“Handsome” guitarist Johnny Marr called out his opposite

(Credit: Phil King)

Thu December 19, 2024 4:53 p.m., United Kingdom

On the Venn diagram of obsessive fans of 1980s bands, it’s generally agreed that Van Halen’s circle (presumably neon yellow) and The Smiths’ circle (charcoal gray?) did not overlap at all – or did they were doing it, it was just a little outburst created by those extra-obnoxious Smiths fans who bought Van Halen records in a childish devotion to irony. In 1986, in the Breakfast Club holding room that was the world, Ally Sheedy and Emilio Estevez weren’t trading cassettes, and the guitar styles of Johnny Marr and Eddie Van Halen could have been America’s and of the USSR.

“No one was more diametrically opposed to my approach than Eddie Van Halen,” Marr admitted in a recent interview. However, he stopped well short of saying anything critical of the late great guitar god. Instead, while Marr initially felt the same aversion, or at least confusion, toward ’80s spandex rock as many of his fans, he eventually developed a unique sort of admiration for some of the purveyors of this sound, Eddie Van Halen in particular.

“On the Smiths’ last American tour,” Marr said Noisy in 2013, “We had a day off in Washington, and since we were on the same label, someone arranged for us to go see Eddie Van Halen, and so I dragged the rest of the band… c That’s it. everyone in the band,” he added with a smirk, knowing that the image of Morrissey attending a David Lee Roth performance is just as upsetting as the Marr vs. Eddie proposition. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It was a ticker that came down from the sky before the group even arrived. It was incredible.

As for Marr’s maiden voyage into the Eddie Van Halen Experience, the visuals, even more than the sound, stayed with him. “I might as well have put earplugs in, because the main thing I remember is (Eddie) started smiling the biggest smile I’ve ever seen, and he never stopped smiling. smile all the way through that smile,” Marr said. “He was laughing, and it was like he was saying, ‘Wow, look how awesome I am!’ Are these my fingers? I’m amazing! » It was just great to see someone so carried away by silly rock n’ roll and how brilliant it was.

You’d think Marr was just making fun of Van Halen here, but his tone was one of genuine joy and fascination, as if he were remembering watching red pandas frolicking at the zoo. “I thought, ‘He’s fine,'” Marr said in another account of his indoctrination with Eddie Van Halen. “And I met him. . . What a handsome guy. But no one needs me to be in that zone.

It’s easy to close your eyes and imagine Marr’s portrayal of Eddie Van Halen, grinning from ear to ear throughout a solo, just like he does in the “Jump” music video. The sad truth, in retrospect, is that the biggest misconception of the Smiths/Van Halen divide of the 1980s was that the former group must have been tortured and miserable while the latter was wonderfully arrogant and optimistic. At least when it came to the two powerhouses of those bands, the darker-looking lead guitarist Marr was almost assuredly the more content individual, having managed to avoid most of the dangerous trappings of rock stardom . Eddie Van Halen’s smile, on the other hand, often hid a lot of pain and internal conflict, something that the joy and near-perfection of his playing rarely hinted at.

Aside from cutting ties with their respective egocentric lead singers (and a 20-second mental explosion on “Shoplifters of the World Unite”), Marr and Van Halen were probably polar opposites; their respective posters are rarely, if ever, hung on the same dorm walls, even out of irony.

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