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Lot Essay
This is the guitar I traded in my black Les Paul for [before] I formed The Smiths in 1982. I wanted something a bit more unusual, but still classic. This particular model is not the typical type of Gretsch as it has a solid body with an effects unit built into it. The first set of Smiths songs were all written on this guitar, including ‘What Difference Does It Make?’, ‘These Things Take Time’, ‘Reel Around The Fountain’ and ‘Jeane’. I used it to record the first single ‘Hand In Glove’, including all the overdubs, as it was the only guitar I owned at that time. This Gretsch is synonymous with The Smiths starting out, as I played it at all the band's early gigs. In 2022, the guitar became an exhibit in the British Pop Archive at the John Rylands Library, Manchester.
JOHNNY MARR, MARR’S GUITARS, 2023
In early 1982, Johnny Marr returned to A1 Repairs in Manchester to trade his Les Paul Standard (see previous lot) for this 1977 Gretsch Super Axe. Co-designed by Chet Atkins, the Super Axe featured built-in compression and phaser circuits, each with their own on/off switch. It has a solid body in the old conventional Gretsch shape with one cutaway and it's really thin...they're good guitars to play and not that expensive either, Marr told Guitarist in 1985. As this was the sole electric guitar that he owned for the first twelve months of The Smiths’ career, there is no doubt that Marr used this Super Axe for all of the early writing sessions with Morrissey that would shape the band’s debut album and played it exclusively throughout the band’s early gigs as they were first starting out and beginning to gain a following. Speaking to author Martin Kelly for Marr’s Guitars, Marr explained what drew him to the Gretsch: Just before forming the band, I traded in my black Les Paul for a Gretsch Super Axe, because I wanted a Gretsch and that model was the one I could afford. I wanted something a bit more fifties, because an aspect of being a guitar player and a guitar obsessive is a guitar's associations… Before the 1980s, the Les Paul had influenced a lot of punk players because of three people: Mick Ronson first and foremost, Pete Townshend and Paul Kossoff. They had all been associated with the Les Paul, but by 1979, 1980, 1981 when I was starting out, there was a new wave coming. A lot of guitarists of my age were starting to get interested in Gretsches and 1950s guitars… it was almost like the Gibson Les Paul and Fender Stratocaster fell out of favour after the 1970s, and guitarists my age wanted something different.
FORMING THE SMITHS
Having split with prior band Freak Party, the seventeen-year-old Marr was lodging with ‘80s TV presenter Shelley Rohde at her home in Bowdon and working at Manchester’s hip new store X-Clothes. Every spare moment was spent honing his craft, working out short compositions on the Super Axe and experimenting with overdubs on his TEAC cassette machine (lot 3). I’d work on a chord sequence until I was happy with it and then record a second guitar part on top, recalled Marr in his 2016 autobiography. I would then bounce the two tracks together and experiment with putting more guitars on. I could build up the tracks by bouncing and overdubbing and create my own wall of sound… Eventually I started to get a collection of instrumental pieces together and I ended up with quite a few ideas for songs. When the time came to put a new band together, Marr identified Steven Morrissey – whom he had met once before at a Patti Smith gig some years previously – as the only good vocalist around and was inspired to track him down, ultimately turning up on his doorstep in late May 1982 to invite him to form a band. Their historic songwriting partnership would begin mere days later when the pair agreed to meet in Marr’s attic bedroom in Bowdon to try working on some songs together.
Morrissey came over in the afternoon, wrote Marr. It was another beautiful day, and through the open window we could hear the sound of the schoolkids playing. Morrissey took out some more lyrics for me to work on. As I took the pages I saw the title ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’, and without thinking about it I started playing a chord change along the lines of the Patti Smith song ‘Kimberly’. It seemed to scan right with the words and suggested a bass line, which I played at the same time. I continued to play, and then Morrissey started singing the words, and within a few minutes the tune was born. After laughing a lot and rehearsing it a couple more times, I recorded what we had on my tape machine, then I overdubbed a ringing guitar line on top, and my new partner and I had our first song. It felt like an important moment… I looked at the next lot of lyrics, for a song called ‘Suffer Little Children’, and as I sat cross-legged on the floor with my guitar and the two sheets of paper at my feet, I pressed ‘record’. As I looked down at the words again, my hands started to play a tune. Something was happening; the song was coming through the ether. I kept going with the verse and Morrissey started singing along, the words and story appearing in my eyes and my mind. I followed the momentum as my guitar delivered the music under the voice, and the song was suddenly all there, a song that didn’t sound like anyone else and didn’t feel like anyone else, a song about the Moors murderers. I didn’t know what to make of it. All I knew was how it felt, and it felt strangely true… Apart from the surprise of being presented with such unexpected words, there was one sentiment about coming from the north in that second song that caught my attention more than anything else, and it defined an aspect of us from that first day of us working together. It said to me, “We do things differently”.
THE SMITHS’ FIRST DEMO RECORDING AND FIRST PUBLIC PERFORMANCE
With Dale Hibbert on bass and Simon Wolstencroft on drums, The Smiths recorded ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’ and ‘Suffer Little Children’ for their first demo at Manchester’s Decibel Studios in August 1982. Drummer Mike Joyce had replaced Wolstencroft by the time the new band gave their first public performance as a support act for Blue Rondo à la Turk during a student music and fashion show at The Ritz in Manchester on 4 October 1982. We’d decided that at the Ritz we’d play ‘Suffer Little Children’, ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’ and a new one we’d written, called ‘Handsome Devil’, wrote Marr. We also planned to do a song by the girl group The Cookies, called ‘I Want a Boy for My Birthday’… I ascended the stairs to the stage for the very first show by The Smiths and my first official engagement as a professional musician. Thwang! What the …? A wave of cold dread rushed through me as I realised I’d banged the headstock of my guitar against the wall. It was a sign, it had to be, the moment was too significant; it meant that either all my dreams and life’s work thus far were about to expire in the next critical minute, or I had just exorcised all the bad luck I had accrued over my eighteen years with one divine bang of my Gretsch. I held the pick and looked out into the spotlight. My left hand formed the G6 chord that opened the first song and … strum … strum … it was … half and half – not totally perfect and glorious, but not too imperfect and disastrous for me not to be able to guide it and live with. Maybe it was symbolic.
SONGWRITING PROCESS AND TUNING UP A STEP
It was the only date that Hibbert would play with the band before being replaced with Marr’s schoolfriend Andy Rourke on bass, thereby cementing the core line-up of The Smiths. EMI had showed enough interest in the band to cover the cost of a second demo at Drone Studios in Chorlton in December 1982, before ultimately turning them down. Morrissey and I had been writing with a passion, recalled Marr, and we had enough money from EMI to record three songs: ‘Handsome Devil’, ‘Miserable Lie’ and a new one called ‘What Difference Does It Make?’ The duo swiftly established a songwriting process whereby Marr would first write the music and hand over to Morrissey to then write the lyrics to fit. New songs usually started with me recording the music on to a cassette and then giving it to Morrissey to write his lyrics and vocal lines, which he would complete within a day or two, recounts Marr. Other times we would get together at my place and sit face to face, about three feet away from each other, while I played my new tune into a tape recorder that was balanced between my knees… There was nothing that could compare to having a new song; it was always the best thing. But we were pragmatic and well aware that we had to keep them coming and make them better, not only for the band’s career but to prove something to ourselves as writers.
Marr got into the habit of tuning this guitar up a step to accommodate Morrissey’s baritone. I wanted to make the sound different, Marr explained to Total Guitar in 1995. Added to that, Morrissey’s voice was so low – so a strange thing went on in most of the early Smiths’ songs. I used to tune up to F#, Andy used to tune down to D… Between the bass and the guitar, you’d get some strange stuff going on. But I snapped too many strings that way. I had this old Gretsch Duo Jet [sic], but I was always snapping strings on it and I didn’t have another guitar. So I went back to conventional tuning and used a capo. I just thought it’d be more interesting. Speaking to The Guitar Magazine in 1997, Marr added: I was writing on my Gretsch Super Axe, which just sounded better tuned up. Interviewed for Guitar Player in 2003, Marr elaborated: It didn’t sound good at concert pitch, so I tuned up a whole step… I wrote the band’s initial songs like that, and to an extent, the tuning dictated where Morrissey was coming from on the first album. But when we got a record deal I could afford a capo.
THE HAÇIENDA
The Smiths played their second show at Manchester’s Manhattan Sound on 25 January 1983. We played the same set as we had at the Ritz, recalled Marr, but added ‘What Difference Does It Make?’ and a couple of other new ones, including the first of our sad and pretty compositions, called ‘What Do You See in Him?’, which I loved. It was a big moment for the band when they secured a slot supporting the Factory Records band 52nd Street at Manchester’s famous Haçienda club for their third ever gig on 4 February 1983. The place was so cavernous and boomy it felt like we were playing to just a handful of our friends in a big concrete room, which turned out to be exactly what it was. The show was professionally recorded by Claude Bessy for IKON but never commercially released, remaining largely unseen until bootlegs surfaced on YouTube in the late 2000s. The gig was also notable for the live debut of the band’s future single ‘Hand In Glove’, as well as the songs ‘Jeane’ and ‘Miserable Lie’. The band debuted another new song ‘Accept Yourself’ when they opened for Richard Hell & the Voidoids at Manchester’s Rafters on 21 February 1983. It was cool to be playing with someone whose records I’d admired, wrote Marr, and I considered the show to be our first real test in front of a non-partisan crowd. We had to stop the set as I broke a string, and because I didn’t have a back-up guitar I had to go through what seemed like a lifetime changing the string onstage while the band waited.
HAND IN GLOVE
While Marr first struck upon the riff that would become ‘Hand In Glove’ on an old acoustic guitar he’d left at his parents’ house, he would develop the song on the Super Axe before the band next got together to rehearse at their manager Joe Moss’ Crazy Face factory on Portland Street. I was eager to show Mike and Andy the new song and we had it sounding good straight away. Morrissey then took the mic and held a sheet of paper, we all went into the song for the first time together, and bang! It was called ‘Hand in Glove’ and it was the best thing we’d done. The spirit in the singing was the same as the spirit in the guitar. The song defined us and described the devotion and solidarity of a powerful friendship. It was a declaration and our manifesto. The words were perfect, the music was perfect, my life was perfect. With the band unanimous that the song was their best yet, Moss stepped up to fund the professional recording of ‘Hand In Glove’ with a one-day session at Stockport’s Strawberry Studios on 27 February 1983.
When the moment finally came to make my first record, wrote Marr, it was like stepping up to destiny. We saw the red light and dived into the first take, and then did a second, more confident take. It was sounding good to us already and we were enjoying the experience. By the third take, we had upped the feeling even more. Our nervousness meant that we’d played the song slightly fast, but it turned out to be a good thing as it gave the performance an impatience and enthusiasm. We captured a rush: take three could be the record… I set about finishing the track by doubling the electric guitar and then overdubbing an acoustic twice on the right-hand side. Mike played a tambourine part and then Morrissey recorded a ghostly backing vocal. It was inspired. As we were mixing the song, I wondered if there was something we needed to announce the start of the record, a kind of finishing touch. I took out the harmonica, asked everyone to bear with me in case it didn’t work, and I came up with a phrase in the corridor on my way into the live room. I recorded the harmonica and I’d made my first record. When it was done, I went outside and the mood of the record was all there in the street. It sounded like it was from the mist of the north and from somewhere in the past. It sounded like the future too.
While the band wracked their brains for how best to secure the release of their new record, they booked their first London appearance at the Rock Garden in Covent Garden on 23 March 1983. The Rock Garden was a little brick basement that sounded like a tin can and had the appropriate no-frills ambience referred to as ‘throw and go’, recalled Marr. We clambered up to the tiny high stage and played a spirited set to not many people, which because we felt on trial brought out a defiance in us that we would learn to call upon in the future. The audience liked us enough to call us back for an encore, which was a first for us and made the gig feel like a victory.
With his mind set on independent record label Rough Trade, Marr turned up at their London office in mid-April 1983 and successfully persuaded founder Geoff Travis to release ‘Hand In Glove’ as a single. With a live recording of ‘Handsome Devil’ from the Haçienda show on the B-side, ‘Hand In Glove’ was released as The Smiths’ debut single on 13 May 1983, reaching number three on the UK Indie Chart and leading to their first major live reviews in the music press. I had fantasised about having my own single from the age of 11, 12, Marr told Record Collector in 2018, so for me it was the pinnacle of a very unusual journey, because I had started it so early. That the sound of that single was appreciated by people was amazing… I felt like it had a magic in the sound; it’s a strange sounding record, it’s got a mist, a haze in it. Reviewing their show at The Venue in London, NME’s Barney Hoskyns described ‘Hand In Glove’ as one of the year's few masterpieces, a thing of beauty and a joy forever.
FIRST JOHN PEEL SESSION
The band caught the attention of John Peel's producer, who invited the band to record a session for Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show on 18 May for broadcast on 31 May 1983. Marr recalled their first of many Peel sessions: Once we had recorded the main take of a song to our satisfaction with the basic guitar, bass, drums and vocal tracks, Morrissey would then re-record his vocal quite quickly, and when that was done I would go through the drum track to make sure it was right, so Andy could then work on the bass if we wanted to change or refine anything. After this, the recording became fun for me. We knew we had the foundations of the music right, so I could then devise whatever guitar overdubs were needed and experiment with ideas, using the different techniques I was learning along the way. The 18 May session, which featured the songs ‘What Difference Does It Make?’, ‘Miserable Lie’, ‘Reel Around the Fountain’, and ‘Handsome Devil’, was posthumously released as an EP The Peel Sessions in 1988.
The Smiths signed a full record contract with Rough Trade and plans were set in motion to begin recording their debut album in July 1983, with Troy Tate of the Teardrop Explodes brought in to produce. Known as the “Pablo Cuckoo Tape”, a leaked rehearsal tape featuring nine of the best songs the band had developed thus far was recorded in May 1983 so that Tate would have something to work with ahead of the planned album sessions. The catalogue of songs that had been written on the Gretsch Super Axe since Marr first linked up with Morrissey in late May 1982 included:
The Hand That Rocks The Cradle
Suffer Little Children
Handsome Devil
Miserable Lie
What Difference Does It Make?
Wonderful Woman
These Things Take Time
Reel Around The Fountain
I Don’t Owe You Anything
Hand In Glove
Jeane
Accept Yourself
You’ve Got Everything Now
A flurry of gigs followed in the wake of the modest success of the single release, as The Smiths began to build up a following over the spring/summer of 1983. The Smiths’ performances that are known to have taken place over the twelve-month period that Marr exclusively played this Gretsch Super Axe include:
The Ritz, Manchester, 4 October 1982
Manhattan Sound, Manchester, 25 January 1983
The Haçienda, Manchester, 4 February 1983
Tower Ballroom, Birmingham, 9 February 1983
Rafters, Manchester, 21 February 1983
Rock Garden, London, 23 March 1983
University of London Union, London, 6 May 1983
Electric Ballroom, London, 21 May 1983
Park Pavilion, Cannock, 2 June 1983
Fighting Cocks, Birmingham, 3 June 1983
Brixton Ace, London, 4 June 1983
Photographer Paul Slattery shot several superb images of Marr playing the Super Axe at both ULU and the Electric Ballroom in London in May 1983. The guitarist looked really cool in his shades, and his sound was amazing, the best guitar sound I'd heard in years, wrote Slattery in 2007 photo book The Smiths: The Early Years. Recalling the latter gig, he added: The Smiths were supporting The Fall at the Electric Ballroom... Towards the end of the gig, the crowd had realised how good The Smiths were even though most of them had gone along to see The Fall. The Smiths knew this and it pushed them up a gear.
It’s believed that The Smiths’ performance at the Brixton Ace on 4 June 1983 was the last live appearance of the Super Axe. By the time that The Smiths returned to play the Brixton Ace on 29 June, Marr had acquired his famous Rickenbacker 330 and effectively retired the Super Axe from use, as he told Guitarist in 2018: I’ve kept it in exactly the same condition it was in at the last Smiths gig I used it for.
JOHNNY MARR, MARR’S GUITARS, 2023
In early 1982, Johnny Marr returned to A1 Repairs in Manchester to trade his Les Paul Standard (see previous lot) for this 1977 Gretsch Super Axe. Co-designed by Chet Atkins, the Super Axe featured built-in compression and phaser circuits, each with their own on/off switch. It has a solid body in the old conventional Gretsch shape with one cutaway and it's really thin...they're good guitars to play and not that expensive either, Marr told Guitarist in 1985. As this was the sole electric guitar that he owned for the first twelve months of The Smiths’ career, there is no doubt that Marr used this Super Axe for all of the early writing sessions with Morrissey that would shape the band’s debut album and played it exclusively throughout the band’s early gigs as they were first starting out and beginning to gain a following. Speaking to author Martin Kelly for Marr’s Guitars, Marr explained what drew him to the Gretsch: Just before forming the band, I traded in my black Les Paul for a Gretsch Super Axe, because I wanted a Gretsch and that model was the one I could afford. I wanted something a bit more fifties, because an aspect of being a guitar player and a guitar obsessive is a guitar's associations… Before the 1980s, the Les Paul had influenced a lot of punk players because of three people: Mick Ronson first and foremost, Pete Townshend and Paul Kossoff. They had all been associated with the Les Paul, but by 1979, 1980, 1981 when I was starting out, there was a new wave coming. A lot of guitarists of my age were starting to get interested in Gretsches and 1950s guitars… it was almost like the Gibson Les Paul and Fender Stratocaster fell out of favour after the 1970s, and guitarists my age wanted something different.
FORMING THE SMITHS
Having split with prior band Freak Party, the seventeen-year-old Marr was lodging with ‘80s TV presenter Shelley Rohde at her home in Bowdon and working at Manchester’s hip new store X-Clothes. Every spare moment was spent honing his craft, working out short compositions on the Super Axe and experimenting with overdubs on his TEAC cassette machine (lot 3). I’d work on a chord sequence until I was happy with it and then record a second guitar part on top, recalled Marr in his 2016 autobiography. I would then bounce the two tracks together and experiment with putting more guitars on. I could build up the tracks by bouncing and overdubbing and create my own wall of sound… Eventually I started to get a collection of instrumental pieces together and I ended up with quite a few ideas for songs. When the time came to put a new band together, Marr identified Steven Morrissey – whom he had met once before at a Patti Smith gig some years previously – as the only good vocalist around and was inspired to track him down, ultimately turning up on his doorstep in late May 1982 to invite him to form a band. Their historic songwriting partnership would begin mere days later when the pair agreed to meet in Marr’s attic bedroom in Bowdon to try working on some songs together.
Morrissey came over in the afternoon, wrote Marr. It was another beautiful day, and through the open window we could hear the sound of the schoolkids playing. Morrissey took out some more lyrics for me to work on. As I took the pages I saw the title ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’, and without thinking about it I started playing a chord change along the lines of the Patti Smith song ‘Kimberly’. It seemed to scan right with the words and suggested a bass line, which I played at the same time. I continued to play, and then Morrissey started singing the words, and within a few minutes the tune was born. After laughing a lot and rehearsing it a couple more times, I recorded what we had on my tape machine, then I overdubbed a ringing guitar line on top, and my new partner and I had our first song. It felt like an important moment… I looked at the next lot of lyrics, for a song called ‘Suffer Little Children’, and as I sat cross-legged on the floor with my guitar and the two sheets of paper at my feet, I pressed ‘record’. As I looked down at the words again, my hands started to play a tune. Something was happening; the song was coming through the ether. I kept going with the verse and Morrissey started singing along, the words and story appearing in my eyes and my mind. I followed the momentum as my guitar delivered the music under the voice, and the song was suddenly all there, a song that didn’t sound like anyone else and didn’t feel like anyone else, a song about the Moors murderers. I didn’t know what to make of it. All I knew was how it felt, and it felt strangely true… Apart from the surprise of being presented with such unexpected words, there was one sentiment about coming from the north in that second song that caught my attention more than anything else, and it defined an aspect of us from that first day of us working together. It said to me, “We do things differently”.
THE SMITHS’ FIRST DEMO RECORDING AND FIRST PUBLIC PERFORMANCE
With Dale Hibbert on bass and Simon Wolstencroft on drums, The Smiths recorded ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’ and ‘Suffer Little Children’ for their first demo at Manchester’s Decibel Studios in August 1982. Drummer Mike Joyce had replaced Wolstencroft by the time the new band gave their first public performance as a support act for Blue Rondo à la Turk during a student music and fashion show at The Ritz in Manchester on 4 October 1982. We’d decided that at the Ritz we’d play ‘Suffer Little Children’, ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’ and a new one we’d written, called ‘Handsome Devil’, wrote Marr. We also planned to do a song by the girl group The Cookies, called ‘I Want a Boy for My Birthday’… I ascended the stairs to the stage for the very first show by The Smiths and my first official engagement as a professional musician. Thwang! What the …? A wave of cold dread rushed through me as I realised I’d banged the headstock of my guitar against the wall. It was a sign, it had to be, the moment was too significant; it meant that either all my dreams and life’s work thus far were about to expire in the next critical minute, or I had just exorcised all the bad luck I had accrued over my eighteen years with one divine bang of my Gretsch. I held the pick and looked out into the spotlight. My left hand formed the G6 chord that opened the first song and … strum … strum … it was … half and half – not totally perfect and glorious, but not too imperfect and disastrous for me not to be able to guide it and live with. Maybe it was symbolic.
SONGWRITING PROCESS AND TUNING UP A STEP
It was the only date that Hibbert would play with the band before being replaced with Marr’s schoolfriend Andy Rourke on bass, thereby cementing the core line-up of The Smiths. EMI had showed enough interest in the band to cover the cost of a second demo at Drone Studios in Chorlton in December 1982, before ultimately turning them down. Morrissey and I had been writing with a passion, recalled Marr, and we had enough money from EMI to record three songs: ‘Handsome Devil’, ‘Miserable Lie’ and a new one called ‘What Difference Does It Make?’ The duo swiftly established a songwriting process whereby Marr would first write the music and hand over to Morrissey to then write the lyrics to fit. New songs usually started with me recording the music on to a cassette and then giving it to Morrissey to write his lyrics and vocal lines, which he would complete within a day or two, recounts Marr. Other times we would get together at my place and sit face to face, about three feet away from each other, while I played my new tune into a tape recorder that was balanced between my knees… There was nothing that could compare to having a new song; it was always the best thing. But we were pragmatic and well aware that we had to keep them coming and make them better, not only for the band’s career but to prove something to ourselves as writers.
Marr got into the habit of tuning this guitar up a step to accommodate Morrissey’s baritone. I wanted to make the sound different, Marr explained to Total Guitar in 1995. Added to that, Morrissey’s voice was so low – so a strange thing went on in most of the early Smiths’ songs. I used to tune up to F#, Andy used to tune down to D… Between the bass and the guitar, you’d get some strange stuff going on. But I snapped too many strings that way. I had this old Gretsch Duo Jet [sic], but I was always snapping strings on it and I didn’t have another guitar. So I went back to conventional tuning and used a capo. I just thought it’d be more interesting. Speaking to The Guitar Magazine in 1997, Marr added: I was writing on my Gretsch Super Axe, which just sounded better tuned up. Interviewed for Guitar Player in 2003, Marr elaborated: It didn’t sound good at concert pitch, so I tuned up a whole step… I wrote the band’s initial songs like that, and to an extent, the tuning dictated where Morrissey was coming from on the first album. But when we got a record deal I could afford a capo.
THE HAÇIENDA
The Smiths played their second show at Manchester’s Manhattan Sound on 25 January 1983. We played the same set as we had at the Ritz, recalled Marr, but added ‘What Difference Does It Make?’ and a couple of other new ones, including the first of our sad and pretty compositions, called ‘What Do You See in Him?’, which I loved. It was a big moment for the band when they secured a slot supporting the Factory Records band 52nd Street at Manchester’s famous Haçienda club for their third ever gig on 4 February 1983. The place was so cavernous and boomy it felt like we were playing to just a handful of our friends in a big concrete room, which turned out to be exactly what it was. The show was professionally recorded by Claude Bessy for IKON but never commercially released, remaining largely unseen until bootlegs surfaced on YouTube in the late 2000s. The gig was also notable for the live debut of the band’s future single ‘Hand In Glove’, as well as the songs ‘Jeane’ and ‘Miserable Lie’. The band debuted another new song ‘Accept Yourself’ when they opened for Richard Hell & the Voidoids at Manchester’s Rafters on 21 February 1983. It was cool to be playing with someone whose records I’d admired, wrote Marr, and I considered the show to be our first real test in front of a non-partisan crowd. We had to stop the set as I broke a string, and because I didn’t have a back-up guitar I had to go through what seemed like a lifetime changing the string onstage while the band waited.
HAND IN GLOVE
While Marr first struck upon the riff that would become ‘Hand In Glove’ on an old acoustic guitar he’d left at his parents’ house, he would develop the song on the Super Axe before the band next got together to rehearse at their manager Joe Moss’ Crazy Face factory on Portland Street. I was eager to show Mike and Andy the new song and we had it sounding good straight away. Morrissey then took the mic and held a sheet of paper, we all went into the song for the first time together, and bang! It was called ‘Hand in Glove’ and it was the best thing we’d done. The spirit in the singing was the same as the spirit in the guitar. The song defined us and described the devotion and solidarity of a powerful friendship. It was a declaration and our manifesto. The words were perfect, the music was perfect, my life was perfect. With the band unanimous that the song was their best yet, Moss stepped up to fund the professional recording of ‘Hand In Glove’ with a one-day session at Stockport’s Strawberry Studios on 27 February 1983.
When the moment finally came to make my first record, wrote Marr, it was like stepping up to destiny. We saw the red light and dived into the first take, and then did a second, more confident take. It was sounding good to us already and we were enjoying the experience. By the third take, we had upped the feeling even more. Our nervousness meant that we’d played the song slightly fast, but it turned out to be a good thing as it gave the performance an impatience and enthusiasm. We captured a rush: take three could be the record… I set about finishing the track by doubling the electric guitar and then overdubbing an acoustic twice on the right-hand side. Mike played a tambourine part and then Morrissey recorded a ghostly backing vocal. It was inspired. As we were mixing the song, I wondered if there was something we needed to announce the start of the record, a kind of finishing touch. I took out the harmonica, asked everyone to bear with me in case it didn’t work, and I came up with a phrase in the corridor on my way into the live room. I recorded the harmonica and I’d made my first record. When it was done, I went outside and the mood of the record was all there in the street. It sounded like it was from the mist of the north and from somewhere in the past. It sounded like the future too.
While the band wracked their brains for how best to secure the release of their new record, they booked their first London appearance at the Rock Garden in Covent Garden on 23 March 1983. The Rock Garden was a little brick basement that sounded like a tin can and had the appropriate no-frills ambience referred to as ‘throw and go’, recalled Marr. We clambered up to the tiny high stage and played a spirited set to not many people, which because we felt on trial brought out a defiance in us that we would learn to call upon in the future. The audience liked us enough to call us back for an encore, which was a first for us and made the gig feel like a victory.
With his mind set on independent record label Rough Trade, Marr turned up at their London office in mid-April 1983 and successfully persuaded founder Geoff Travis to release ‘Hand In Glove’ as a single. With a live recording of ‘Handsome Devil’ from the Haçienda show on the B-side, ‘Hand In Glove’ was released as The Smiths’ debut single on 13 May 1983, reaching number three on the UK Indie Chart and leading to their first major live reviews in the music press. I had fantasised about having my own single from the age of 11, 12, Marr told Record Collector in 2018, so for me it was the pinnacle of a very unusual journey, because I had started it so early. That the sound of that single was appreciated by people was amazing… I felt like it had a magic in the sound; it’s a strange sounding record, it’s got a mist, a haze in it. Reviewing their show at The Venue in London, NME’s Barney Hoskyns described ‘Hand In Glove’ as one of the year's few masterpieces, a thing of beauty and a joy forever.
FIRST JOHN PEEL SESSION
The band caught the attention of John Peel's producer, who invited the band to record a session for Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show on 18 May for broadcast on 31 May 1983. Marr recalled their first of many Peel sessions: Once we had recorded the main take of a song to our satisfaction with the basic guitar, bass, drums and vocal tracks, Morrissey would then re-record his vocal quite quickly, and when that was done I would go through the drum track to make sure it was right, so Andy could then work on the bass if we wanted to change or refine anything. After this, the recording became fun for me. We knew we had the foundations of the music right, so I could then devise whatever guitar overdubs were needed and experiment with ideas, using the different techniques I was learning along the way. The 18 May session, which featured the songs ‘What Difference Does It Make?’, ‘Miserable Lie’, ‘Reel Around the Fountain’, and ‘Handsome Devil’, was posthumously released as an EP The Peel Sessions in 1988.
The Smiths signed a full record contract with Rough Trade and plans were set in motion to begin recording their debut album in July 1983, with Troy Tate of the Teardrop Explodes brought in to produce. Known as the “Pablo Cuckoo Tape”, a leaked rehearsal tape featuring nine of the best songs the band had developed thus far was recorded in May 1983 so that Tate would have something to work with ahead of the planned album sessions. The catalogue of songs that had been written on the Gretsch Super Axe since Marr first linked up with Morrissey in late May 1982 included:
The Hand That Rocks The Cradle
Suffer Little Children
Handsome Devil
Miserable Lie
What Difference Does It Make?
Wonderful Woman
These Things Take Time
Reel Around The Fountain
I Don’t Owe You Anything
Hand In Glove
Jeane
Accept Yourself
You’ve Got Everything Now
A flurry of gigs followed in the wake of the modest success of the single release, as The Smiths began to build up a following over the spring/summer of 1983. The Smiths’ performances that are known to have taken place over the twelve-month period that Marr exclusively played this Gretsch Super Axe include:
The Ritz, Manchester, 4 October 1982
Manhattan Sound, Manchester, 25 January 1983
The Haçienda, Manchester, 4 February 1983
Tower Ballroom, Birmingham, 9 February 1983
Rafters, Manchester, 21 February 1983
Rock Garden, London, 23 March 1983
University of London Union, London, 6 May 1983
Electric Ballroom, London, 21 May 1983
Park Pavilion, Cannock, 2 June 1983
Fighting Cocks, Birmingham, 3 June 1983
Brixton Ace, London, 4 June 1983
Photographer Paul Slattery shot several superb images of Marr playing the Super Axe at both ULU and the Electric Ballroom in London in May 1983. The guitarist looked really cool in his shades, and his sound was amazing, the best guitar sound I'd heard in years, wrote Slattery in 2007 photo book The Smiths: The Early Years. Recalling the latter gig, he added: The Smiths were supporting The Fall at the Electric Ballroom... Towards the end of the gig, the crowd had realised how good The Smiths were even though most of them had gone along to see The Fall. The Smiths knew this and it pushed them up a gear.
It’s believed that The Smiths’ performance at the Brixton Ace on 4 June 1983 was the last live appearance of the Super Axe. By the time that The Smiths returned to play the Brixton Ace on 29 June, Marr had acquired his famous Rickenbacker 330 and effectively retired the Super Axe from use, as he told Guitarist in 2018: I’ve kept it in exactly the same condition it was in at the last Smiths gig I used it for.