Former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr was a surprise guest at Franz Ferdinand‘s Manchester show over the weekend.
According to NME, Franz Ferdinand was playing a show at Manchester’s Aviva Studios for Amazon Music’s City Sessions series, which was streamed live on Prime Video and Amazon Music’s Twitch channel. After performing songs from their entire career, including tracks from their new album, The Human Fear, Marr came onstage to perform with them on “Do You Want To,” from Franz’s second album, You Could Have It So Much Better.
After that, Marr and the band performed “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” from The Smiths’ 1986 album, The Queen Is Dead. After that came Franz’s biggest hit, “Take Me Out.”
Marr captured the moment on Instagram, writing, “Love and best to my friends @franz_ferdinand for a great time and great show.” He and Franz frontman Alex Kapranos also posted black-and-white images of themselves together backstage, set to The Smiths’ song “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want.”
You can find footage of the performance on social media.
Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
