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Lot Essay
JOHNNY MARR’S CUSTOM GIFFIN TELECASTER – HIS GO-TO RHYTHM GUITAR 1984-1985
Johnny Marr first played a Fender Telecaster in late 1983, when he borrowed producer John Porter’s 1955 butterscotch Tele during the recording of The Smiths’ self-titled debut album. Porter had purchased the guitar from Pete Townshend’s guitar tech Alan Rogan and had it refurbished by British luthier Roger Giffin. Interviewed for Vintage Guitar Magazine in August 2008, Porter recalled: When I was working with the Smiths, Johnny only had two guitars - a Rickenbacker and a Gretsch Super Chet, I believe. It was a bit limited; to my ear we needed a good Tele. I brought in the refin, and Johnny really loved it.
Speaking to Jonathan Horsley for Total Guitar in April 2021, Marr elaborated: The first time I ever used a Telecaster was the day I recorded ‘This Charming Man’. The sound of that intro was always assumed that it was a Rickenbacker because that is what I was most known for at the time, but it is actually – mostly – a ’54 Tele, maybe ’53, that belonged to the producer, tracked with a Rickenbacker, so it is quite an interesting sound… The combination of that '50s Tele sound and the Rickenbacker was perfect for what I was looking for… Quite quickly, I was lucky enough to acquire a few different guitars, but I made it my business to get a Tele… My wife, who was then my girlfriend, very kindly wanted to get me a gift and the great Alan Rogan tipped her off to this one-off that Roger Giffin had made.
Luthier Roger Giffin produced hand-built guitars for the British rock and roll elite in the 1970s and 80s until he moved to the US to run the Gibson Custom Shop in 1988. Similar custom Telecasters were built for the likes of Pete Townshend and Joe Walsh. Giffin recalls that he custom-built this green sunburst Telecaster style guitar with brass hardware and “reverse zebra” humbucker for one of his clients in the early 1980s and indicates that Rogan must have negotiated the sale of this guitar directly from its original owner to Angie Marr. The previous owner had customised the guitar with an additional toggle switch to split the coil, allowing the player to select both coils of the humbucker, the top coil only, or both coils “out of phase”. A lot of people remember [this guitar] because it is very distinctive-looking, Marr told Horsley, but Alan recommended it to me because it sounded very unusual… It has a very distinctive sound, adding It weighs an absolute ton, and it has a lot of brass on it. I was only a little slip of a thing when I got it [laughs], so I could only play two songs with it before I had to go and lie down.
Marr told us: It was the first time that myself and my then girlfriend, my wife Angie, felt like we’d ever made any money. I turned up at a Smiths session, and she’d gone behind my back and acquired it for me. So there’s a sentimental value there, and the guitar was so pretty as well. The Smiths were very prolific making singles at that time, so it’s on a lot of those records, that run of singles that we had, like ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ and ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’. It does quite an unusual job because Telecasters are very practical guitars. There’s not a lot that can go wrong in the mid. Typically they don’t have tremolo bars or anything like that, so they’re very reliable. Being so solid because of all the brass, it feels like you’ve got a connection to the 50s, but it operates like an industrial machine. The Tele became Marr’s studio workhorse for laying down distinctive rhythm tracks that would set the stage for layering different sounds and textures on top. Marr detailed this layered recording process in Marr’s Guitars, explaining: Over the years I've developed a style of recording using multilayered guitar parts. It's a technique I started in my bedroom at my parents' house where I would record a part… and then build up a backing track with a lot of overdubs that all worked together… During the 1980s, as I made more albums and acquired different guitars, I was able to refine this approach. It's the thing I love to do and I named the process 'the Guitarchestra'.
‘HEAVEN KNOWS I’M MISERABLE NOW’
Marr was in possession of the Roger Giffin Telecaster by March 1984 when, hot on the heels of the release of their debut album that February, the Smiths assembled at Island Records' Fallout Shelter studios to record their next single ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’. Having written the song on his Gibson ES-355 (lot 7) during a moment of divine inspiration in a New York hotel room that January, Marr laid down the main body of the guitar on the 355 and layered overdubs with the Giffin Tele. Marr’s upbeat melody served as a sublime counter to Morrissey’s “miserabilist” anti-work lyrics. Marr then recorded the single's B-side 'Girl Afraid' on the Telecaster, including the song's lightning-fingered intro. Speaking to Guitarist in 1985, Marr revealed how 'Girl Afraid' developed in the studio: When I wrote the song I was conscious that it should have a fast New Orleans piano part. It turned into a Kinks-style, real 60's erratic drum beat bop. Released on 21 May 1984, ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ became the band's first top ten single on the UK Singles Chart and was later included, along with B-side ‘Girl Afraid’, on the band’s 1984 compilation album Hatful of Hollow. Marr made a memorable first appearance on stage with the custom green Tele when the Smiths debuted the soon-to-be-hit single with a mimed performance on BBC’s Top of the Pops on 31 May 1984, which performance has since been repurposed as the band’s official music video for the song.
To swiftly follow-up the chart success of ‘Heaven Knows...’, Marr famously wrote the music for the band's next single ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ over the course of an incredibly productive four-day period in June 1984 that also saw him come up with the perennial fan favourites ‘How Soon Is Now?’ and ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ for the B-sides. Whilst Marr would use his Gibson J-160 (lot 12) for the main acoustic rhythm laid down at London’s Jam Studios that July, he enlisted the Giffin Tele to deliver the high fast top line in the chorus that was then flipped backwards on the outro.
MEAT IS MURDER
The Giffin Tele was a key component in shaping the sound of The Smiths' second album Meat Is Murder, recorded at Liverpool’s Amazon Studios in October-November 1984, featuring on album opener ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, its pro-vegetarian title track, and the rockabilly inspired ‘Nowhere Fast’. Unusually for Marr, ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ had developed over the course of a year, with the nuts and bolts coming together during the shelved Troy Tate sessions for the band’s first album, until it began to take a more definitive shape in early 1984. It's in an open-D tuning with a capo at the 2nd fret, Marr told Guitar Player in 1990. I fancied the idea of a strange Joni Mitchell tuning, and the actual progression is like what she would have done had she been an MC5 fan or a punk rocker.
Marr cites ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, which was heavily overdubbed, as a prime example of his trademark layering technique. It was a very exciting period for me, Marr told Leonard, realising I could hijack 16 tracks all for myself. Unravelling the song’s intricate layers, Marr told us that he used the Giffin Tele for the main guitar part in open-D tuning and his 1984 Les Paul (lot 20) for the top line melody: Layering was a big part of what I was known for from the outset and what I'm still into now, really. A good example of that is what I did on this guitar for Headmaster Ritual. The main body of the guitar goes like this [plays riff] in this open tuning style, which this guitar – being a Telecaster – is very, very useful for because they're very reliable and solid. So I put that main guitar down there, and then I used [the Les Paul] in a regular tuning [plays melody]. It was a personal triumph for Marr, as he told Record Collector in 1992: 'The Headmaster Ritual' was a favourite of mine for a long time just because I'm really pleased with the guitars on it and the strange tuning.
Marr still remembers being blown away by this song in the studio and having a sense that The Smiths were charting new musical territory beyond anything their contemporaries were doing at the time. Speaking to Paste magazine in 2023, Marr maintained his otherworldly affinity for the song: When we did [‘The Headmaster Ritual’], it was not only the music I wanted to make as an individual and as a writer but, when I was working on [that song] in the studio, I genuinely thought “No one can touch this, no one else is doing anything like this” … I liked other bands, I liked New Order a lot and I really respected The Cure. I wasn’t really competitive, but I thought [that song was] particularly unique.
It’s very, very practical, this guitar, Marr informed us. It was great for putting in tunings, because it was so robust. I wrote the song ‘Meat Is Murder’ on it, which is in a tuning. And I recorded ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ on it as well, which is also in a tuning. Recalling the development of ‘Meat Is Murder’, Marr told Goddard: That was a riff I’d been playing around with for a few days before. Really nasty, in open D. Marr elaborated in his autobiography: Experimenting with guitar tunings that steered me into a heavy mood, I eventually came up with some chord sequences. I thought about how horror films sometimes use a plaintive nursery-rhyme motif to convey a sense of dread, or threat to innocence, and I found a few notes on the piano that suited it perfectly. I was essentially composing a soundtrack for the horror that an innocent animal experienced.
While the propulsive guitar on ‘Nowhere Fast’ was predominantly accomplished on the Casino, the Tele can be heard on the rhythm backing track. A mock recording session for ‘Nowhere Fast’ was filmed by the BBC while the band were putting the finishing touches to the album at Fallout Shelter in late 1984 for a segment on the making of the album that would be broadcast on British music television show The Old Grey Whistle Test on 12 February 1985. Marr is seen running through the guitar part on the Giffin Tele while Morrisey mimes the vocals. Released on 11 February 1985, Meat Is Murder became the band's only studio album to reach number one on the UK Albums Chart.
In support of the album release, Marr was featured on the front cover of the February 1985 issue of Guitarist magazine with the green Giffin ‘Telecaster’. When interviewed about his burgeoning guitar collection by Guitarist’s Geoff Twigg, Marr listed a Telecaster, made by Roger Giffin, which is a phenomenal guitar, and went on to compare his Tele to his Rickenbackers: I would like to get away from playing Rickenbackers so much. When you stick your left hand round a Rickenbacker you tend to play it in a certain way – well, I do… [but] when I pick up my Telecaster it’s like the difference between Roger McGuinn and Albert Lee. With the Tele you really notice the flat neck, whereas the action on the Rickenbacker is high.
MEAT IS MURDER TOUR
Whilst Marr opted not to bring the Giffin Tele on the first three legs of the Meat Is Murder Tour due to its hefty weight, he did take advantage of a short seven-date run in Scotland at the end of the tour from 22 September to 1 October 1985 to showcase the guitar, using it for performances of ‘Stretch Out And Wait’ and ‘Meat Is Murder’. The 25 September show at Glasgow’s Barrowlands was filmed for Channel 4’s The Tube and brief excerpts including the band’s performance of ‘Meat Is Murder’ (featuring this guitar) were spliced into a special report on The Smiths’ Scottish tour broadcast on 25 October 1985. Additionally, Marr is seen playing the Tele for ‘Stretch Out And Wait’ in a 30-minute bootleg recording of the 22 September show at Irvine’s Magnum Leisure Centre made by Steve Catterall of Soundsville International. The following year, Marr played ‘Stretch Out And Wait’ and ‘Meat Is Murder’ on the Tele for the encore of The Smiths’ headline set at the Liverpool City Council benefit With Love From Manchester at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool, on 8 February 1986, as seen in photographs by Steve Double. It’s probable that Marr played the Tele on the same two numbers at the handful of Irish shows that rounded out the Meat Is Murder Tour in mid-February 1986.
Second guitarist Craig Gannon began using Marr’s Giffin Tele when he joined the band for The Queen Is Dead Tour. He was seen playing the green Tele for The Smiths’ performance of ‘Panic’ on Channel 4’s summer special Euro-tube on 5 July 1986 and used it throughout the subsequent tour until he left the band before The Smiths’ final show at Brixton Academy that December. By spring 1987, Marr had acquired a 1960s Telecaster with similar humbucker modification (lot 46), which evidently became his preferred Tele for some time in the aftermath of The Smiths.
At some point in the 2000s, Marr asked luthier and guitar technician Bill Puplett to change the neck pickup to a Bare Knuckle Juggernaut, however the guitar’s original Smiths-era “reverse zebra” humbucker was retained and is included in the lot. Marr was last seen playing this guitar on stage at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, the Barbican in London, and Birmingham Town Hall during his UK book tour for autobiography Set The Boy Free in November and December 2016. More recently, Marr performed the intro to ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ on the Giffin Tele during promotional interviews for his 2023 book Marr’s Guitars with Daniel Steinhardt and Mick Taylor’s YouTube series That Pedal Show and ITV News.
See lot 20 for additional images of this lot.
Johnny Marr first played a Fender Telecaster in late 1983, when he borrowed producer John Porter’s 1955 butterscotch Tele during the recording of The Smiths’ self-titled debut album. Porter had purchased the guitar from Pete Townshend’s guitar tech Alan Rogan and had it refurbished by British luthier Roger Giffin. Interviewed for Vintage Guitar Magazine in August 2008, Porter recalled: When I was working with the Smiths, Johnny only had two guitars - a Rickenbacker and a Gretsch Super Chet, I believe. It was a bit limited; to my ear we needed a good Tele. I brought in the refin, and Johnny really loved it.
Speaking to Jonathan Horsley for Total Guitar in April 2021, Marr elaborated: The first time I ever used a Telecaster was the day I recorded ‘This Charming Man’. The sound of that intro was always assumed that it was a Rickenbacker because that is what I was most known for at the time, but it is actually – mostly – a ’54 Tele, maybe ’53, that belonged to the producer, tracked with a Rickenbacker, so it is quite an interesting sound… The combination of that '50s Tele sound and the Rickenbacker was perfect for what I was looking for… Quite quickly, I was lucky enough to acquire a few different guitars, but I made it my business to get a Tele… My wife, who was then my girlfriend, very kindly wanted to get me a gift and the great Alan Rogan tipped her off to this one-off that Roger Giffin had made.
Luthier Roger Giffin produced hand-built guitars for the British rock and roll elite in the 1970s and 80s until he moved to the US to run the Gibson Custom Shop in 1988. Similar custom Telecasters were built for the likes of Pete Townshend and Joe Walsh. Giffin recalls that he custom-built this green sunburst Telecaster style guitar with brass hardware and “reverse zebra” humbucker for one of his clients in the early 1980s and indicates that Rogan must have negotiated the sale of this guitar directly from its original owner to Angie Marr. The previous owner had customised the guitar with an additional toggle switch to split the coil, allowing the player to select both coils of the humbucker, the top coil only, or both coils “out of phase”. A lot of people remember [this guitar] because it is very distinctive-looking, Marr told Horsley, but Alan recommended it to me because it sounded very unusual… It has a very distinctive sound, adding It weighs an absolute ton, and it has a lot of brass on it. I was only a little slip of a thing when I got it [laughs], so I could only play two songs with it before I had to go and lie down.
Marr told us: It was the first time that myself and my then girlfriend, my wife Angie, felt like we’d ever made any money. I turned up at a Smiths session, and she’d gone behind my back and acquired it for me. So there’s a sentimental value there, and the guitar was so pretty as well. The Smiths were very prolific making singles at that time, so it’s on a lot of those records, that run of singles that we had, like ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ and ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’. It does quite an unusual job because Telecasters are very practical guitars. There’s not a lot that can go wrong in the mid. Typically they don’t have tremolo bars or anything like that, so they’re very reliable. Being so solid because of all the brass, it feels like you’ve got a connection to the 50s, but it operates like an industrial machine. The Tele became Marr’s studio workhorse for laying down distinctive rhythm tracks that would set the stage for layering different sounds and textures on top. Marr detailed this layered recording process in Marr’s Guitars, explaining: Over the years I've developed a style of recording using multilayered guitar parts. It's a technique I started in my bedroom at my parents' house where I would record a part… and then build up a backing track with a lot of overdubs that all worked together… During the 1980s, as I made more albums and acquired different guitars, I was able to refine this approach. It's the thing I love to do and I named the process 'the Guitarchestra'.
‘HEAVEN KNOWS I’M MISERABLE NOW’
Marr was in possession of the Roger Giffin Telecaster by March 1984 when, hot on the heels of the release of their debut album that February, the Smiths assembled at Island Records' Fallout Shelter studios to record their next single ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’. Having written the song on his Gibson ES-355 (lot 7) during a moment of divine inspiration in a New York hotel room that January, Marr laid down the main body of the guitar on the 355 and layered overdubs with the Giffin Tele. Marr’s upbeat melody served as a sublime counter to Morrissey’s “miserabilist” anti-work lyrics. Marr then recorded the single's B-side 'Girl Afraid' on the Telecaster, including the song's lightning-fingered intro. Speaking to Guitarist in 1985, Marr revealed how 'Girl Afraid' developed in the studio: When I wrote the song I was conscious that it should have a fast New Orleans piano part. It turned into a Kinks-style, real 60's erratic drum beat bop. Released on 21 May 1984, ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ became the band's first top ten single on the UK Singles Chart and was later included, along with B-side ‘Girl Afraid’, on the band’s 1984 compilation album Hatful of Hollow. Marr made a memorable first appearance on stage with the custom green Tele when the Smiths debuted the soon-to-be-hit single with a mimed performance on BBC’s Top of the Pops on 31 May 1984, which performance has since been repurposed as the band’s official music video for the song.
To swiftly follow-up the chart success of ‘Heaven Knows...’, Marr famously wrote the music for the band's next single ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ over the course of an incredibly productive four-day period in June 1984 that also saw him come up with the perennial fan favourites ‘How Soon Is Now?’ and ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ for the B-sides. Whilst Marr would use his Gibson J-160 (lot 12) for the main acoustic rhythm laid down at London’s Jam Studios that July, he enlisted the Giffin Tele to deliver the high fast top line in the chorus that was then flipped backwards on the outro.
MEAT IS MURDER
The Giffin Tele was a key component in shaping the sound of The Smiths' second album Meat Is Murder, recorded at Liverpool’s Amazon Studios in October-November 1984, featuring on album opener ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, its pro-vegetarian title track, and the rockabilly inspired ‘Nowhere Fast’. Unusually for Marr, ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ had developed over the course of a year, with the nuts and bolts coming together during the shelved Troy Tate sessions for the band’s first album, until it began to take a more definitive shape in early 1984. It's in an open-D tuning with a capo at the 2nd fret, Marr told Guitar Player in 1990. I fancied the idea of a strange Joni Mitchell tuning, and the actual progression is like what she would have done had she been an MC5 fan or a punk rocker.
Marr cites ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, which was heavily overdubbed, as a prime example of his trademark layering technique. It was a very exciting period for me, Marr told Leonard, realising I could hijack 16 tracks all for myself. Unravelling the song’s intricate layers, Marr told us that he used the Giffin Tele for the main guitar part in open-D tuning and his 1984 Les Paul (lot 20) for the top line melody: Layering was a big part of what I was known for from the outset and what I'm still into now, really. A good example of that is what I did on this guitar for Headmaster Ritual. The main body of the guitar goes like this [plays riff] in this open tuning style, which this guitar – being a Telecaster – is very, very useful for because they're very reliable and solid. So I put that main guitar down there, and then I used [the Les Paul] in a regular tuning [plays melody]. It was a personal triumph for Marr, as he told Record Collector in 1992: 'The Headmaster Ritual' was a favourite of mine for a long time just because I'm really pleased with the guitars on it and the strange tuning.
Marr still remembers being blown away by this song in the studio and having a sense that The Smiths were charting new musical territory beyond anything their contemporaries were doing at the time. Speaking to Paste magazine in 2023, Marr maintained his otherworldly affinity for the song: When we did [‘The Headmaster Ritual’], it was not only the music I wanted to make as an individual and as a writer but, when I was working on [that song] in the studio, I genuinely thought “No one can touch this, no one else is doing anything like this” … I liked other bands, I liked New Order a lot and I really respected The Cure. I wasn’t really competitive, but I thought [that song was] particularly unique.
It’s very, very practical, this guitar, Marr informed us. It was great for putting in tunings, because it was so robust. I wrote the song ‘Meat Is Murder’ on it, which is in a tuning. And I recorded ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ on it as well, which is also in a tuning. Recalling the development of ‘Meat Is Murder’, Marr told Goddard: That was a riff I’d been playing around with for a few days before. Really nasty, in open D. Marr elaborated in his autobiography: Experimenting with guitar tunings that steered me into a heavy mood, I eventually came up with some chord sequences. I thought about how horror films sometimes use a plaintive nursery-rhyme motif to convey a sense of dread, or threat to innocence, and I found a few notes on the piano that suited it perfectly. I was essentially composing a soundtrack for the horror that an innocent animal experienced.
While the propulsive guitar on ‘Nowhere Fast’ was predominantly accomplished on the Casino, the Tele can be heard on the rhythm backing track. A mock recording session for ‘Nowhere Fast’ was filmed by the BBC while the band were putting the finishing touches to the album at Fallout Shelter in late 1984 for a segment on the making of the album that would be broadcast on British music television show The Old Grey Whistle Test on 12 February 1985. Marr is seen running through the guitar part on the Giffin Tele while Morrisey mimes the vocals. Released on 11 February 1985, Meat Is Murder became the band's only studio album to reach number one on the UK Albums Chart.
In support of the album release, Marr was featured on the front cover of the February 1985 issue of Guitarist magazine with the green Giffin ‘Telecaster’. When interviewed about his burgeoning guitar collection by Guitarist’s Geoff Twigg, Marr listed a Telecaster, made by Roger Giffin, which is a phenomenal guitar, and went on to compare his Tele to his Rickenbackers: I would like to get away from playing Rickenbackers so much. When you stick your left hand round a Rickenbacker you tend to play it in a certain way – well, I do… [but] when I pick up my Telecaster it’s like the difference between Roger McGuinn and Albert Lee. With the Tele you really notice the flat neck, whereas the action on the Rickenbacker is high.
MEAT IS MURDER TOUR
Whilst Marr opted not to bring the Giffin Tele on the first three legs of the Meat Is Murder Tour due to its hefty weight, he did take advantage of a short seven-date run in Scotland at the end of the tour from 22 September to 1 October 1985 to showcase the guitar, using it for performances of ‘Stretch Out And Wait’ and ‘Meat Is Murder’. The 25 September show at Glasgow’s Barrowlands was filmed for Channel 4’s The Tube and brief excerpts including the band’s performance of ‘Meat Is Murder’ (featuring this guitar) were spliced into a special report on The Smiths’ Scottish tour broadcast on 25 October 1985. Additionally, Marr is seen playing the Tele for ‘Stretch Out And Wait’ in a 30-minute bootleg recording of the 22 September show at Irvine’s Magnum Leisure Centre made by Steve Catterall of Soundsville International. The following year, Marr played ‘Stretch Out And Wait’ and ‘Meat Is Murder’ on the Tele for the encore of The Smiths’ headline set at the Liverpool City Council benefit With Love From Manchester at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool, on 8 February 1986, as seen in photographs by Steve Double. It’s probable that Marr played the Tele on the same two numbers at the handful of Irish shows that rounded out the Meat Is Murder Tour in mid-February 1986.
Second guitarist Craig Gannon began using Marr’s Giffin Tele when he joined the band for The Queen Is Dead Tour. He was seen playing the green Tele for The Smiths’ performance of ‘Panic’ on Channel 4’s summer special Euro-tube on 5 July 1986 and used it throughout the subsequent tour until he left the band before The Smiths’ final show at Brixton Academy that December. By spring 1987, Marr had acquired a 1960s Telecaster with similar humbucker modification (lot 46), which evidently became his preferred Tele for some time in the aftermath of The Smiths.
At some point in the 2000s, Marr asked luthier and guitar technician Bill Puplett to change the neck pickup to a Bare Knuckle Juggernaut, however the guitar’s original Smiths-era “reverse zebra” humbucker was retained and is included in the lot. Marr was last seen playing this guitar on stage at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, the Barbican in London, and Birmingham Town Hall during his UK book tour for autobiography Set The Boy Free in November and December 2016. More recently, Marr performed the intro to ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ on the Giffin Tele during promotional interviews for his 2023 book Marr’s Guitars with Daniel Steinhardt and Mick Taylor’s YouTube series That Pedal Show and ITV News.
See lot 20 for additional images of this lot.