Credit: Apple Music / YouTube Still
Tue 25 August 2026 18:08, UK
Johnny Marr has expressed his support for Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s cover of The Smiths.
On August 24th, during Burnham’s first visit to Ukraine as prime minister, he stopped by the military and artistic unit in Kyiv, which allowed him to show his skills on the guitar.
After being handed a guitar by a soldier, Burnham then delivered a rendition of ‘Rusholme Ruffians’ from The Smiths’ classic album Meat is Murder.
Now, during an interview with Absolute Radio on August 25th, Marr has reacted to Burnham playing a riff that he wrote more than four decades ago, and has nothing but nicities to say.
The Mancunian shared, “I’ve only just been told about it in great detail. I think it’s an amazing thing. In all honesty, I think it’s a victory for the guitar. Just the way I’m wired, I always think like that.”
Marr continued, “I can’t quite get my head around it. I don’t know whether pride is the word, but it probably is. It’s kind of beyond me to process it, really, becuase it could be massive that. I just sort of go, ‘How great is the guitar?’ What an amazing tool the guitar is.”
The former Smiths guitarist added that his “overwhelming feeling was that it was a victory of the guitar”, but did acknowledge the serious situation regarding the “plight of Ukraine”, admitting, “The more I think about it, the more I think how insignificant I am in it, really.”
Burnham’s love of The Smiths is no secret, recalling once to FourFourTwo, “I saw The Smiths in 1986 at Salford University and I was a big disciple of the band.”
After he became the Mayor of Manchester in 2016, Burnham has also brushed shoulders with Marr on more than one occasion, recalling how they first met at the Etihad Stadium when his beloved Everton played Marr’s Manchester City, “I was going downstairs from the corporate section to meet someone and passed Johnny on the stairs. He said: ‘I didn’t know you were a blue’. I said: ‘I am, but not the kind you think I am’.”
Burnham added, “It was slightly awkward but Johnny is wonderful. I went to watch Noel (Gallagher) at Wythenshawe Park recently, I’d been to Goodison that day watching us get beat by Wolves so he was getting my misery about the state of things. We had a good chat.”
Meanwhile, while speaking to The Guardian in 2023, he explained how The Smiths “came along at a time when the north-west of England was probably at its lowest ever ebb in recent history. It seemed to me to be a recurrent theme in Morrissey’s lyrics that you can kind of aspire to be more than this. You don’t have to be dragged down by your situation or circumstances.”
When he was a guest on Desert Island Discs in 2010, he elected ‘How Soon Is Now?’ and ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’ among his eight songs, as well as the Morrissey track ‘Every Day Is Like Sunday’.
As of writing, Morrissey is yet to give his verdict on Burnham’s take on The Smiths classic, which, presumably, considering their political differences, will be less complimentary than Marr’s.
In other Johnny Marr news, earlier today (August 25th), he continued to preview his forthcoming solo album, The Age Of Everything, set for release on October 2nd, with the new single ‘It’s Time’.
He said of the new track, “‘It’s Time’ is my way of singing about some worldly issues but finding defiance, in idealism. I wanted a lyric that matched the exuberance of the music but is actually about resisting cynicism and corruption: ‘Everybody ain’t making it, change the weather and breaking it. Mobilise to know the truth. Open eyes to know the truth.’ I guess it’s about the assholes with dodgy views.”
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