Let’s Get Some More Concentration
There is a massive difference between being successful and being a true hero. Last night a black tour bus pulled up outside the Paradise club in Boston. In it was Johnny Marr, currently playing with the Cribs. Context: Here is a guy who is accepted by any guitar player of taste as a true original genius.
The easiest way to extend life expectancy would be to create a religion that insists that before you can enter heaven you have to be able to play a Smiths song on the guitar. Heaven knows we would all be miserable now. We would live for 200 years trying. It’s that hard. Noel Gallagher points out that even Johnny Marr can’t remember how to play all of Johnny Marr’s guitar parts because they are too hard.
By my guess Marr has also sold over 15 million albums with the Smiths alone. He is not on tour, playing in front of a few hundred kids in Boston on a rainy-snowy night in January, because he needs money. He is there because he defines himself simply as a guitar player. Not just in some cliched sense of cool. Because it is the essence of him.
Marr is not a rock star, poser, legend, or tortured soul. He is a guitar player first and foremost, and he is with the band and on the road to do that one thing. I expect that none of the other hundred thousand things that surround us in life could divert him from remaining connected to what he is fundamentally about.
It’s hard to think of another musician of Johnny Marr’s stature who so single-mindedly embraces the 100% proof concentrate of what he is about. It’s glorious.
So to quote a classic Smiths song: “Please please please, let me get what I want.” 100% concentrate.
