‘I’m going to need a new tour bus,” quips Johnny Marr, referring to the vast amount of people on the stage. His regular band of 10 years has expanded and now includes his son Nile on “guitar and fabulous harmonies”; a 30-piece orchestra – conducted by Fiona Brice – is here to provide what the 60-year-old frontman has called a “highly pumped symphonic feel”.
The occasion marks Marr’s 10 years as a solo artist and new solo best of, Spirit Power. It’s also the inaugural large music event at Manchester’s Aviva Studios. The product of the UK’s biggest cultural investment (£242m) on a venue since the Tate Modern is a vast space for 5,000 people with an unusually high ceiling allowing for spectacular lights and visuals.
Marr talks about how New Town Velocity – one of his loveliest solo songs – was inspired by walking around Manchester as a kid with big dreams, and performs it with film of himself pounding those streets as an adult after an illustrious 40 years in music. An orchestral rendition of the Smiths’ Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me is illustrated by photographer Chris Hunt’s book Beeton Grove: the photos of poverty in 1970s Longsight powerfully demonstrate the environment such songs came from.
The orchestra never feels bolted on and the new arrangements allow songs to be reinvented or extended. How Soon Is Now? has a new classical coda. Get the Message by Electronic – Marr’s 90s group with Bernard Sumner – has Bollywood-type strings. That song misses the New Order singer’s lighter vocals but Marr sings the Smiths’ Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want beautifully: the combination of acoustic guitar, flutes, xylophones and brass is magical.
Danceable solo track Easy Money sounds like a Wythenshawe Chic. A giant projection of Smiths bassist Andy Rourke – who died this year – is a lovely touch and the new arrangements of the band’s classics Panic and There Is a Light become joyous singalong celebrations. Hopefully we’ll hear more from the Johnny Marr Orchestra, if he can fit them on that bus.
• At Aviva Studios, Manchester, tonight, sold out.
