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Lot Essay
I've always loved playing acoustic guitar, but this was the first decent model I owned. I got this Gibson because of my love of the Beatles and the Hollies, and I'd discovered that a lot of the beat groups of the early 1960s used this model. I'd moved into a flat in Earl's Court and every night I'd watch a video called The Compleat Beatles with footage of John Lennon playing his J-160E on songs like 'I Should Have Known Better' and 'Things We Said Today'. This guitar inspired me to write 'Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want', 'William, It Was Really Nothing' and 'Well I Wonder'. It brought a bit of a beat group sensibility to my writing.
JOHNNY MARR, MARR’S GUITARS, 2023
Johnny Marr purchased this Gibson J-160E at Andy’s Guitar Centre on Denmark Street not long after The Smiths first moved to London in early 1984. Writing in his 2016 autobiography Set The Boy Free, Marr remembers: I moved into a second-floor flat in Earls Court with Angie… Our flat quickly became the full-time hang-out and HQ for the band, and for me it was a sanctuary where I could write songs, listen to music, and hide away from the day-to-day business that I wanted to get away from… Getting into the charts and making some money meant the band could all indulge ourselves a bit, and I discovered the guitar shops in west London. I had dragged the rest of the band into my beat group period by continuously viewing a Beatles documentary that had become available on VHS and obsessing over a Hollies Greatest Hits album, and it inspired me to buy an old Gibson J-160 acoustic like the ones used by both bands. Morrissey, meanwhile, had been devouring Herman’s Hermits songs, which also featured the Gibson J-160, so I took that as an omen and it made the guitar an absolute must-have. Marr made his first and only public appearance with this guitar on the ‘Charlie’s Bus’ segment of the British children’s television show SPLAT on ITV’s TV-am in June 1984. After taking a bus ride to Kew Gardens, The Smiths settle on the grass amongst a group of schoolchildren to enjoy an impromptu acoustic performance of their 1983 B-side ‘Jeane’ by 60s pop singer Sandie Shaw, accompanied by Marr on the Gibson J-160E.
To swiftly follow-up the chart success of their May 1984 single ‘Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now’, Marr wrote the single ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ and its B-side ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ on this guitar over an incredibly productive four-day period in June 1984 that also saw him come up with perennial fan favourite ‘How Soon Is Now?’ on his Epiphone Casino (lot 15). Marr went on to reveal how the three songs came about: One day, I was playing my Gibson acoustic on the mattress in the back of the van, on our way up to a gig, when a riff appeared, inspired by the speed and momentum of the journey. I played it over the next few days and it developed into a song that I thought would be good for the next single. Angie had gone back to Manchester for the weekend and the band had a rare couple of days off, so I found myself alone in the flat… I decided that after I’d demoed the next A side I would try to come up with the B-side and then the extra track for the 12-inch while I had the opportunity. The A-side was fun to put down. It was a fast rush of a tune done on the acoustic, and after working on it for a while it felt complete. The Smiths hadn’t had such a short song before, around two minutes. I liked the fact that Buzzcocks singles were short, so two minutes ten seconds it would stay. I approached the B-side completely differently. I’d been living in London for six months and I was missing Manchester and I hadn’t seen my family for a while. Thinking about my family made me remember a song that my mother liked, and I strummed around the chords and tapped into a feeling of melancholy until I had channelled the right spirit and came up with a very pretty tune and the B-side was done. After completing the two songs by Saturday, I hung around the flat on the Sunday, listening to what I’d done and thinking about writing the third track for the 12-inch. I thought that because the A-side was short and fast and the B-side was short and waltzy, I should try to write something long with some kind of a groove… Then I took the cassette of the three songs round to Morrissey’s, having written ‘Fast’, ‘Irish Waltz’ and ‘Swampy’ on it. He worked on it for a few days, and when he’d finished the lyrics the songs became ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’, ‘Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want’ and ‘How Soon Is Now?’
When the band assembled at Jam Studios in London’s Finsbury Park to lay down the three new songs in July 1984, Marr recorded both ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ and ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ on the Gibson J-160E, with the addition of mandolin for the instrumental section on the latter. ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ came together quickly, Marr notes, while ‘Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want’ was a matter of capturing the poignancy of the song without adding too much. ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ was released on 20 August 1984, reaching No. 17 on the UK singles chart, and has since been named by Rolling Stone as one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The Dream Academy's cover version of the B-side ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’, famously soundtracked the museum sequence of the 1986 John Hughes teen comedy classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, while the original also featured on the acclaimed soundtrack for the Hughes’ written/produced teen drama Pretty In Pink that same year. Asked to interrogate the enduring cultural ubiquity of The Smiths’ back catalogue for Stereogum in 2021, Marr mused There was always more going on in that band in the culture than just the music… There was gender politics in there, there was ideological politics in there, there was politics politics in there, there was subversion in there. We kind of built all these elements in and poured petrol on it, and the important thing, I guess, is the songs kept getting better and better… the material stands up. I think there’s a reason why ‘Please Please Please…’ or ‘There Is A Light…’ are revered. I genuinely think there’s a component that I’m not able to put my finger on… [But] not only do I not know, I don’t want to know. It was intense enough for me carrying that chord change around, that string line. That was enough for me. A shelved seven-minute version of the acoustic-led ‘Rusholme Ruffians’ was also recorded on the J-160E during the Jam sessions in July 1984, before the definitive album version was laid down on the D-28 during the album sessions that October.
Later that summer, Marr once again picked up the J-160E at his Earl's Court flat and was inspired to write the song ‘Well I Wonder’. I wrote it from scratch and made a demo with Andy [Rourke] on acoustic in one afternoon, he told biographer Simon Goddard in 2004. I had a theme knocking around subconsciously that just worked with acoustic. Marr's then girlfriend Angie happened to capture a candid snapshot of Marr demoing the track on the Gibson acoustic that day. I know I'm demoing 'Well I Wonder', Marr told us, because Andy's in the background and he was just about to get his idea for the bassline, which is so beautiful. It was one of the rare occasions that Andy was there in the moment to work with me on the demo. Marr would ultimately use his Martin D-28 (lot 21) to record the song for the band's 1985 album Meat Is Murder at Liverpool's Amazon Studios that October. To promote the release of Meat Is Murder, Marr was photographed with this guitar for a feature in the February 1985 issue of Guitarist magazine. Though the J-160E was ultimately supplanted by the Martin D-28 as Marr’s preferred acoustic in around September 1984, there is no doubt that the intensely creative summer that Marr spent with this guitar yielded a handful of The Smiths’ best-loved songs.
Interviewed for Paste magazine in 2023, Marr reflected on his early acquisition of this guitar: I think, when you’re younger, it’s totally fine to be attracted to things mostly because of the way they look and the association. I got that 160E entirely because I had seen footage of John Lennon playing it, and the Hollies… I think, whether you’re young or not, you go, “That’s a fucking cool guitar.” That’s usually the criteria for most boys and girls who want to buy a guitar; they see Kurt Cobain or Alex Turner or Nick Zinner or me and they just go, “That’s fucking cool, I want one of those if I can ever afford it.” When I got the chance to be able to buy this stuff, I went for it.
JOHNNY MARR, MARR’S GUITARS, 2023
Johnny Marr purchased this Gibson J-160E at Andy’s Guitar Centre on Denmark Street not long after The Smiths first moved to London in early 1984. Writing in his 2016 autobiography Set The Boy Free, Marr remembers: I moved into a second-floor flat in Earls Court with Angie… Our flat quickly became the full-time hang-out and HQ for the band, and for me it was a sanctuary where I could write songs, listen to music, and hide away from the day-to-day business that I wanted to get away from… Getting into the charts and making some money meant the band could all indulge ourselves a bit, and I discovered the guitar shops in west London. I had dragged the rest of the band into my beat group period by continuously viewing a Beatles documentary that had become available on VHS and obsessing over a Hollies Greatest Hits album, and it inspired me to buy an old Gibson J-160 acoustic like the ones used by both bands. Morrissey, meanwhile, had been devouring Herman’s Hermits songs, which also featured the Gibson J-160, so I took that as an omen and it made the guitar an absolute must-have. Marr made his first and only public appearance with this guitar on the ‘Charlie’s Bus’ segment of the British children’s television show SPLAT on ITV’s TV-am in June 1984. After taking a bus ride to Kew Gardens, The Smiths settle on the grass amongst a group of schoolchildren to enjoy an impromptu acoustic performance of their 1983 B-side ‘Jeane’ by 60s pop singer Sandie Shaw, accompanied by Marr on the Gibson J-160E.
To swiftly follow-up the chart success of their May 1984 single ‘Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now’, Marr wrote the single ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ and its B-side ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ on this guitar over an incredibly productive four-day period in June 1984 that also saw him come up with perennial fan favourite ‘How Soon Is Now?’ on his Epiphone Casino (lot 15). Marr went on to reveal how the three songs came about: One day, I was playing my Gibson acoustic on the mattress in the back of the van, on our way up to a gig, when a riff appeared, inspired by the speed and momentum of the journey. I played it over the next few days and it developed into a song that I thought would be good for the next single. Angie had gone back to Manchester for the weekend and the band had a rare couple of days off, so I found myself alone in the flat… I decided that after I’d demoed the next A side I would try to come up with the B-side and then the extra track for the 12-inch while I had the opportunity. The A-side was fun to put down. It was a fast rush of a tune done on the acoustic, and after working on it for a while it felt complete. The Smiths hadn’t had such a short song before, around two minutes. I liked the fact that Buzzcocks singles were short, so two minutes ten seconds it would stay. I approached the B-side completely differently. I’d been living in London for six months and I was missing Manchester and I hadn’t seen my family for a while. Thinking about my family made me remember a song that my mother liked, and I strummed around the chords and tapped into a feeling of melancholy until I had channelled the right spirit and came up with a very pretty tune and the B-side was done. After completing the two songs by Saturday, I hung around the flat on the Sunday, listening to what I’d done and thinking about writing the third track for the 12-inch. I thought that because the A-side was short and fast and the B-side was short and waltzy, I should try to write something long with some kind of a groove… Then I took the cassette of the three songs round to Morrissey’s, having written ‘Fast’, ‘Irish Waltz’ and ‘Swampy’ on it. He worked on it for a few days, and when he’d finished the lyrics the songs became ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’, ‘Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want’ and ‘How Soon Is Now?’
When the band assembled at Jam Studios in London’s Finsbury Park to lay down the three new songs in July 1984, Marr recorded both ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ and ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ on the Gibson J-160E, with the addition of mandolin for the instrumental section on the latter. ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ came together quickly, Marr notes, while ‘Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want’ was a matter of capturing the poignancy of the song without adding too much. ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ was released on 20 August 1984, reaching No. 17 on the UK singles chart, and has since been named by Rolling Stone as one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The Dream Academy's cover version of the B-side ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’, famously soundtracked the museum sequence of the 1986 John Hughes teen comedy classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, while the original also featured on the acclaimed soundtrack for the Hughes’ written/produced teen drama Pretty In Pink that same year. Asked to interrogate the enduring cultural ubiquity of The Smiths’ back catalogue for Stereogum in 2021, Marr mused There was always more going on in that band in the culture than just the music… There was gender politics in there, there was ideological politics in there, there was politics politics in there, there was subversion in there. We kind of built all these elements in and poured petrol on it, and the important thing, I guess, is the songs kept getting better and better… the material stands up. I think there’s a reason why ‘Please Please Please…’ or ‘There Is A Light…’ are revered. I genuinely think there’s a component that I’m not able to put my finger on… [But] not only do I not know, I don’t want to know. It was intense enough for me carrying that chord change around, that string line. That was enough for me. A shelved seven-minute version of the acoustic-led ‘Rusholme Ruffians’ was also recorded on the J-160E during the Jam sessions in July 1984, before the definitive album version was laid down on the D-28 during the album sessions that October.
Later that summer, Marr once again picked up the J-160E at his Earl's Court flat and was inspired to write the song ‘Well I Wonder’. I wrote it from scratch and made a demo with Andy [Rourke] on acoustic in one afternoon, he told biographer Simon Goddard in 2004. I had a theme knocking around subconsciously that just worked with acoustic. Marr's then girlfriend Angie happened to capture a candid snapshot of Marr demoing the track on the Gibson acoustic that day. I know I'm demoing 'Well I Wonder', Marr told us, because Andy's in the background and he was just about to get his idea for the bassline, which is so beautiful. It was one of the rare occasions that Andy was there in the moment to work with me on the demo. Marr would ultimately use his Martin D-28 (lot 21) to record the song for the band's 1985 album Meat Is Murder at Liverpool's Amazon Studios that October. To promote the release of Meat Is Murder, Marr was photographed with this guitar for a feature in the February 1985 issue of Guitarist magazine. Though the J-160E was ultimately supplanted by the Martin D-28 as Marr’s preferred acoustic in around September 1984, there is no doubt that the intensely creative summer that Marr spent with this guitar yielded a handful of The Smiths’ best-loved songs.
Interviewed for Paste magazine in 2023, Marr reflected on his early acquisition of this guitar: I think, when you’re younger, it’s totally fine to be attracted to things mostly because of the way they look and the association. I got that 160E entirely because I had seen footage of John Lennon playing it, and the Hollies… I think, whether you’re young or not, you go, “That’s a fucking cool guitar.” That’s usually the criteria for most boys and girls who want to buy a guitar; they see Kurt Cobain or Alex Turner or Nick Zinner or me and they just go, “That’s fucking cool, I want one of those if I can ever afford it.” When I got the chance to be able to buy this stuff, I went for it.