Fifty years ago, a 12-year-old Johnny Marr - or John Maher as he still was then - would get the bus from Wythenshawe and spend his Saturday mornings in a guitar shop next door to Altrincham Market. He was too young to be paid, but he was rewarded enough by the sight, smell and sound of the instrument that would later define him. "I just hung around, getting the manager his sandwiches and his cigs and putting the kettle on, just so I could be around guitars," he told us in 2018.
The 62-year-old Johnny Marr still just wants to be around guitars, but now 8,000 people want to watch him do it. Last night's sold-out gig at the Castlefield Bowl - the fourth of this year's Sounds Of The City series - was significant in being his biggest ever solo show, and what a homecoming it was.
Such was the remarkably prodigious nature of Marr's early work - The Smiths' 70 original songs and four studio albums were all completed before his 24th birthday - that it has inevitably cast a long shadow over a career now well into its fifth decade.
The intervening period has been testament to a work ethic rooted in his working-class upbringing - alongside session work with Oasis, Pet Shop Boys, Talking Heads and many more, he has written a US number 1 album with Modest Mouse, scored Oscar-nominated film soundtracks with Hans Zimmer and even played guitar with Billie Eilish on the Bond theme for No Time To Die.
But for all the times he has sprinkled his genius on others, the past 13 years have also been about Johnny Marr the solo artist and his fifth studio album, The Age Of Everything, arrives in October.
What was most striking about last night's gig was the degree to which the best of this solo work now holds its own alongside those Smiths classics.
Songs like 2023's Somewhere, which comes alive in the amphitheatre-like Bowl as passing train drivers wave from the viaduct and students crane for lofty views from fortuitously-located apartments, the anthemic Spirit, Power and Soul and irresistibly catchy Easy Money.
Three new songs were aired last night - new single Spin, All in A Life and a brilliant It's Time - which all suggest we have much to look forward to with the new record.
Of course, it's the songs he created with that other Mancunian genius, Morrissey, that bring the house down.
Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before, The Headmaster Ritual, This Charming Man, Bigmouth Strikes Again, all played with an authenticity of sound that only their creator can summon.
Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want was beautifully desolate in the balmy July moonlight, while How Soon Is Now?, Panic and a euphoric There Is A Light That Never Goes Out made for a crowd-pleasing finale, with the departing hordes chattering loudly about having been witness to something very special indeed.
Later this year, 85 of Marr's personal guitars will be auctioned by Christie's. His very first electric - a red Vox Ace bought from that Altrincham guitar shop for £32 - is not among them, but the 1960 Cherry Red Gibson ES-355 he used to write Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now has an estimate of £100,000-150,000. The very same guitar is said to have inspired Noel Gallagher to pick one up - we know how that ended - and is a reminder of the seismic influence that Marr has had on Manchester's music scene since The Smiths arrived in 1982.
Last night's all-age audience told its own story. Half a century on, the boy who just wanted to be around guitars still is - and Manchester, evidently, still wants to be around him.
Setlist
Generate Generate
Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before
Armatopia
The Headmaster Ritual
New Town Velocity
Spirit Power & Soul
Spin
This Charming Man
Somewhere
All In A Life
Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want
Hi Hello
Getting Away With It
It's Time
Bigmouth Strikes Again
Easy Money
How Soon Is Now?
---
Panic
The Passenger
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
