Oh I want to know the answer to this too; one of my friends claims this is absolutely true, but I don't know as I believe him.

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When I learned that phrase in French I asked myself the same thing! Certainly makes it easier to remember...Johnny Marr!

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According to Wikipedia he was born "John Martin Maher" so it seems a fair bet it's deliberate.

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He changed his name to avoid confusion with / out of respect for John Maher, the Buzzcocks' drummer, who'd have been better known in Manchester at the time. It's not that much of a leap...

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He might just have been upset that no one was pronouncing it properly!

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Smash Hits claimed it was intentional in 1986...I am inclined to believe them.

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In marre aussi though it has quite a different meaning: that would be "Have a laugh too". Maybe marre assez ("Enough with the laughing!")

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Could easily mean both. That's what happens when you move around the word endings instead of the sentence structure to express stuff, it sometimes overlaps. Microsoft would complain you had a sentence fragment, but the conversation

"Comment t'appele-tu"
"J'en ai marre"
"Et toi"
"Marre aussi"

Would make sense in verlaine's original sense.

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True indeed, although I don't think you ought to be gratuitously supporting verlaine like that.

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I heard he had already decided to call himself that, and that it was later that Morrissey noticed the phonetic similarity to the French phrase and henceforth pronounced it thus.

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Dunno, but it's the way I alwaays remember the French term.

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I have ALWAYS wondered this same thing.

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<sings>Johnny Marr, he plays guitar.</sings>

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Wow., nice. Hope you're OK. Have you in my thoughts.

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