The Maccabees’ Felix White on how Johnny Marr influenced the direction of new music with 86TVs
nme.comThe Maccabees’ Felix White has spoken about how Johnny Marr helped steer the direction of new music with his comeback band 86TVs.The group – comprising Felix’s brothers Hugo and Will (the latter formerly of mid-noughties indie band Talk Taxis and his solo project BLANc) and The Noisettes’ drummer Jamie Morrison – recently released their debut single ‘Worn Out Buildings’.Speaking to NME in a recent interview about writing post-Maccabees and the direction of the new band, Felix explained how The Smiths guitarist and songwriter gave them some important advice for their new material.The band recalled that for the first year of the project, “it was completely instrumental and we were writing music we thought could be a soundtrack or we’d get someone else to sing on”.However, eventually they were convinced by Marr to sing on the tracks themselves.“I think The Maccabees had just split up, but I’d read Johnny Marr’s autobiography, which I loved, and it was a really striking time to read it because a lot of his life has been about reinvention and change,” Felix recalled.He continued: “So there was a correlation in my head at that particular moment in my life with what Johnny’s book had said.
I bumped into him at the NME Awards and said, ‘Can I send you some music? We’ve just been doing some instrumental music and we don’t know if it’s good’.
So I sent him all these instrumentals, which was actually quite a brazen thing to do looking back at it.”Felix also remembered the contents of Marr’s feedback email, which read: “‘I’m on multiple listens, it sounds great.
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