After receiving the medal that goes with it, the legendary guitarist settled down for a public interview with Hot Press’ Stuart Clark.
Whilst reiterating – for the 1,983rd time! – that The Smiths won’t be reforming, Marr revealed that himself and Morrissey have “semi-agreed” to the release of a major new box-set.
“The label approached me a few years ago with this proposal that I wasn’t into at all, but they sent me some stuff and it sounded pretty good,” he says. “There are versions of the songs that are really stripped down as we recorded them as ‘live’ takes – and you’d be really surprised, we were a pretty good band!
“Also, how good some of those live bootlegs are was an absolute revelation for me. It was like, ‘Whoa, this is intense!” Even ‘Frankly Mr. Shankley’ is intense! It’s pretty heavy and I like heavy music.
I hope it happens, but there’s all kinds of bullshit politics that I have to negotiate.”
Also emerging from the chat were the fact that Johnny’s itching to work with Feist and LCD Soundsystem, and that Modest Mouse had such a fab time at the Electric Picnic they want to tour here in the New Year.
“The band couldn’t believe it,” he says of the Mouse-ian reaction to the Picnic. “They went, ‘Aren’t the Irish audiences great for everybody?’ And I said, ‘No, they actually liked us.’ It was a really good, strong reaction because they’d never been to Ireland before and they have a real respect for Irish culture – particularly the music in a way that’s almost unusual to me.”