(Source: Paul R Taylor/MEN)

Guitar legend Johnny Marr has been appointed a professor of music at Salford University.

He is to pass on his expertise to students on the BA course in popular music and recording.

Johnny, 43, born in Ardwick, has performed with some of the biggest names in popular music in the past two decades.

After his songwriting partnership with Morrissey came to an end, he went on to form Electronic with Bernard Sumner of New Order.

A singer, keyboardist and harmonica player, he has also been a sought-after session musician, touring, writing and recording with Bryan Ferry, The Pretenders, Black Grape and Oasis among many others.

Johnny said: "Salford University is offering some fantastic opportunities to students in music. It is an honour to be appointed as a professor and I'm excited at the prospect of being able to make a contribution."

This latest venture comes after he received a Q Lifetime Achievement Award and hit the top of the US charts with his current band, American indie rockers Modest Mouse.

But it's not the first time Johnny has visited Salford University. He played there with The Smiths in 1986, which he regards as one of the best gigs he ever played.

He said: "The PA had to be tied down because the floor was bouncing up so high that the stage was practically falling to pieces."

Johnny was formally appointed a visiting professor of music at a reception with Prof Michael Harloe, the vice-chancellor, and registrar Dr Adrian Graves.

John Sweeney, from the school of media, music and performance, said: "Johnny is a revered guitarist and composer and is held in the highest esteem by many of his fellow performers.

"At the moment he is back at the height of his considerable powers, so it is a tremendous opportunity for our students to gain from his expertise and experience.

"He has so much to give - students lucky enough to benefit from Johnny's appointment are in for something special."

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10cc PLAY LOWRY

(Source: Lawrence Poole/MEN)

Broughton. The former stomping ground of two of the biggest names to emerge on the Manchester music scene in the past 40 years – Bernard Sumner and Graham Gouldman.

And while the bands’ frontmen - who went on to make their name in Joy Division/New Order and 10cc respectively - maybe wildly different in musical terms, there’s seemingly no doubt the gritty Salford suburb has played some part into putting a fly in the ointment with regards to their bittersweet lyrics.

While New Order are currently in the middle of a bemusing tussle via the pages of MySpace, Gouldman continues to tour under the banner of the veteran soft-rockers – arriving here for a hometown date on November 11.

Now based in London, I caught up with the man so intrinsically linked with last dance school disco smoocher I’m Not In Love for a chat about the past, the future and working with old mucker Kevin Godley again:

How are you spending the run up to the tour?
I'm just busy sorting out the final details for the tour, I'm looking forward to getting out there to play live again. In between that I'm off to Bhutan for the Teenage Cancer Trust. That's Roger Daltrey from The Who's charity and we're going out the to raise funds. Teenage cancer patients tend to be lumped in with either adults or children, but their different and need their own care. It will be hard work, but the charity has great success rates and that's all I needed to know to get involved.

You last played here with a gig in Tameside in March, do you notice a big difference when you play shows in your home region?
It's not a massive difference, but there is a warm fuzzy factor I guess to playing to your home crowd. It's nice to be able to perform for the again.

Raised in Broughton, The Lowry is a real hometown show - looking forward to it?
Yes I am, I don't get up there as often as I used to and it's a venue I've never played before so that should be good. I was actually back there recently as my daughter is considering studying at Manchester University so I could be back more regularly in the future.

What turned you on to music in the first place?
What was so good about Manchester then was the sheer quality of live music on offer, huge bands like the Beatles and the Stones used to play there on a regular basis in the '60s. I guess the gigs that really stick out are one by The Big Three, which was mind-blowing, The Stones at Oasis and also The Beatles did a gig in Macclesfield, which was great. I've always loved The Beatles and wanted to have a go at writing songs and making music myself.

You were a bit of hit-making machine in the '60s, and wrote tracks like For Your Love by The Yardbirds.
Yes, that was a track I did when I was in the Mockingbirds with and Kevin Godley. It got passed on to the band. They took the harpsichord off, but left the bongos on and I thought it sounded great.

You appeared in a number of bands before 10cc, was it a case of finding the right chemistry?
I wasn't consciously searching for that no, it just sorted of evolved. When I, Eric (Stewart), Kevin and Lol (Creme) started working together it did feel right though.

Strawberry Studios - how important was it for you?
That was so integral for the band. We wouldn't have achieved what we did without it. To have that base that was our own to create our music was vital. I was immensely proud of the work we did there.

How proud are you of the bands who came through there?
Oh it was great. To have played a part in so many bands coming through there and not have to trek down to London was a great thing really.

How did you feel when Kevin and Lol left?
Bad. Very bad. We were at the height of our success and had such great times together, it was really sad. I guess I admired there decision deep down though, it was extremely brave and stupid at the same time - as we were doing so well at the time. But they thought we'd become to predictable and wanted to do new things, which I respected. Myself and Eric were determined to carry on though as we went on to achieve more success.

With so many bands reforming can you see the originally line-up ever going back on the road?
I don't think so no, they don't want to tour again. I’d like to perform with them again, but I can't see it happening. I've got my own band now, the Mk 111 version, so I can go out and play our songs still.

You've been putting music out via your gg6.co.uk website with Kevin - that must bring you great pleasure too.
Kevin is a great songwriter and has such a great voice, so to be able to record stuff and put it on the website and not worry about whether it's going to sell or not is a great position to be in. I've really enjoyed working with him again.

Ian Brown caused quite a stir with new single, which you spoke out about in the Jewish Telegraph.
That was overblown a bit to be honest. I'm not a political animal was basically saying how some organisations like the BBC only tend to tell one side of the story on the situation in Israel and it's not balanced. Ian Brown has taken a similar stance to them, which I think is unfair.

10cc play The Lowry on Sunday, November 11.£27.50.

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SAVILLE REMEMBERS WILSON

(Source: Sarah Walters/MEN)

Even if you're not familiar with name Peter Saville, you'll be more than familiar with his enormous body of work. And that's particularly true of late, since the resurgence of interest in Factory Records - its creator, Tony Wilson, its club, the Haçienda, and its bands, most notably Joy Division. It's spawned a raft of exhibitions, movies and tributes this year to coincide with anniversaries (good and bad) and with the untimely death of Wilson himself in August.

The last of Factory's great visionaries to be recognised, then, is Peter (pictured), the Hale Barns boy behind the label's visual legacy - its legendary posters and record sleeves. "Everybody within Factory did what they felt like doing," laughs Peter, founder of design studio Peter Saville Associates and a creative director for the City of Manchester, as we catch up at his London office over coffee and many, many cigarettes.

"So Tony played host as he felt like it, the people who managed groups managed as they felt like it, the groups recorded, wrote and performed as they felt like it, and I proposed a visual identity. As I felt like it." Autonomy has remained the name of the game for Peter, who went on to create equally bold and celebrated visual identities for the likes of his "beloved" Roxy Music, Wham and Orchestra Manoeuvres in the Dark. Art, in the shape of a curatorial role at the hip White Chapel Gallery in London, and fashion clients in Japan and America also called at his door.

"I probably would have become disillusioned with formal graphic design in my mid-20s had I not had this remarkable freedom for self expression at Factory. It gave me a sort of simulated pop stardom." Not that his family anticipated such career potential. When Peter announced his intention to go to art college rather than follow his father and grandfather into business, his parents were horrified. "When I said I wanted to go to art college, it was about the same in those days as saying, 'I want to be an irresponsible alcoholic'. But my father had wanted to be an architect so he indulged me, and let me go in 1974.

"It was not until 1990, when he came to visit me as a partner of (London design group) Pentagram where I was earning far more money than my father had ever earned, that he turned to me and said, 'Well ok then, you've done ok'. That registered on his list of values." As Peter talks at length about his 30-year career, it swiftly becomes clear why Diesel U Music is finally recognising his contribution to music at their annual awards this Saturday. It's a prize that's passing from one visual icon to another - last year, it went to photographer Mick Rock. And he's just the person to inherit the gong.

Dauntingly erudite, Peter speaks with remarkable assurance on every topic that criss-crosses his flow, emboldening key phrases with invisible quotation marks and slipping in unspoken semi-colons. His arrestingly pregnant pauses (only left, one feels, to give you time to catch up) say much about his commanding personality. It's curious, therefore, that Peter's work became best known for its understated approach, many covers often limited to two colours (in Factory's case, the yellow and black that continues to symbolise the label and the Haçienda nightclub) and his pioneering post-Modernist vision - a movement born out frustration with modernism, which had "envisaged the brave new world as the crescents in Hulme".

"I'd sit in the University library and look at books of antiquity, at what had been achieved in these classical references, the buildings and culture," Peter recalls. "And then I'd look out onto Oxford Road at mid-1970s Manchester and it was really disappointing." Two things fuelled Peter's imagination: punk music and Tony Wilson. "Punk turned our world upside down. It took the incumbent establishment into early retirement. For anyone under 25, it was like a management buyout of pop culture.

"One of the people who realised this wasn't a temporary aberration was Tony. And he wasn't very grown up, but he was on television and he wore a suit, so that made him an awful lot more grown up than the rest of us.

"We all admired Tony for his ambassadorial role with this new music. He was encouraging of young people; whether you were an artist, a writer, a designer or in television, he thought that young people mattered.

"I'd like him to be remembered by the city for that; not as a block of stone in a city square somewhere, but for a college or an academy or an exhibition space, something that continues his spirit of engagement with the modern world."

And it's because of the indelible mark that Saville has left on the city that Urbis - whose own Hacienda exhibition is currently open until February 17 - has been mulling over a homage to Peter, too. How would Peter feel if Urbis' restaurant was renamed The Modern?

"I like that," he chirps. "The Modern's good because Manchester is a city of the modern age. There's been an awful lot going on in this country which is really synthetic - we might call it test tube consumerism. "With The Modern, I feel there's a degree of courage in that," he smiles, "because 'modern' is a moving target."

The Diesel U Music Awards will be shown on Channel 4 this Saturday (October 27). Haçienda 25 The Exhibition: Fac 491 is at Urbis until Sunday, February 17.

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(Source: MEN)

Billed as a community celebration of all that is good about Levenshulme, the annual LevFest is a huge draw. Thousands flocked to last year's festival of music, comedy, dance, food, art and sport and took part in special events across the two weeks.

Now in its ninth year, it continues to grow. Kicking off as the half-term school holiday gets under way, there's lots of family fun planned, from martial arts to schools of rock. It's also proving a great opportunity for rising talent, with breaking bands using the festival as a stepping stone.