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Lot Essay
JOHNNY MARR’S 1976 "SILVERFACE" FENDER TWIN REVERB, USED WITH THE SMITHS FROM 1982-1987
After scraping by for around three years with a second-hand Falcon Fifteen amp he’d bought from his schoolfriend Billy Duffy in 1977, the seventeen-year-old Johnny Marr bought his first serious amplifier from A1 Repairs in Manchester circa 1980. In conversation with author Martin Kelly for Marr’s Guitars, Marr recalled I was with my girlfriend Angie, who's now my wife, and we'd got into the habit of going down to the King's Road in London and buying clothes wholesale, then bringing them back to Manchester and selling them to our mates. Eventually, the two of us saved enough money to buy a second-hand Les Paul Standard and a Fender Twin Reverb amp [the present lot]. Marr explained his choice to Ultimate Guitar’s Steve Rosen: I was a Les Paul freak, because everybody in the UK was, and in the new wave days over here it was all about Les Pauls into Fender Twins. After initially forming the band Freak Party with schoolfriend and future Smiths’ bassist Andy Rourke, Marr took a step back to basics with a “year zero”. There was just me and Angie and the black Les Paul, Marr told Kelly. I treated my bedroom, my record player and my Fender Twin Reverb like a laboratory… I started experimenting, trying to find what I was feeling like, and those experiments turned into the early Smiths songs.
By late May 1982, Marr had traded his Les Paul for a Gretsch Super Axe (lot 2) and invited Steven Morrissey to form a band. As Marr’s only amplifier at this time, the Twin Reverb would become a crucial piece of equipment as the pair assembled the band and began playing their first gigs as The Smiths. Marr would use the Twin Reverb to record the first Smiths’ demo ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’ and ‘Suffer Little Children’ in August 1982 and for the fledgling band’s first public performance during a student music and fashion show at The Ritz in Manchester on 4 October 1982. Marr would rely solely on this Twin Reverb for another two years until he acquired his Roland JC-120 in May 1984. Although photographs and recordings are few and far between, we can assume that Marr used the Twin Reverb for almost every Smiths performance until early May 1984. Their third ever gig at Manchester’s famous Haçienda club on 4 February 1983 was notable for the live debut of the band’s future single ‘Hand In Glove’. Marr would use the 1976 Twin Reverb to record the single some three weeks later during a one-day session at Stockport’s Strawberry Studios on 27 February 1983.
Following the successful single release of ‘Hand In Glove’ in May 1983, the band embarked on a national tour through to the end of the year as they built a following. By the beginning of June, Marr had acquired his Rickenbacker 330, which he would play through the Twin Reverb at every show from then on. The Reverb can be seen behind Marr in the live recording of their first headlining show at The Haçienda on 6 July 1983. After signing with independent label Rough Trade, The Smiths set to recording their first album. Marr would use the Twin Reverb extensively throughout the shelved Troy Tate sessions in July-August 1983 and the final album sessions with producer John Porter that September. Most notably, perhaps, Marr used this amp to record the singles ‘This Charming Man’, ‘What Difference Does It Make’, and ‘Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now’, which went on to reach numbers 25, 12 and 10 on the UK Singles Chart respectively. Presumably, Marr also used the Twin Reverb to record The Smiths’ various sessions for John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show which took place from May 1983 onwards. After the eponymous debut album reached number two on the UK Albums Chart upon release in February 1984, the band made several television appearances in support of the record, including a live performance of ‘Hand In Glove’, ‘Still Ill’ and ‘Barbarism Begins At Home’ on Channel 4’s The Tube on 16 March 1984, which prominently featured the present amp.
After he acquired a Roland JC-120 in May 1984, Marr would alternate between the two amps on the 1984 tour, telling Guitarist’s Geoff Twigg: I used either one or the other depending on what sounded good in the sound check, adding My Fender was out of action for quite a long time and I couldn't afford to get it fixed; so I only had the Roland. By the time The Smiths performed at the Parc Des Expositions in Paris on 1 December 1984, Marr had begun using the Twin Reverb and the JC-120 in parallel, a setup he would utilise throughout the Meat Is Murder Tour from February to October 1985. With my amp set up, he told Twigg, the Rickenbacker's just perfect as it goes through a Fender twin and a JC120. The Fender twin has got loads of power and that handles the bottom to mid range. The Fender has also got the best reverb, so I just let the Roland handle the top end most of the time; it's a dream and sounds great. It's something that I wanted to get together for a long while… The amps are both miked up and DId into the PA system, so there's loads of signal going through to the desk and I'm monitoring on the actual amp. Very rarely do I have any coming through my actual front wedges or the side monitors.
It appears that on the US leg of the tour, an additional JC-120 and Twin Reverb were added to the rig to bolster the sound. The set list for the tour regularly included the band’s 1984 B-side ‘How Soon Is Now?’, which was incredibly difficult to reproduce live because of the two completely separate guitar parts that couldn’t be played at the same time. Marr’s solution was to use a digital delay line, telling Twigg I just sent the effect straight through the Fender twin… and put straight guitar through the Roland… I had to send the signal through the Fender twin because of the vibrato. The only difficulty with using vibrato all the way through a song is that you've got to really get it in time and Mike the drummer has got to ride the beat… It doesn't sound exactly the same live as it does on record but it is still as powerful and still as atmospheric so I'm really pleased with it.
Marr used the same Meat Is Murder Tour setup on the first leg of UK/Ireland pre-release shows for The Queen Is Dead in early 1986, until he retired the Twin Reverb from tour use in favour of a Fender Bassman and Mesa Boogie for The Queen Is Dead Tour. Beyond its extensive live use from 1982-1986, Marr confirms that this 1976 Fender Twin Reverb was used during the recording of all four of The Smiths’ studio albums, as well as numerous singles and B-sides from 1983-1987, making this the only piece of equipment in Marr’s arsenal to span the entire Smiths’ career.
See lot 20 for additional images of this lot.
After scraping by for around three years with a second-hand Falcon Fifteen amp he’d bought from his schoolfriend Billy Duffy in 1977, the seventeen-year-old Johnny Marr bought his first serious amplifier from A1 Repairs in Manchester circa 1980. In conversation with author Martin Kelly for Marr’s Guitars, Marr recalled I was with my girlfriend Angie, who's now my wife, and we'd got into the habit of going down to the King's Road in London and buying clothes wholesale, then bringing them back to Manchester and selling them to our mates. Eventually, the two of us saved enough money to buy a second-hand Les Paul Standard and a Fender Twin Reverb amp [the present lot]. Marr explained his choice to Ultimate Guitar’s Steve Rosen: I was a Les Paul freak, because everybody in the UK was, and in the new wave days over here it was all about Les Pauls into Fender Twins. After initially forming the band Freak Party with schoolfriend and future Smiths’ bassist Andy Rourke, Marr took a step back to basics with a “year zero”. There was just me and Angie and the black Les Paul, Marr told Kelly. I treated my bedroom, my record player and my Fender Twin Reverb like a laboratory… I started experimenting, trying to find what I was feeling like, and those experiments turned into the early Smiths songs.
By late May 1982, Marr had traded his Les Paul for a Gretsch Super Axe (lot 2) and invited Steven Morrissey to form a band. As Marr’s only amplifier at this time, the Twin Reverb would become a crucial piece of equipment as the pair assembled the band and began playing their first gigs as The Smiths. Marr would use the Twin Reverb to record the first Smiths’ demo ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’ and ‘Suffer Little Children’ in August 1982 and for the fledgling band’s first public performance during a student music and fashion show at The Ritz in Manchester on 4 October 1982. Marr would rely solely on this Twin Reverb for another two years until he acquired his Roland JC-120 in May 1984. Although photographs and recordings are few and far between, we can assume that Marr used the Twin Reverb for almost every Smiths performance until early May 1984. Their third ever gig at Manchester’s famous Haçienda club on 4 February 1983 was notable for the live debut of the band’s future single ‘Hand In Glove’. Marr would use the 1976 Twin Reverb to record the single some three weeks later during a one-day session at Stockport’s Strawberry Studios on 27 February 1983.
Following the successful single release of ‘Hand In Glove’ in May 1983, the band embarked on a national tour through to the end of the year as they built a following. By the beginning of June, Marr had acquired his Rickenbacker 330, which he would play through the Twin Reverb at every show from then on. The Reverb can be seen behind Marr in the live recording of their first headlining show at The Haçienda on 6 July 1983. After signing with independent label Rough Trade, The Smiths set to recording their first album. Marr would use the Twin Reverb extensively throughout the shelved Troy Tate sessions in July-August 1983 and the final album sessions with producer John Porter that September. Most notably, perhaps, Marr used this amp to record the singles ‘This Charming Man’, ‘What Difference Does It Make’, and ‘Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now’, which went on to reach numbers 25, 12 and 10 on the UK Singles Chart respectively. Presumably, Marr also used the Twin Reverb to record The Smiths’ various sessions for John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show which took place from May 1983 onwards. After the eponymous debut album reached number two on the UK Albums Chart upon release in February 1984, the band made several television appearances in support of the record, including a live performance of ‘Hand In Glove’, ‘Still Ill’ and ‘Barbarism Begins At Home’ on Channel 4’s The Tube on 16 March 1984, which prominently featured the present amp.
After he acquired a Roland JC-120 in May 1984, Marr would alternate between the two amps on the 1984 tour, telling Guitarist’s Geoff Twigg: I used either one or the other depending on what sounded good in the sound check, adding My Fender was out of action for quite a long time and I couldn't afford to get it fixed; so I only had the Roland. By the time The Smiths performed at the Parc Des Expositions in Paris on 1 December 1984, Marr had begun using the Twin Reverb and the JC-120 in parallel, a setup he would utilise throughout the Meat Is Murder Tour from February to October 1985. With my amp set up, he told Twigg, the Rickenbacker's just perfect as it goes through a Fender twin and a JC120. The Fender twin has got loads of power and that handles the bottom to mid range. The Fender has also got the best reverb, so I just let the Roland handle the top end most of the time; it's a dream and sounds great. It's something that I wanted to get together for a long while… The amps are both miked up and DId into the PA system, so there's loads of signal going through to the desk and I'm monitoring on the actual amp. Very rarely do I have any coming through my actual front wedges or the side monitors.
It appears that on the US leg of the tour, an additional JC-120 and Twin Reverb were added to the rig to bolster the sound. The set list for the tour regularly included the band’s 1984 B-side ‘How Soon Is Now?’, which was incredibly difficult to reproduce live because of the two completely separate guitar parts that couldn’t be played at the same time. Marr’s solution was to use a digital delay line, telling Twigg I just sent the effect straight through the Fender twin… and put straight guitar through the Roland… I had to send the signal through the Fender twin because of the vibrato. The only difficulty with using vibrato all the way through a song is that you've got to really get it in time and Mike the drummer has got to ride the beat… It doesn't sound exactly the same live as it does on record but it is still as powerful and still as atmospheric so I'm really pleased with it.
Marr used the same Meat Is Murder Tour setup on the first leg of UK/Ireland pre-release shows for The Queen Is Dead in early 1986, until he retired the Twin Reverb from tour use in favour of a Fender Bassman and Mesa Boogie for The Queen Is Dead Tour. Beyond its extensive live use from 1982-1986, Marr confirms that this 1976 Fender Twin Reverb was used during the recording of all four of The Smiths’ studio albums, as well as numerous singles and B-sides from 1983-1987, making this the only piece of equipment in Marr’s arsenal to span the entire Smiths’ career.
See lot 20 for additional images of this lot.