By the time Johnny Marr launched a solo career in 2013 with "The Messenger," the guitarist had long established himself as one of rock and roll's most valuable team players.

It was 30 years prior that Marr made a name for himself as the musical half of a songwriting partnership with Morrissey, effectively positioning the Smiths as one of the most beloved British rock acts of their generation.

But some partnerships weren't meant to last, and by the time their fourth and final album, "Strangeways, Here We Come," arrived in 1987, they'd already gone their separate ways.

After leaving the Smiths, the guitarist was able to build on the foundation of that legacy with stints in the Pretenders, The The, Electronic, Modest Mouse and the Cribs, to name a few. There was also session work with everyone from Talking Heads to Pet Shop Boys and the 2003 release of "Boomslang" with a project he'd dubbed Johnny Marr + the Healers.

Marr says it was playing with Modest Mouse and the Cribs that helped convince him to go it alone.

"Because both those bands toured so much – incessantly – I was getting ideas on the road for not only songs but the kind of group that I wanted to be in," he says.

"I would have liked to stay with Modest Mouse forever, but taking a long time in between records isn’t really my way and it was evident that the band wanted to take a break. So I started to imagine the next thing I was going to do."

Going solo seemed a logical next step.

"I had the material," he says. "I sang the demos and wrote the lyrics. I also felt that the lead singer should play guitar. So all those things pointed to me, really. And when I came to start it, I was very prepared and enthusiastic."

A second album, "Playland," followed quickly in 2014.

"I knew when I was making the first one that I wanted to address the classic second-album syndrome," Marr recalls. "I actually welcomed that because I happen to like a lot of second albums."

Citing a handful of favorite second efforts (Talking Heads, Buzzcocks and Ride chief among them), he says, "It was always my plan to make a very quick second album with the energy of a band who was touring a lot at the time. And then when I toured on that, it took me to 2015, which is right before I started writing my book."

'Set the Boy Free'

That book is the autobiography "Set the Boy Free," which was published in 2016 and reflects his intention to keep the focus on "a lot of positivity and love and a true account of what it felt like to be not only in the Smith but all those groups – Electronic, working with Pet Shop Boys, Modest Mouse."

He had no intention, he says, to "settle some scores or retort to some perceived slights that may or may not be true, or just be involved in some narrative that’s grown up around the group and become part of the mythology."

He felt he'd rather write about "how great it was to be in the van on the way to the John Peel sessions, how fantastic it was when I was trying to put the band together, all the joy and nerves and excitement and wonder of our early gigs, the pioneering spirit we felt going through every record."

He wanted to honor that part of his life, he says, "because it is my life and I’m not really going to have the narrative of show business take that away from me because that’s what the nonsense around the band, to me, has just become, show business."

There are moments in "Set the Boy Free" that read like a love letter to music.

"There’s no doubt that I love being a musician," he says, "and all the things that music does, whether you’re famous for it or otherwise, how it can change your mood, how it can make you brave, how it can make you reflective, how it can make you romantic."

His aesthetic was shaped, he says, like most musicians, by artists he loved in his teens, around the time he first decided that he loved Lou Reed, Ray Davies, Patti Smith and David Bowie's glam years.

"As the years go on, more and more people influence you and you add to that," Marr says. "But my standards, the bar I’m trying to reach was set by those kind of people."

Marr spent nine months immersed in the writing of "Set the Boy Free." Then he did a book tour, and when that was through, he'd gone a year without performing, which seemed like a long time to him.

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'Call the Comet'

"So I was very eager to get back into the studio and just make some music," he says. Marr, 54, used music as a method of escaping what was going on as he set out to write the songs that would become his latest effort, "Call the Comet."

Not wishing to make an overtly political record, he uses dystopian imagery and science-fiction devices to reflect what's going on.

"It was just like it was for me when I was a kid," he says. "Just playing guitar, writing songs and making tracks helped me shut out the outside world and was.... I don’t want to say therapy – I don’t really mean to be as dramatic as that – but it definitely felt like a refuge."

One song, "New Dominions," was inspired by a 1960s science-fiction novel, "Only Lovers Left Alive," about a society where teenagers are able to run wild because there are no grown-ups. "The Tracers" features noble beings from another planet.

"I subconsciously, almost, imagined a kind of intelligence from somewhere outside of planet earth that was almost more of a compassionate or evolved version of ourselves, really," Marr says.

"Also, I’ve read quite a lot of science fiction and I kind of got back into it and realized it was a very sort of H. G. Wells thing coming along. And I just like that being part of my direction at this point."

Another song, "A Different Gun," was initially inspired by the Bastille Day attack in Nice. Then, as Marr was working on the track, Islamic terrorists bombed Manchester Arena in Marrs' hometown, where he happened to be at the time.

"So that was a very unfortunate but significant coincidence," he says.

There may be a lyrical thread that runs through many of the songs on "Call the Comet," but Marr has gone out of his way to clarify that this is not a concept album.

"I’m just being honest," he says, "because it isn’t a concept record. That would be misleading. On the other hand, I’m glad there’s a thread that goes through a lot of the record and I was able to follow that through once I identified it."

A handful of songs on the album are more personal in nature, though.

"Inevitably, whether you like it or not," Marr explains, "if you’re writing without any dialectic concepts, which I was, a few songs will have to be about yourself and reflect your own world. Even though I tried to avoid that, sometimes a piece of music just demands that you sing a sincere and emotional lyric."

Johnny Marr

When: 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 30.

Where: Marquee Theatre, 730 N. Mill Ave., Tempe.

Admission: $35-$65.

Details: 480-829-0607, luckymanonline.com.

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