Johnny Marr on signature guitars, the power of acoustic and his seven-string signature model
Ask Johnny Marr about the first time that he picked up a guitar, and the language he uses – “besotted” – reflects a lifelong love affair with the instrument that has defined him, and through him defined an entire school of guitar playing.
“I’m very, very, very fortunate to be able to say I never really wanted to do anything else, really,” he affirms. “Just to have a life as a guitar player – whatever that was.”
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But we’re chatting to the legendary Smiths guitar-slinger today primarily to talk about – for a change –acoustic guitars. Even though the knotty, intricate electric riffs of This Charming Man and the stuttering effected brilliance of How Soon Is Now? might have made Marr the most influential and respected guitar player of his generation, there’s always been a strong acoustic aspect to his music – one that goes all the way back to the start.
“My parents were – really, still are – very into music, really into records,” Marr explains of his early life growing up in Manchester. “They came over from Ireland in the early 60s. So, being young Irish kids, they were really into rock ‘n’ roll music. I guess even then, it was probably stuff that was considered retro.
“So I heard a lot of Eddie Cochran and The Everly Brothers and all of that. So, funnily enough, the first guitar sounds I was really drawn to were acoustic! The very loud, strummy, acoustic sounds on those Everly records – which still sound magic to me to this day.”
Over the ensuing decades, Marr has become one of the most well-travelled and eclectic guitar players around – working with everyone from The Pretenders to the Pet Shop Boys, Modest Mouse, The Cribs, Hans Zimmer… he even nearly joined Oasis after Bonehead left. But through all his love of the purity of acoustic guitars has remained.
“I just love the sound of them,” he exclaims. “Particularly on the movies, I work with really, really, very talented and revered sound sculptors – synthesizer players, keyboard players and so on. And I’m so annoying, because I always point out that a keyboard just cannot do what an acoustic guitar does. And it certainly can’t do what two acoustic guitars can do – especially with capos and voicings and stuff like that.”
Image: Riaz Gomez
The Crucible
The young man born John Martin Maher wasn’t yet a teenager when he moved out of Manchester’s inner city to the sprawling suburban council estate of Wythenshawe. Wythenshawe is better known for producing athletes than musicians – heavyweight champ Tyson Fury was born and raised there, as were England footballers Marcus Rashford and Cole Palmer – but back in the 70s it was a transformative musical crucible for a young Marr.
“I moved from the inner city to the suburbs when I was 10, and I landed in a place that had a few older boys who were playing the guitar – Billy Duffy being one of them,” he reflects. “And, you know, they were only 14 themselves, but me being 10 or 11, I just hung around those guys, whether they liked it or not! And I soaked up everything I could soak up. That was more important to me than anything else – just hanging out with other guitar players.”
At the age of 11, Marr’s obsession with guitar led him to getting some slightly less than legal work at a local guitar shop – unable to officially pay Marr for his time at such a young age, the owner paid Marr by giving him discounts on gear, including his first electric, a Vox.
“Unlike a couple of my friends, I had no interest in dropping the acoustic once I got an electric, I kept playing my acoustic,” Marr explains. “I remember seeing The Who doing Pinball Wizard on television, and seeing Townshend playing that part. I think he was miming on electric, but I was aware that it was an acoustic sound.
“So that was when, I guess, the seeds of Big Mouth Strikes Again went in there, really. It was a sound that I really loved and that I just didn’t consider abandoning. When the Smiths did records with loud, prominent acoustics, I was proud of it, but also I was conscious that we were different from everybody else in that regard.”
Image: Riaz Gomez
Martin Magic
The sound of so many of those iconic acoustic guitar moments on The Smiths songs came courtesy of Martin guitars. Marr fell in love with the brand long before he ever saw one in the flesh – courtesy of Rory Gallagher and later Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren – and used a variety of dreadnoughts throughout his career.
When the news broke that he would be partnering with Martin on a signature model, most assumed it would be some interpretation of the D-28 that he’d used during The Smiths’ heyday. Instead however, Marr’s second ever signature guitar ended up being a 0000-sized model with, hold up… seven strings?!
“There’s no point in me just making another D-28 because the D-28s are perfect!” Marr chuckles of his decision to do something rather unexpected with his first signature acoustic. But in many ways we shouldn’t be surprised – after all nobody associated Johnny Marr with the Fender Jaguar before he came out with a signature model, but now its one of the most beloved and oft-imitated models in Fender’s line.
For the M-6 and M-7, the decision to try a smaller body was born of several things – not least a chance encounter with an old 0000 in the early 2000s, and a fairly confrontational conversation with an Oasis guitarist around the same time…
Image: Martin
“I was having conversations with Gem Archer,” Marr recalls. “He was putting me to the sword about why I liked the dreadnoughts over the Gibsons – which is pretty prerogative! But I always just took it for granted that I was going to play dreadnoughts if I was lucky enough to be able to. Because growing up liking Neil Young, and the sound of Stephen Stills’ guitar playing, and Joni Mitchell, those three. And Rory Gallagher had played a D-35 – so I was all in on dreadnoughts.
“But Gem was challenging me on the usefulness of the bottom end. I thought, ‘Oh no, I actually like the bottom end.’ Dreadnoughts have a bottom end that isn’t there, particularly, on a lot of Gibsons – but I make use of it. If I don’t need it, just EQ it out and turn the compression up – still sounds great!”
But Archer had planted a seed – one that would come back to Marr when he was chatting to Martin’s Fred Greene about the design of the guitar. It was a process that was very different to how his Fender had been developed.
“My Jaguar was done over a couple of years of me putting bits together with a couple of guitar techs and gigging it,” Marr explains. “The nature of Fender guitars is that you can put a different neck on, try different pickups – we got really into the weeds with Tim at Bare Knuckle Pickups. We tried all different stuff. There’s just more – literally – moving parts. But the process of the Martin one was, was almost like, magicking up all my favourite bits and going, ‘Really? Is that allowed? Would that work?’”
Image: Riaz Gomez
Seventh Heaven
Undoubtedly the most head-turning feature of the M-7 model is the presence of the seventh string – in this case it’s an added octave G string, sitting alongside the regular wound G as if a 12-string has momentarily barged into the room and then quickly excused itself.
It’s a concept that’s been seen on guitars before of course – not least Martin’s own Roger McGuinn model from the early 2000s – but it’s still a very different and potentially polarising choice. But Johnny wants to reassure anyone that the presence of that extra string shouldnt scare anyone off.
“When I got the prototype, I realised it was for regular guitar players,” Marr enthuses. “I hope that the experience comes across in the same way for you – that you do what you do, but it sounds like it has some extra production on it.
“If you take someone who’s written their song on a six-string, when they play it on there, they will hear the difference. And, of course, it doesn’t sound like a 12-string, and it doesn’t behave like a 12-string. But – and this is going to sound incredibly, incredibly obvious – but you can play anything the way you would normally play it on a six string, and just forget that that G string is there. Because it’s so uncumbersome, but your ear tells you that something else is going on.”
It might seem like a gimmick to some, but Marr is insistent that he wouldn’t waste his efforts creating something that wasn’t also a useful and practical musical tool.
“Obviously I’m very fortunate that over the years people have approached me to work on some quirky ideas,” he remarks. “But frankly, being a working musician keeps me busy! I’m too busy to be putting my time and effort and energy into something that actually I’m not going to get songs out of, and I’m not going to need live.”
Working For A Living
Marr has been using the M-7 for over a year at gigs now, and you get the sense that if it wasn’t doing a useful and unique job it wouldn’t have stood the test.
“My signature Jag, came out in 2012, and I don’t think I have played any other guitar in my own live set in those 12 years,” he explains. “And if I was to develop it, which I may do now, after 12 years, it will be because I want to go somewhere else. It won’t be to mess with the one I’ve got, but it will be to go down a different road. It’s like if you have a car to do a thing, and then you need to design a different car to do a different thing.”
Don’t expect his passion for developing interesting tools for himself and other musicians to expand much beyond this however – after all, it’s taken 12 years for a second signature instrument to pass muster.
“I’m not Eddie Van Halen!” he laughs “He did a really great, admirable job of literally creating his own industry with the EVH stuff. And fair play to him and his boy for everything with that. But I think my ambitions are fine with Fender and Martin. I’m very good, very grateful to have the opportunity, and to put those instruments to work.”
Ultimately, you get the sense that the working class lad from Manchester is still very much at the core of what Marr is and does – and creating some of the most memorable and unique guitar parts of the last 40 years hasn’t changed that one bit.
“I feel like a working musician, y’know?” he agrees. “I obviously feel privileged to have made it my life from being a teenager – although it was really flipping hard work when I was 15, 16, 17! But since then, I’ve never known anything any different. So, that’s why I feel like a working musician. And I’d like to think that, regardless of whether I was able to make a living out of it, I’d still be doing it. I’m pretty sure that that’s the case.”
Find out more about the Martin M-7 and M-6 Johnny Marr at martinguitar.com
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