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Johnny Marr: "The Smiths" and the Art of Gun-Slinging: "The Smiths" and the Art of Gun-Slinging
 
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Johnny Marr: "The Smiths" and the Art of Gun-Slinging: "The Smiths" and the Art of Gun-Slinging (Paperback)

by Richard Carman (Author)
2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
RRP: £12.99
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Customers buy this book with Morrissey and Marr: The Severed Alliance by Johnny Rogan

Johnny Marr: "The Smiths" and the Art of Gun-Slinging: "The Smiths" and the Art of Gun-Slinging + Morrissey and Marr: The Severed Alliance
Price For Both: £18.72

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  • This item: Johnny Marr: "The Smiths" and the Art of Gun-Slinging: "The Smiths" and the Art of Gun-Slinging by Richard Carman

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Product details

  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Independent Music Press (28 Sep 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0954970489
  • ISBN-13: 978-0954970482
  • Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 185,137 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

The Smiths were the best British band since The Beatles. Their shimmering, muscular, guitar-driven pop remains the barometer for everyone who looks back at the 1980s with affection. In a decade that arguably produced more poor pop music than any other since the 1950s. The Smiths shone like a beacon and inspired a generation of indie guitar bands, and their influence continues undiminished to this day. Musically, The Smiths were a league ahead and guitarist Johnny Marr was the driving force behind their revolutionary sound. Manchester-born Marr proved to be a craftsman and explorer without equal, a guitarist who rode the longest highways to find the most perfect sounds and who built the gilt-edged frames in which the word-pictures of co-writer Morrissey sat so perfectly. After The Smiths, Marr continued to inject beautiful, sophisticated guitar into some of the best music of the period: The Pretenders, Kirsty McColl, Billy Bragg, and Talking Heads all benefited from his incendiary input. More recently with his band Johnny Marr and The Healers, and the critically acclaimed album "Boomslang", Johnny remains as influential and important as ever - a true guitar hero.


From the Publisher

1) This is the world’s first and only biography of Johnny Marr.
2) This year sees the 20th anniversary of the seminal Smiths album, The Queen Is Dead, which will guarantee a high profile for all Smith-s related books and artists.
3) Similar books on Morrissey are proven strong sellers and The Smiths’ fanbase remains fanatical.
4) This title will also appeal to fans of the artists Marr has collaborated with as well as music fans in general
5) The title sits neatly alongside other I.M.P. titles such as Dave Grohl and Robert Smith, all maverick artists who have made an impact across more than one band
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Customer Reviews

10 Reviews
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4 star:
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3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
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Average Customer Review
2.7 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Irritating but Essential, 2 Feb 2007
By m gannicliffe (manchester) - See all my reviews
Halfway through there's an interesting thought (the interesting thought): we want our great songwriting duo's to conform to a heads/tails, yin/yang duality which does them serious injustice. It was McCartney (the corny populist?) listening to Stockhausen and making those tape loops, while Lennon (arty, edgey, out-there) sat at home watching 'Meet the Wife' on the box. In The Smiths' myth Morrissey vacuums up all the sensitivity, intelligence and compassion and finds his flipside in a streetfightin' Marr. Which is nonsense; by all accounts Marr has no shortage of those Morrisque attributes (could you write that music and not have?) and, well, after the court case I doubt there's many of the great unquiffed who associate the singer with sensitivity or compassion. Carmen would never make this last point and his book suffers terribly for it. His completely uncritical approach resembles Soviet newscasts. Candle-bearing crowds besiege the Kremlin before he admits the fourth Oasis album might have lacked a little something. I'm not sure serial apologists do artists any favours. What's he scared of? Admitting that many of Marr's fans don't get The Healers and examining various angles would tell us more about the fans and The Healers. Filling the critical void are track-by-track assessments of albums you've listened to more times than you've said your own name, and if you've never heard 'You've Got Everything Now' then reading that "it runs at a nervy, bass-led punk pace" with "a perfect beat" isn't going to help. That said, it's the only biography and gathers many existing sources well. I knew a good deal of it before but still found plenty to fascinate. And irritating as it gets, Carmen's positivity at least mirrors that of his subject. Of course a Johnny Marr biography should run: Music, Guitars, Gossip, Haircuts, but Carmen's chronological trawl does succeed in joining the dots between the Marr's varied projects.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars You've Got Everything Now, 13 Oct 2006
The first ever Johnny Marr biography - I'm sure not the last either, but it won't be easily bettered. The writer's got a clear understanding of and affinity for Marr and his music, but manages to avoid the usual hagiography and produce something readable.

I learned loads of stuff I didn't know before about Marr, The Smiths and especially Marr's post-Smiths work, but written in a style that made me not want to put the book down. This is well researched and informative, with some great observations and asides - the "jingle-jangle moaning" description of the Smiths sound combines the endless comparisons to Roger McGuinn, and that Rickenbacker picking electric guitar sound of Mr Tambourine Man by The Byrds, not Dylan, with the old complaint about miserable Morrissey.

The Smiths were easily the best band of the era and probably one of the best ever. If you're a fan, you'll enjoy this book.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing!, 26 Sep 2006

I was expecting a detailed overview of Marr's career with lots of new stories and interviews, but this was a pretty banal account, over-familiar, with no input from Marr or the other Smiths. There was also nothing new about Marr's pre-Smiths history. In Rogan's The Severed Alliance many people are interviewed from Marr's early life but not here. So it really is a missed opportunity. I think Marr deserves a decent book, although his profile isn't as high as it once was. But this isn't the one. Disappointing.
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 		 Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Well researched, poorly written
This book has been well researched, the author is clearly taken with Johnny Marr and has set about the book with the best intentions of educating the reader with Marr's life to... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Nanker Phelge

1.0 out of 5 stars Truly Awful
I am always a little tentative about books which are unnofficial and unauthorised simply because you dont know what you are going to get. Read more
Published 23 months ago by C. Huddleston

2.0 out of 5 stars One for completists...
Poorly written (how about this for a sentence - "Red Wedge was pop music's answer to another year of stifling Thatcherite brutality being administered to the British public like a... Read more
Published 23 months ago by chepalle

1.0 out of 5 stars CAUTION: UNOFFICIAL & UNAUTHORISED!!!!
Beware of this book. No more than a compilation of various references to interviews in past music publication. Read more
Published on 20 Aug 2007 by Mr Arber

3.0 out of 5 stars this book review.
how can the idiot who made this books amazon review say that the 80s produced more poor pop since the 50s. next to the 90s and this decade the 80s pop looks brilliant. Read more
Published on 18 Oct 2006 by R. Kennedy

4.0 out of 5 stars not only in The Smiths
He contributed to the only songwriting partnership to really challenge the Lennon/McCartney axis. His post-Smiths work has sadly gone unnoticeed. Read more
Published on 15 Sep 2006 by A. Donaldson

5.0 out of 5 stars How soon is not so good as before ?
Johnny marr was a true guitar hero...This is a stone cold fact !
but Has he produced any work of note post smiths ? Read more
Published on 15 Aug 2006 by J. A. Scrivener

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