It was only then that I thought ‘It’s worth forming a group with this’.”It’s not the first Marr project to be a product of chemistry. The Smiths could never have existed without the Morrissey-Marr songwriting partnership, while in Electronic he had Sumner as his foil. Yet, however much he may feel a bond with Starkey, the Healers is still primarily Marr’s band.”I wouldn’t have done it without the others but since I write the songs and I sing them I guess that makes me the big cheese,” he grins.Ah yes, the singing. It’s not easy to imagine Marr, a man who always seemed so comfortable lurking in the shadows, behind a microphone For a long time, Marr couldn’t imagine it either. “I got hold of tapes by a couple of singers but when I played them to Zak and Alonza they didn’t like them,” he says.

“I think their words were ‘these guys are too normal and your voice is weird. We think you should do it’.”Looking back on his childhood, Marr says he was a “quiet and introverted kid” and cannot remember a time when he wasn’t listening to music. When his parents moved over from Ireland as teenagers they brought box-loads of American records with them and used to invite friends and family members to their home in the Manchester suburb of Wythenshawe to dance around to the Everly Brothers. “I don’t remember why I became obsessed with the guitar but I was and every year I was given a slightly bigger one to play,” recalls Marr. “Getting a proper guitar coincided with my discovery of glam rock, in particular T-Rex. Those two things changed me forever.”I’m surprised to find Marr happy to talk about his days with The Smiths – in old interviews he’s seemed reluctant to rake over the past – although since I have already confessed to being a sad, slavering fan it’s possible he’s just indulging me. Either way, he still adores the music he made with them – “It’s stood the test of time.

I’m really proud of that” – and it seems he harbours no lasting grudges against Morrissey.”If you think Smiths fans were obsessive, you should have seen what me and Morrissey were like We were absolutely in love with what we were doing. We were really high on the band and high on our relationship – the two of us were always walking three feet off the ground It was an incredible and very intense friendship. Of course it had its down side but it had to be that way because of the sort of people we were and the environment we created. The negative elements were so small and insignificant compared with the positives.”If Marr has any regrets, they stem from the years after The Smiths’ split when relations between band members descended into a “silly soap opera” of back-biting and public slanging matches.”On the occasions where I’ve been dragged into it, it makes me embarrassed to have been in the band,” he says grimly. “They’re like a bunch of bitchy schoolgirls who should know better.”The in-fighting reached a head in 1996 with a highly publicised court case over royalties during which Morrissey and Marr were ordered to pay the drummer Mike Joyce £1.25m in back earnings by a judge who, it was reported, had never heard of Top Of The Tops, let alone The Smiths. However, Marr accepted the judgment but Morrissey appealed against it.”It tied me up for a couple of years while I was trying to make a record,” remembers Marr.

“It’s really hard because it weighs you down and puts you off the whole business of making music. I had no respect for the court case at all including my own side. Morrissey kept fighting it and fighting it and the consequences are still affecting me to this day. The drummer has now decided that, since Morrissey won’t pay, he can exercise his legal right to get me to pay Morrissey’s debt. It’s a struggle to be positive with that hanging over me.”Despite the on-going saga, of all The Smiths’ members Marr is the only one who seems to have moved on.