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"I think that buildings can be art, and there are stories behind them," Johnny Marr tells Gigwise, when quizzed on some of his more abstract sources of inspiration. You've heard countless hackneyed love songs about about the heart, the soul, flesh and bone - but why not bricks and mortar?
"The way a certain environment, let's say a building, can make you feel once you enter it, there's nothing like it - the right space really feels like a sacred place."
Elvis Costello once was quoted as saying that "writing about music is like dancing about architecture", but that is exactly what Marr found himself doing on Playland. The impact of the right space and structure has always had a profound effect on the former Smiths guitarist, which may go some way to explaining the very complex and towering sonic frameworks he so expertly designs.
Modernism has a very cosy spot in his heart, which is why Manchester landmark the CIS Tower found itself as the muse for Playland highlight 'Dynamo'.
"When that was being built, I was quite excited about it," smiles Marr. "I didn't know how that was going to turn out and I quite liked it. There's a building in Harlem which I really like and found myself outside of one really beautiful morning - blue skies behind it and jetstreams in the air. It really stuck me. Obviously when I was working in London, the Gherkin building came to mind, all of that glass. It's a song about a love affair with a building really."
But what does it take for archiecture to really inspire Marr?
"Well, I wanted to write a love song because I had the melody, and it sounded like a power-pop love song, but I didn't want to write your usual la-di-dah kind of thing," says Marr. "It was important that once I'd written this song, people could impose whoever they wanted on to it. It was more interesting for me to write a love song to a building.
"Somewhere like the Guggenheim, which is obviously Frank Lloyd Wright, or some of the Van Der Rohe buildings - there's an amazing amount of love and idealism in the design and making of it, and within the space of it. If I like something aesthetically, I'll really, really like it. I find it as beautiful as I would a person."
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