Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Studio master tapes, studio outtakes

Johnny Marr’s Dansette Delights

Craig McAllister

For Johnny Marr, the 7″ is king. The latest edition of Mojo has him picking his 10 essential 7″s (+ 6  8! bonus tracks). He’s even designed a CD cover as well. All you need is the music…..

johnny_marr_3

I’ve lifted the picture above and some of the text below from Mojo’s website. Credit where it’s due and that.
1. Del Shannon
Keep Searchin’ (We’ll Follow The Sun)
(Stateside B-side, 1964)
Johnny Marr: “The influence of [A-side] The Answer To Everything on me when writing Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want is well documented so I picked its sister record, this time. It was the sound of the house when I was little.”
2. The Rolling Stones
Get Off Of My Cloud
(Decca single, 1965)
Johnny Marr: “The main thing I took from Keith Richards was his musical ideology; that there is a nobility in playing rhythm guitar and being the engine room and steering the ship, all these very valorous concepts which he threw in the face of guitar culture in the early ’70s.”
3. T.Rex
Metal Guru
(T-Rex Wax Co. single, 1972)

Johnny Marr: “It’s so beautiful and commercial but slightly weird and I could not believe what I was hearing because it was so all-encompassing. It connected with something beyond my regular senses.”

4. The Isley Brothers
Behind A Painted Smile
(Tamla Motown B-side, 1969)

Johnny Marr: “Motown provided a fantastic alternative to the rock music my mates were getting into. I ventured into this place called Rare Records on John Dalton Street in Manchester, I went into the basement and I remember to this day it was like a sea of future happiness.”

5. Iggy And The Stooges
Gimme Danger
(Raw Power LP track, CBS 1973)

Johnny Marr: “I remember getting on the bus and just staring at the front cover in disbelief all the way home. I wasn’t disappointed when I played it because it sounded like I thought it would. It was mysterious, sexy, druggy, riffy and to-the-point.”

6. The Crystals
There’s No Other Like My Baby
(Philles single, 1961)

Johnny Marr: “There is an unpretentiousness to it, and compared to what was passing itself off as weird in rockland with prog music at the time this just sounded weirder to me, and it seemed to come from an odder dimension.”

7. Blondie
Hanging On The Telephone
(Chrysalis single, 1978 )

Johnny Marr: “It reminds me of going to parties and really complaining that I didn’t want to hear Peaches by The Stranglers for the eleventh time and going through record collections with all that ELO shit in them and pulling out *Parallel Lines and going, ‘Alright then, let’s listen to this very, very loud!’”

8. Bob And Marcia
Young Gifted And Black
(Harry J single, 1970)

Johnny Marr: “It was one of the records that both Morrissey and myself liked in the same way. It reminded us both of being youthful fanatics and being outside of the norm… Then, amazingly, when [New Order’s] Bernard Sumner and I started to get close we both discovered that we liked that record in the same way.”

9. The Equals
Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys
(President single, 1970)

Johnny Marr: “Some records you wear down and you wear out but this one… I remember it from being out from when I was a kid but unlike some of the other tracks I play, I don’t listen to it for that reason, I like it because it reminds me of something shared between me and my mate.”

10. The Cribs
Hey Scenesters
(Wichita single, 2005)

Johnny Marr: “A fantastic working class street rock’n’roll 45 that could only have come from a band in this country. It’s like, Move over, this is the new generation. The Jarmans are as hip as street musicians get from any generation.”

Bonus Tracks:

Paul Davidson – Midnight Rider (Tropical single, 1976)

Johnny Marr: “Aside from Keith Richards’ on Gimme Shelter, Midnight Rider contains my favourite ever guitar solo.”

 

Alternative TV – Action Time Vision (Deptford Fun City single, 1978 )
Built To Spill – In Your Mind (Ancient Melodies Of The Future LP track, WEA, 2001)
The Drifters – I Count The Tears (Atlantic, 1960)
Johnny Marr: “If you were to play this to the other members of The Smiths it would remind them of being in a band with me. I used to sing and play it on the guitar when we weren’t recording and forced everyone to sing along. They learned to love it!”

Hamilton Bohannon – Disco Stomp (Dakar/Brunswick, 1975)
No direct quote from Johnny, but he’s said before that Disco Stomp influenced the swampy rhythm of How Soon Is Now. That record, and undoubtedly a huge side order of Bo Diddley.


TV On The Radio – Wolf Like Me (4AD single, 2006)

!!!Extra Bonus Tracks!!!

Del Shannon – The Answer To Everything

Johnny Marr: “The influence of ‘The Answer to Everything’ on me when writing ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ with The Smiths is well documented.” It is? ! ?

Rolling Stones – Gimme Shelter (Guitar track from recording session)

Johnny Marr: “Keith Richards was badass. His solo on ‘Gimme Shelter’ is my favourite ever guitar solo.“

johnny_cd_artwork

 

Download the entire set + artwork here.

I’ve written about Johnny Marr before. Have a read here

***Woops! Numpty Alert!

In my haste to bring you this excellent compilation, I mistakenly put the wrong TV On The Radio track on the album. Playing it in the car today I though, “Hang on! That’s not ‘Wolf Like Me’! Idiot!” But this is. So if you downloaded the .rar file previously, you’ll need it to correct the tracklisting on the compilation You can also download front and back cover artwork here (made by my good self). Ta!

Published by Craig McAllister

Over one and a half a million visitors since Jan 07! The material on Plain Or Pan has been downloaded, digested and discussed by every knowing hipster throughout Europe, North America, South America, Australia, Asia and Africa - truly Plain Or Pan-Global! One and a half million thanks to each and every one of you!

14 thoughts on “Johnny Marr’s Dansette Delights”

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  2. Pingback: Gimme Shelter? Gimme, Gimme, Gimme! « Plain Or Pan?

  3. The last shadow puppets are amazing but a few shameless grand if Del Shannon. Interested about the smiths link. Genuinely did not see that.

  5. Top stuff. I’d done my own version of it before you posted this. Any chance you could post an mp3 of the Equals song, which is the only one I havn’t been able to get?

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  10. Er, that’s Bob and Marcia’s “Young, Gifted and Black”, Bob and Marcia Young’s “Gifted and Black”…Who types these things in?

  11. Howdy Gruff.

    I type these things. A wee typo there. As you can see from the layout of this post, my fonts and paragraphing were playing funny that day. I’ll get round to fixing it sometime.

    Thanks for dropping by!

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