Johnny Marr talked to the Guardian  this weekend, in the build up to the release of his autobiography, Set the Boy Free, which is set for release on November 3. The former Smiths, Electronic, The The, Modest Mouse and The Cribs
guitarist also disclosed that he had met former Smiths partner Morrissey, but also that his favourite band to play in “without a beat” was Modest Mouse.

Marr said “Yeah. People don’t believe it when I say that. I love Modest Mouse so much because the chemistry of those guys was a real brotherhood. They were a great American band, and I really wanted to be in a great American band.”

Marr was a member of Modest Mouse from 2006, before parting company with the band in 2009. During his time there, the band released their album We were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank in 2007, to critical acclaim, and the album even reached number one in the US, which was a first for Marr.
In the same Guardian interview, Marr disclosed an extract from his autobiography, detailing  a meeting he and Morrissey had in a Manchester pub in 2008, during the of remastering the Smiths’ back catalogue. Marr describes being “happy to see him – it was 10 years or more since we’d last met. We caught up with personal news and family and reminisced a bit[…] then our conversation turned to deeper things. Morrissey started to talk about how our relationship had become owned by the outside world, usually in a negative way. We had been defined by each other in most areas of our professional life. I appreciated him mentioning it, because it was true.” Their talk even turned to the often discussed reunion of The Smiths, and ” For four days it was a very real prospect.” with Marr even talking to members of his current band The Cribs, about potentially playing shows with the Smiths once more.

Sadly for the huge amounts of The Smiths’ fans, nothing ever came of that meeting, or in the 8 years that followed. Marr talks of going to Mexico with The Cribs, but returning to “radio silence” from Morrissey. “Our communication ended, and things went back to how they were and how I expect they always will be.”

Morrissey addressed the questions of a reunion as recently as August this year, but only to say that “​It’s no longer a question of time or wounds, but simply that the issue is now so remote that the question doesn’t make sense any more.”