In a new interview, Johnny Marr has spoken about when he met Morrissey. Marr opened up about the time that this happened and it was a full stop on how shocking it sounded. The former Smiths guitarist recalled sneaking into the Apollo in Manchester to watch Patti Smith in 1978 and stumbling upon Morrissey for the first time.
He explained: “Funny enough, it was actually for the real first time Morrissey and I met, but we met really in passing, when I went to see Patti Smith on my own in 1978. I was 14, and none of my mates wanted to pony up for the ticket. We used to always sneak in. I talked about this in my book quite a lot. We used to sneak into the Apollo.”
The former BBC 6 Music host intervened to ask, “Through the toilets, was it?” which Marr said: “Yeah, through the window. Just get me in the window and then I would open the door at the back girls toilet. I opened the door and we would all pile in. And because of that, and there’s quite a number of usually boys, I think Mark Reilly was in the fall. He works on the radio. I think Mark Radcliffe is another. He sort of might have done that. But it was a bit of a thing of culture, you know, I wasn’t the only one. but we used to go, the thing with me and my mates we were completely indiscriminate.”
He continued: “Whoever was on, we would go just for something to do. So I saw more bands that I didn’t like, that I did like. I saw Barclay James Harvest, I saw Uriah Heep and all these bands I didn’t know about. But because I was so into Patti Smith, I got a ticket. So I went on my own and I bumped into a couple of old older lads in the bar, and Morrissey was with them. But then I went off just to get right at the front, and I stood at the front of this Patti Smith Show.”
