse” Johnny Marr recalls the moment he realised he was being “ridiculous” not playing The Smiths songs live
While Marr jokes “Okay, Hans, no need to hurt my feelings!”, Zimmer was right. Marr wasn’t living up to his name or legacy – so he made sure to bring everything to the table from that day on. “It was a good lesson learned,” he says. “These days I think I know what people want me to bring [to a recording session].”
In the years since their first collaboration, Marr has also given Zimmer some helpful advice in return. In fact, in 2015, Marr began to encourage Zimmer to pick up his own guitar and start performing live. “[He said it had] came to the point now where I have to look the audience in the eye, where I can’t hide behind a screen anymore, and I need to get out there and confront humanity,” the composer explained on CBC’s Q with Tom Power podcast last year.
Just as Zimmer had encouraged Marr to be more confident in his skills. And Zimmer decided to take his advice, even performing guitar for Pharrell Williams at the 2015 Grammy Awards. “At that moment, I thought only an idiot would say no,” Zimmer noted. “That sort of started the whole thing up.”
That’s how Zimmer began embarking on tours to perform his soundtracks live, with the first tour coming in 2016. “It’s all Johnny Marr’s fault, really,” he told Irish News in 2016. “He talked me into doing a concert, then another, then another and now a tour. There I was, trapped away in my little room with no windows for 30 years, and now I’m playing arenas.”
“I always had [stage fright], and it was Johnny making me go on stage that got me out there each time we’ve performed,” he added. “He was always saying, ‘Come on, you can do it, you’ve got to’, and I got out there. You can’t not do something in life just because you are afraid of it. You cannot let fear rule your life; you just have to throw yourself at the mercy of humanity. If I mess up, people will be kind about it.”
Elsewhere in the MOJO interview, Marr also reflected on how another legend’s advice reframed his sadness over The Smiths breakup – namely, Beatles icon Paul McCartney. “I just told him about the break-up of the band,” he remembers. “I looked to him and waited and he just said, ‘That’s bands for you.’ It’s such a brilliant answer coming from him.”
“Over the years, I’ve been asked to give advice,” he continues. “There is just a time to say, ‘That’s bands for you.’”
Johnny Marr’s new album, The Age of Everything, drops on 2 October. You can pre-order it now.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
