Johnny Marr: ‘The Smiths would’ve signed to Factory Records over my dead body’


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Johnny Marr has insisted the widely accepted view that The Smiths were refused a deal by Tony Wilson’s hugely influential Factory Records is a ‘crock of shit’, and claimed the band would’ve signed to the Manchester label ‘over his dead body’.

“If you were a musician in Manchester at that time, it was almost the law that you went on your hands and knees and begged Tony Wilson for his papal blessing to stick you in the studio, and I wasn’t about to do that,” he told NME.

Factory Records added to Tony Wilson’s fledgling musical empire in the late seventies, and is noted for handing breaks to bands such as Joy Division and later the Happy Mondays who, in the mecca of Wilson’s Hacienda nightclub, helped to shape a genuine cultural phenomenon.

But as the archetypal outsiders, Johnny Marr has refuted claims that The Smiths were one of the few Manchester success stories of the era to have been turned down by Wilson, adding they would have actively avoided being ‘assimilated into the Factory aesthetic’ in any case.

“So much has been made of Factory apparently turning The Smiths down, but that’s a crock of shit,” he continued. “The Smiths would have signed to Factory over my dead body. I didn’t want to be assimilated into the Factory aesthetic. Before we knew it, we would’ve had side-partings and khaki shorts, with bongos round our necks. No disrespect to A Certain Ratio.”

You can read a previous Live4ever feature on the story of Factory Records right here.


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