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NEWS : STORIES
British pop artist Johnny Marr, co-founder of '80s rock group the Smiths, was in a colorful headspace when he decided to start a new band three years ago. He had accomplished everything he wanted to with his electro-pop group Electronic and he was
He aimed to get away from computerized music and explore more organic rock terrain, and in his extracurricular life he was tapping into a wealth of otherworldly stimuli including religion, parapsychology, psychic phenomena and philosophy, which helped guide his path. "I was kind of into the Jim Morrison vibe, only without the beard and the organ," he said. "I've done the zone-out thing in Arizona for the last five or six years, and I've been going to séances and checking out a lot of esoteric stuff. I've seen tables shaking and candles moving from one part of the room to another — all these things I haven't quite gotten my head around yet." Much of Johnny Marr and the Healers' debut album, Boomslang, reflects Marr's openness to such new experiences. The band's name is a reference to a book by Russian psychic philosopher Madame Blavatsky, and the album title came to Marr in a vision. "I had a dream about a talking snake, which said, 'I am Boomslang, I am Boomslang. I wanna go up, I wanna go up,' " said Marr. "It seemed to go on all night, and I woke up thinking, 'Well, that was pretty weird, even for me.' So I went on the Internet and lo and behold, there was a snake called Boomslang." Songs like "The Last Ride," "You Are the Magic" and "Need It" bubble over with loose rhythmic grooves, echoey guitars and sedated vocals that vibe with Marr's open-minded consciousness. Musically, the songs have more in common with the soporific pulse of '90s Manchester, England, bands like Stone Roses and Charlatans UK than with the sulky androgynous pop of the Smiths. "I'm interested in investigating so-called 'white rhythms' — something that can make you dance and hit you physically but isn't directly close to James Brown or Funkadelic," said Marr, who plays guitar and sings on Boomslang. "Sometimes it's too easy to get on a Bootsy [Collins] vibe, and I can appreciate that, but it's not where I'm coming from culturally." Assisting Marr in his quest for sonic transcendence are ex-Kula Shaker bassist Alonza Bevan and Ringo Starr's son Zak Starkey on drums. "The chemistry with these guys is amazing," Marr said. "In a perfect world, we'd all be Healers and my name wouldn't be in front of it, but everyone around me convinced me that it would be silly not to put my name on it. It would be like Patti Smith calling her group the Shoes." Originally, Marr planned to hire a lead vocalist for the band, so he sang on a batch of tunes in his studio and gave the recordings to various singers. Then he listened to their tapes and chose a frontman for the Healers. But when he played the seemingly lucky crooner's demo for Began and Starkey, they balked. "They snuck off to a cafe, then came back and said they thought what I was doing was more interesting," said Marr. "They used the key words. They said it was odd, quirky and messed up, and that's what I was looking for. It was nice because from the time I was 16 I've done music, and the aesthetic and the vocal and lyrical content has always been an unknown for me because it came out of someone else's mind. It would be like I did the landscape and then somebody else put the subject right in the center of it. With this record, I was able to paint the complete picture." Johnny Marr and the Healers tour dates, according to their publicist:
This report is provided by MTV News
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