Having The Smiths’ guitarist as your father can be a blessing and curse as Tim Hughes finds out

It can be a mixed blessing having a famous parent, while it can give you a massive leg-up and head start, it can also impose ridiculous expectations.

Just ask Nile Marr.

The son of the guitar legend and former Smiths axeman Johnny Marr admits he didn’t really have much choice in life, but to embrace his dad’s iconic status and do something to make him proud.

He started writing songs at the age of 14, initially inspired by Nick Drake and John Martyn, but when the family uprooted to the hipster heaven of Portland, Oregon, when Nile was 14, he found inspiration in the rich indie and alt rock scene of the Pacific Northwest, as well as punk acts like Fugazi and Black Flag.

“It changed completely how I wanted to work and how I wanted to make music,” he says. “From that point on we needed to be running everything with American work ethic and approach to guitar music.

“You just get in the van and you do it, and you drive and just keep driving.”

He met drummer Scott Griffiths at a practice room giving him a stack of records by Fugazi and his dad’s former outfit, Portland band Modest Mouse, telling him to come back and play like a combination of the bands’ drummers. Then began the hunt for a bass player – the pair settling on Callum Rogers, and striking out as three-piece Man Made.

Nile says the Manchester band were passionate about not denying “someone in their formative years the chance to experience a band on a very intimate level” and deliberately played gigs open to under 18s. They also played shows for charities and assorted good causes, including refugee benefit shows, and donated cash to conservation projects. Vitally they also got stuck into the business of nurturing Manchester’s grass roots arts scene – supporting musicians, filmmakers and photographers.

“These are events where you can help a good cause, you’re supporting an independent venue, kids can go in and you get to appreciate art,” he says.

A preoccupation is technology, and how it influences are lives. It’s also a central theme of their album tellingly titled TV Broke My Brain.

“I wanted to stop and think about how quickly we embrace new technology, and promises that it’ll make your life easier,” he says.

“It’s not a judgement, it’s just asking the questions about your relationship with technology. For me, the most valuable experiences in my life have been face-to-face, real, analogue interactions.”

The album was recorded at the band’s shared house over a year and a half, and mixed by mixed by Nick Launay, who has previously shared his talents with Kate Bush, Lou Reed and Arcade Fire.

It took that long, he says, because the songs changed every time they were played live. “It’s the menu of the live experience,” he elaborates. “The songs change every night and that depends on the audience, the room and the atmosphere.

“It shouldn’t be ‘we have an album, let us play it for you’. It’s ‘we are a band and we have recorded us playing for you!’.”

SEE THEM
Man Made play the Bullingdon, Cowley Road, Oxford, on Monday, March 7. 
Tickets from ticketweb.co.uk