Johnny Marr's Guitars
ABC News
In a new book, Johnny Marr reveals the stories behind his guitars.
In 1984 Johnny Marr bought a Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar in cherry red from A1 Repairs in his boyhood hometown of Manchester, England. The purchase, at age 21, was ostensibly made for the recording of “Meat Is Murder,” the second album for the Smiths, the influential British band he formed two years earlier.
Yet for a musician who owns more than 130 guitars (he admits to losing count of the exact number after 132) this Gibson Les Paul went on to be used on more records than any other, including during his post-Smiths stints performing with rock luminaries from the Pretenders and Brian Ferry to Talking Heads, The The, Electronic, and Modest Mouse.
The story of Marr’s cherry red Gibson makes up just one of the numerous accounts he shares inside “Marr’s Guitars,” a handsomely produced coffee table book that charts the 60-year-old musician’s career through virtually every electric and acoustic instrument he’s owned over 40 years of recording music.
Each guitar in the 288-page volume is accompanied by Marr’s personal reflections that detail his encounters with great musicians - Chrissie Hynde, David Byrne, Brian Eno, among many others - and on what tracks and at which shows the guitars were played. But the running commentary also reveals how Marr’s distinctive sound and musical aesthetic were amplified by his guitars.
From the Martin D-28 acoustic used to create the tuneful arrangements and layered guitars that formed the foundation of recordings with Morrissey and the Smiths to the Fender Stratocaster and Rickenbacker 370/12 employed for the full-bodied, shifting chords on recordings with a string of celebrated artists. For his collaboration with composer and music producer Hans Zimmer on the 2010 soundtrack of the Christopher Nolan film “Inception,” Marr grabbed the Gibson EDS-1275 doubleneck electric guitar.
