Johnny Marr Is 50

John Martin Maher is 50 today. We tend to identify more with Morrissey because everyone has been sad but not all of us have written some of the greatest tunes of the 20th century, and maybe also because while Morrissey has done one thing the same way for the last thirty years Marr has been all over the place to the extent that if you are a youngish band on the verge there is a better-than-even chance that you might wake up one morning and discover that he’s now a member, but let us take a moment to acknowledge that even a lot of the non-Smiths stuff (and sure, he will never surpass the Smiths stuff and neither will anyone else) is absolutely brilliant and if it came at the beginning of a career instead of after the amazing run that it followed we would still build him some kind of pantheon. So let’s go with this one, which he co-wrote with the late Kirsty MacColl. He is currently on tour, you know.