Johnny Marr explains why he sought out Morrissey:
“I went to Morrissey because I’d learned that he was a lifer like me. Had we been mates before then, we wouldn’t have had to explain ourselves to each other. But we had to iron those things out immediately, as we were writing those first songs. We really were swept away by passion for what we were about to embark upon. I remember talking about the New York Dolls’ album cover photograph on the very first day we got together - should *we* sprawl all over each other in photos like they did? Without sounding too pretentious, the two of us were able to project onto each other and into the ether, everything in us that had been suppressed for years. There was lot of shouting ‘yeah!’ at each other, great, passionate agreement: ‘Yeah, that’s what *I* want to do too.” (Word, 2004)
