Johnny Marr’s autobiography is thick. Set the Boy Free, which tells the ex-Smiths guitarist’s story from his hardscrabble Manchester childhood to his globetrotting years as a journeyman musician, is a hefty 464 pages. But it’s not as long as that sounds—the typeface is on the largish side, and the text is laid out quite spaciously, so that there’s a peculiarly small number of words per page. My first thought was that the book was padded to match the page count of Morrissey’s Autobiography from 2013, which Set the Boy Free does, down to the exact page number. But if that’s the case, I’m certain Marr had nothing to do with it.
Because if Set the Boy Free does anything, it proves that Marr is above those types of petty rivalries with his ex-songwriting partner, and that their falling-out, supposedly one of the most notorious in music, has been unfairly overblown by the press. Perhaps the greatest surprise is how warmly he depicts Morrissey, and the book should preempt any further questions presented to Marr about whether the Smiths will ever reunite. (The answer? It’s not entirely up to him. If the circumstances were exactly right, Marr would likely be interested. But they’re not right at the moment, and they might not ever be right, and life’s too short to dwell on the shoulda coulda wouldas.)