Watch The Killers perform Smiths classics with Johnny Marr
Marr is currently touring with the Las Vegas band in North America
By Tom Skinner
The Killers have joined forces with Johnny Marr at three shows on their current North American tour – check out the videos below.
The Las Vegas group are currently on the road in the US and Canada, kicking off the stint in Vancouver on Friday night (August 19). That gig saw Marr – who is the opening act on this run of dates – make a surprise mid-set appearance to perform Smiths classics ‘Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before’ and ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’ alongside Brandon Flowers and co.
At the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Washington the following evening (August 20), Marr played a trio of songs in the encore: ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’, ‘What She Said’, and The Killers‘ hit ‘Mr Brightside’, the latter of which closed the 23-track concert.
The guitarist then performed with The Killers at the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon last night (August 21).
Marr previously collaborated with the group during their headline show at Glastonbury 2019. Brandon Flowers has long cited The Smiths as a major influence on The Killers’ sound, telling The Guardian in 2007: “When I heard [1986 single] ‘Panic’, at 12, it made me feel immensely happy.”
He continued: “It certainly didn’t make me want to wear black and be alone in a corner of the room. And nobody in Nephi, Utah had heard of the Smiths then and I doubt they have heard of them now, which made them something special. Everyone was listening to grunge and here was this song saying ‘burn down the disco … because the music they constantly play says nothing to me about my life.’ Morrissey was speaking directly to me!”
The Killers’ North American tour with Johnny Marr is set to resume in San Francisco, California tomorrow night (August 23).
The band recently released a new single called ‘Boy’, which they debuted at Mad Cool festival in Madrid last month. The Killers’ most recent studio album, Pressure Machine, came out in August 2021, and followed on from 2020’s Imploding the Mirage.
Speaking about plans for new music, Brandon Flowers told Rolling Stone UK earlier this year: “We’re always working. We never sit down and have a roundtable discussion about which direction we’re going to go, we just follow the music. This song [‘Boy’] in particular we recorded with Shawn Everett and Stuart Price. It sounds exactly as it should!”