With a handful of U.K. concert appearances coming up this month, Johnny Marr stopped by BBC Two’s “Later… With Jools Holland” this week, with the program airing a pair of tunes (“The Right Thing Right” off The Messenger and The Smiths’ “Bigmouth Strikes Again”).
As Johnny Marr wraps up his U.S. tour in support of solo album The Messenger, he pulled a very special guest up on stage last night in Brooklyn: former Smiths bassist Andy Rourke who helped play “How Soon Is Now?” in an on-stage reunion of half of that legendary band. Check out video of the performance.
Johnny Marr is wrapping up his U.S. tour in support of solo album The Messenger, and found time to stop by “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” last night to perform the record’s title track on air and then stuck around for a web-only performance of “How Soon Is Now?” — both of which you can see here.
With a week to kill in Los Angeles between appearances at the Coachella festival, New Order popped up on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” last night to perform its classic single “Bizarre Love Triangle” on air plus treated fans to a bonus web-only version of “I’ll Stay With You,” the opening track off its just-released ‘Lost Sirens.’
Johnny Marr surprised fans in San Francisco on Saturday night by pulling an old friend on stage: Billy Duffy of The Cult, who joined Marr and his band to rip through “I Fought the Law,” the 1958 classic by The Crickets’ Sonny Curtis popularized first by the Bobby Fuller Four and then The Clash.
There may have been no Smiths reunion at Coachella once again this year, but they were there in spirit as guitarist Johnny Marr played the festival’s first day, whipping out three classics by his former band — including the indelible “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out,” which you can see here.
The 1991 self-titled debut from indie supergroup Electronic — featuring New Order frontman Bernard Sumner and guitarist Johnny Marr of The Smiths, with the occasional assist from Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant — will be reissued in the U.K. next week in a 2CD expanded edition.
The lineup for this summer’s Glastonbury festival was announced today, and it’s an utter monstrosity, with headliners The Rolling Stones, Arctic Monkeys and Mumford & Sons joined by a seemingly endless list of bands, including Primal Scream, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Elvis Costello, Billy Bragg and more.
Johnny Marr was feted at the NME Awards in London on Wednesday night, winning the music mag’s “Godlike Genius” award and then taking the stage to perform tracks off his solo album and a couple Smiths classics — including “How Soon Is Now?,” for which he was joined by Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones.
Morrissey today announced rescheduled dates on his trouble-stricken North American tour, adding shows in Hollywood, Philadelphia and Richmond, Va., on a tour that will now keep him on the road through late April — which means he’ll be touring the U.S. at the same time as his former bandmate Johnny Marr.
This week’s new releases include brand-new albums from Johnny Marr (‘The Messenger’), KMFDM (‘Kunst’) and John Foxx (‘Evidence’), plus reissues from Fine Young Cannibals, The Blue Aeroplanes and The Sound, as well as best-ofs from Kirsty MacColl and The Human League.
It’s still more than a week before legendary former The Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr releases his new solo album ‘The Messenger,’ but you don’t have to wait any longer to hear the record — a full stream of the 12-track album premiered tonight via Rolling Stone, and you can hear it via the link included here.
The NME later this month will bestow its “Godlike Genius” award to Johnny Marr, and in conjunction with the issue celebrating that honor the guitarist recorded a couple videos for the publication’s “Song Stories” series in which he offers insight into the writing of the Smiths’ “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.”
Johnny Marr let the cat out of the bag over the weekend, but New Order today confirmed that it will play two Coachella warm-up concerts with the former Smiths guitarist in Las Vegas and Santa Barbara, Calif., in April — and announced they’ll play “more U.S. dates later in the year.”
Johnny Marr will follow his previously announced U.K. solo tour with an 18-date North American run in April and May that’s built around his appearances at the two-weekend Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival — and which includes dates with New Order in Las Vegas and Santa Barbara, Calif.
The original lineup of The Stone Roses will makes its U.S. debut at April’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, joining headliners Blur, Phoenix and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, plus a bill that also includes New Order, OMD, both Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Grinderman, Johnny Marr and more.
You can’t say they’re not persistent: Organizers of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival apparently continue to make offers to land a reunion of The Smiths to headline the annual festival, with Morrissey reporting this week that he has yet again turned down an offer to have the defunct indie giants top the 2013 bill.
Although he’s already premiered a couple tracks and released a video, Johnny Marr today debuted the video for the first official single from his upcoming solo album The Messenger, a David Barnes-directed performance clip for the song “Upstarts” that you can check out right here.
The 1991 self-titled debut from indie supergroup Electronic — featuring New Order frontman Bernard Sumner and guitarist Johnny Marr of The Smiths, with the occasional assist from Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant — will be reissued this spring in a 2CD special edition featuring eight previously unreleased bonus tracks.
