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Lot Essay
I bought this guitar from A1 Repairs in Manchester for the second Smiths album Meat Is Murder. It may surprise some people to learn that this is the guitar I've used on more records than any other. When people think of me having a ringing sound, they usually assume it's a Rickenbacker, Fender Telecaster or Fender Jaguar, but it's often been this 1980s Les Paul. I put the Bigsby trem arm on myself because I liked the look of it on Neil Young's old black Les Paul. It's the guitar I played on the last song The Smiths played together in concert. I used this on 'Slow Emotion Replay' and 'Dogs Of Lust' by The The. It's also the guitar Bernard Sumner used on the New Order song 'Regret'.
JOHNNY MARR, MARR'S GUITARS, 2023
JOHNNY MARR’S 1984 “MEAT IS MURDER” LES PAUL
Built at Gibson’s Nashville Factory in August 1984, Marr purchased this Cherry Red Les Paul Standard from A1 Repairs in Manchester circa September 1984 as The Smiths prepared to enter the studio to record their second solo studio album Meat Is Murder. Although he would later modify the tailpiece, pickups and pots, the guitar was stock at the time of purchase with standard Gibson humbuckers. I was looking for a harder sound for the Meat Is Murder album, Marr told The Mail on Sunday in 2009, and I tried a few different guitars before coming around to the Les Paul. There are a lot of traditional rock cliches associated with this make of guitar, so I had to work past that. A former Les Paul devotee in teen homage to musical hero Marc Bolan, Marr had traded his first Les Paul Custom for a Gretsch mere months before forming The Smiths in line with a general post-punk rejection of 1970s blues-rock culture among young British guitarists at the time. Before I formed the band I was a Les Paul freak, Marr told Steve Rosen for Ultimate Guitar in 2012, because everybody in the UK was, and in the new wave days over here it was all about Les Pauls into Fender Twins. Quite quickly I wanted to return to the Les Paul, but I was playing clean sounds… songs like ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, ‘Meat is Murder’ and those kinds of things were clean Les Pauls, which most players know have a much more jazzy, different sort of aspect to them.
Marr’s preoccupation as a guitar player, however, has always been about layering different sounds, rather than becoming associated with one particular guitar. He told us: I pretty quickly learned that different guitars did different things… When I was just starting out in the industry, I owned a guitar and a backup – the Rickenbacker and the Gretsch – and then went for an acoustic straight away, so it gives you some variety of sound. But then I would want a Les Paul, because that would have a heavier sound. And then I needed a Strat. So, as time went on, whatever money I was making, the first thing I would do was buy a guitar, but I would be buying each different guitar to do the job of layering… I used them all to create this wall of sound, really, and they did actually do that.
MEAT IS MURDER
This 1984 Les Paul is all over the Meat Is Murder album and I used it on tour all the time, Marr told us. It crops up everywhere, and it surprises people, because when people assume that a ringing, clean, jangly sound is happening, they think it's a Rickenbacker. The clean Les Paul would play a key role in shaping the sound of the album as it came together across Amazon Studios in Liverpool and Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey from October-November 1984, with Marr acting as producer and Stephen Street as engineer. As well as album opener ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, Marr would use the Les Paul to write and record ‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’, ‘What She Said’, and ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’.
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. I wrote "The Headmaster Ritual" on acoustic, Marr told Guitar Player in 1990. It's in an open-D tuning with a capo at the 2nd fret. 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. Speaking to Another Man magazine in 2018, Marr continued: I knew The Smiths’ song ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ was a happening piece of music, and was quite inspired, but, because I’d been playing it on an acoustic guitar for months, I just couldn’t get away from it sounding like Joni Mitchell. But when we came to make the Meat is Murder record, and I had the red Les Paul, I kind of put that in the tune and it then sounded like a Smiths song, and it all came together.
Marr cites ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, which was heavily overdubbed, as a prime example of his trademark layering technique. After the main body of the guitar was laid down on his Roger Giffin Telecaster in open-D tuning (lot 10), Marr overdubbed several layers of guitar including two tracks of Martin D-28 (lot 21) and a top line melody on this Les Paul. Layering was a big part of what I was known for from the outset and what I'm still into now, really, he notes. 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 on the Telecaster] in this open tuning style. So I put that main guitar down there, and then I used this [Les Paul] in a regular tuning [plays melody]. I would never have come up with that top line on ‘Headmaster Ritual’ had I not picked up this particular guitar. It's just something about the way it makes me play. Most people would assume that when they hear those guitar parts, that they're all done on the Rickenbacker because of the sort of sound of it in the chime, and also because they saw me on television using the Rickenbacker. But in fact, from 1985 onwards, a lot of that sound and that approach was this red Les Paul. The song 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.
Speaking to The Guitar Magazine in 1997, Marr enthused I really like ‘That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore’, and ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, as guitar pieces they took me a long time to do, and songs like that don't come around that often. Marr still remembers being blown away by both songs 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 two songs: When we did [‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’] and [‘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 those songs in the studio, I genuinely thought “No one can touch this, no one else is doing anything like this.” I’ve always got stuck on [‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’] because it’s just so dramatic and quite pretty. And 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 those songs were particularly unique. Released on 11 February 1985, Meat Is Murder became the band's only studio album to reach number one on the UK Albums Chart.
HATFUL OF HOLLOW AND MEAT IS MURDER TOURS
The 1984 Les Paul was first seen on The Smiths’ short Hatful Of Hollow Tour of Ireland from 11-22 November, which included two shows at Dublin’s SFX Centre and closed with a final date at the Parc Des Expositions in Paris on 1 December 1984. Bootleg video recording from the Paris show indicates that Marr used his new Les Paul for the majority of the set, including ‘What She Said’, ‘Nowhere Fast’, ‘How Soon Is Now?’, ‘This Charming Man’, and ‘Still Ill’. Photographer Paul Slattery captured several superb photographs of Marr with the Cherry Red Les Paul at the Paris show, one of which is included in the lot. The guitar was next seen during an interview segment with Tony Wilson for British regional news service ITV News Granada Reports, filmed during rehearsals for The Smiths’ upcoming Meat Is Murder Tour on 21 February 1985, during which Marr talks through his guitar influences and demonstrates on the Les Paul. The Les Paul formed part of Marr’s arsenal throughout The Smiths’ Meat Is Murder Tour from 27 February to 1 October 1985, used for performances of ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, as seen in footage from the show at Paseo De Camoens in Madrid on 18 May 1985, which was filmed for broadcast on Spanish television channel TVE.
Inspired by Neil Young’s “Old Black” Les Paul, it’s believed that Marr retrofitted the Bigsby vibrato at some point between the North American leg of the tour, which closed on 29 June, and the seven-date Scottish leg which kicked off on 22 September 1985. Speaking to guitar historian Tony Bacon in 2022, Marr explained: Like a lot of guitar players, the look is very important, and I like the look of a Bigsby on a Les Paul. It’s quite unusual. I won’t lie: a lot of it was about how it looked. I’d written the song ‘Nowhere Fast’ on an Epiphone Casino with a Bigsby for a very ‘50s kind of thing… I didn’t want to take it out on the road, so I just thought well, I’ve got this new Les Paul, so I’ll put a Bigsby on that and be able to play ‘Nowhere Fast’ and a few of the other twangy things. That was my logic. The Bigsby was evident when The Smiths appeared on Top of the Pops for a mimed performance of their latest single ‘The Boy with the Thorn in His Side’ on 10 October 1985, which the band have since repurposed as their official music video for the song. Considering Marr’s logic behind the Bigsby, it seems probable that he used the Les Paul to perform ‘Nowhere Fast’ during 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 well as the handful of Irish shows that rounded out the Meat Is Murder Tour in mid-February 1986, of which there are a sprinkling of photographs that confirm the guitar was seen on stage.
Marr next enlisted the guitar for a performance of the band’s new single ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ on the BBC music television programme The Old Grey Whistle Test on 20 May 1986, followed by another just over six weeks later when The Smiths performed their latest single ‘Panic’ alongside album track ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’ on a special five-hour episode of Channel 4’s The Tube, “Euro-Tube”, broadcast around Europe on 5 July 1986. The performance was particularly memorable for the addition of the young schoolboy who joined the band on stage to sing the refrain “Hang the DJ” alongside Morrissey.
THE QUEEN IS DEAD TOUR
Whilst Marr chiefly used his 1978 Les Paul Custom during the recording of the band’s third studio album The Queen Is Dead, the present Les Paul was one of three that rotated regularly throughout the set list on the subsequent tour from 16 July to 12 December 1986. Marr generally used this 1984 Les Paul with Bigsby for performances of ‘The Queen Is Dead’, ‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’, ‘Rusholme Ruffians’, ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’, ‘What She Said’, ‘London’, ‘How Soon Is Now?’, and ‘Still Ill’. Several Video8 bootleg recordings were made by Steve Catterall of Soundsville International when he unofficially toured with the band during the second UK leg of the tour in October 1986. At the close of The Queen Is Dead Tour, The Smiths played what would end up being their last ever live concert together for Artists Against Apartheid at the Brixton Academy in London on 12 December 1986. By chance, it was the 1984 Les Paul that Marr played on the last song The Smiths played together in concert, which was fittingly their debut single ‘Hand In Glove’.
THE PRETENDERS
Marr later used the 1984 Les Paul with The Pretenders when he became a member of the band for a short time in the aftermath of The Smiths when their guitarist Robbie McIntosh left the band mid-tour. In conversation with Martin Kelly for Marr’s Guitars, Marr recalled: Someone from The Pretenders' office sent me a message saying, The Pretenders want to continue with the U2 tour and they need someone who can stand in. How about it? … It was an amazing opportunity and a challenge, and just one of those things that happened in my life that was both pretty abstract and quite a big deal when I look back on it. Marr stayed on when the band returned to London, where they went into the studio in 1988 to record two songs for the soundtrack to the film 1969, which would be released as the 1988 single ‘Windows Of The World’. Marr used this guitar to record the B-side ‘1969’. Writing in his 2016 autobiography, Marr reflected: It turned out to be a perfect document of how The Pretenders sounded with me in the band.
MODIFICATIONS
In 1989, Marr commissioned expert luthier and guitar technician Bill Puplett to replace the original Gibson humbuckers with a set of Seymour Duncan Alnico 2 Pro “zebra” humbucking pickups and to add a coil-tap activated by push-pull pots, which Marr would utilise when doubling-up arpeggios. Marr told Bacon that while the usual method is to double with a different guitar for textural and sonic variation, this modified Les Paul allows him to stick with the same guitar and simply flick the coil-tap to dial in a different tone. The guitar was first seen with its new pickups in promo shots of Marr with The Cult’s Billy Duffy for their collaboration on the Ennio Morricone cover ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ for the 1992 charity compilation album Ruby Trax – The NME's Roaring Forty.
THE THE AND ELECTRONIC
The Les Paul remained a favourite when Marr joined Matt Johnson’s The The alongside forming the alternative dance supergroup Electronic with New Order’s Bernard Sumner in the late 1980s. Marr used this guitar to record The The songs ‘Dogs of Lust’ and ‘Slow Emotion Replay’, which would be released as the first and second singles from the band’s 1993 album Dusk. Marr also plays this Les Paul in the official music video for ‘Dogs of Lust’. Marr told Kelly A song like ‘Slow Emotion Replay' has the arpeggio hook, which brought a sort of joy and an uplifting vibe to an already lovely track. When I came up with the part, I was playing my feelings in the moment… It was a very happy time and I loved the song… Playing in The The was a pioneering time for me as a guitar player. Among numerous recording sessions with Electronic, the Les Paul is notably heard on the song ‘Twisted Tenderness’, the title track of the group’s 1999 studio album of the same name. Marr reports that longtime collaborator Bernard Butler also borrowed this guitar to record the riff on New Order’s 1993 hit single ‘Regret’, which was released as the lead single from their 1993 album Republic and has since become one of their most iconic songs.
THE CRIBS
Marr brought the Les Paul to Seedy Underbelly Studios in Los Angeles in March 2009 to record the 2009 album Ignore The Ignorant with British indie rock group The Cribs, of which he was an official member from 2008-2011. He used the Les Paul on the album’s second single ‘We Share The Same Skies’, which was released on 6 November 2009. Marr told Bacon that he came up with the riff on a Jazzmaster but cut it on the Les Paul, adding The band were excited that it was a very typical ‘me’ kind of riff, so I just thought OK, I’ll make it sound like I’m supposed to sound [and] recorded it on the Les Paul. There’s a documentary online about the making of that album, and you can see me using that guitar quite a lot. Marr is also seen recording the song ‘Cheat On me’ on this guitar in said documentary Secrets Saved, which was included with the deluxe album box set The Roses Edition.
SOLO CAREER AND COLLABORATIONS
The Cherry Red Les Paul has remained one of Marr’s all-time favourite studio guitars throughout his career and into his solo era, featuring on every solo studio album from 2013-2026. Of particular note, Marr used the Les Paul to record the song ‘Generate! Generate!’ on debut solo album The Messenger in 2013 and to lay down the riff on ‘Bug’ on 2018 solo album Call The Comet. When interviewed by Guitar World about the gear used on his 2022 solo album Fever Dreams Pts 1-4, Marr noted I also used my Smiths 1980s red Les Paul with the Bigsby. That’s always on the records. That’s been on more records than any other guitar, including Meat Is Murder. I use that a lot to play clean arpeggios and to double [track] the Jag. It adds a real creaminess.
Marr picked out the riffs to New Order’s ‘Regret’ and The Smiths’ ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’ on this 1984 Les Paul during an interview about his guitar collection with Daniel Steinhardt and Mick Taylor for their YouTube series That Pedal Show in October 2023 and declared: this is the one that I'd run into a burning building for. In 2022, Marr collaborated with Noel Gallagher, using this 1984 Les Paul to contribute guitar parts for the songs ‘Pretty Boy’ and ‘Council Skies’ on the 2023 Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds album Council Skies. Speaking to NME in 2023, Gallagher enthused For the three tracks that he plays on, I had the idea that Johnny would be able to play something great on it – I could just hear it and knew it. With ‘Pretty Boy’, it’s so linear and gets to that point where it just motors along. He’s the G.O.A.T.! He elevates my songs. Marr is seen working on the title track ‘Council Skies’ in the four-part docuseries ‘‘The Making of Council Skies’ on Noel Gallagher’s YouTube channel. After Marr joined Franz Ferdinand on stage to perform their new album track ‘Build It Up’ for Amazon Music’s City Sessions in 2025, the collaboration was so successful that the band subsequently recorded a new studio version of ‘Build It Up’ featuring Marr on this 1984 Les Paul for single release. Frontman Alex Kapranos stated: Johnny is an inspiration. Literally. I sat in my bedroom as a teenager trying to work out how to play his melodies. To hear his distinctive playing on our song is glorious. He’s elevated it in that way only he can.
Evidently, this guitar has remained in action right up to the moment Marr sent it to Christie’s for auction. Most recently, Marr used the Les Paul to record the tracks ‘The Empty Dream Machine’, ‘The Plastic Guru’, ‘Casablanca’, and ‘The Sweet Prince’ as one of the featured collaborators on Gorillaz’ 2026 album The Mountain. The treasured Les Paul even features on Marr’s as yet unreleased fifth solo studio album Age of Everything and will be heard on the track ‘It’s Time’, as well as the recently released lead single ‘Spin’. In February 2025, Gibson released a super limited edition run of 20 Les Pauls based on this very Bigsby-equipped '84 Les Paul Standard, with all proceeds going to the Teenage Cancer Trust.
When I've been asked which out of all my guitars is the main go-to, reflects Marr, there's two that come to mind really, because they were pivotal in my career, I think, and became really well known and associated with me. One is the red 355 that I got in 1984 in The Smiths’ days (lot 7), and the other, which has been on more records I've made than any of the others, is the red Les Paul. These two are the ones that I sort of gulp when I think I'm really going to let them go, but I've been playing my signature Jaguars for a long time now. And I think I’ve had some pretty good use out of this one.
See lots 22 and 36 for additional images of this lot.
JOHNNY MARR, MARR'S GUITARS, 2023
JOHNNY MARR’S 1984 “MEAT IS MURDER” LES PAUL
Built at Gibson’s Nashville Factory in August 1984, Marr purchased this Cherry Red Les Paul Standard from A1 Repairs in Manchester circa September 1984 as The Smiths prepared to enter the studio to record their second solo studio album Meat Is Murder. Although he would later modify the tailpiece, pickups and pots, the guitar was stock at the time of purchase with standard Gibson humbuckers. I was looking for a harder sound for the Meat Is Murder album, Marr told The Mail on Sunday in 2009, and I tried a few different guitars before coming around to the Les Paul. There are a lot of traditional rock cliches associated with this make of guitar, so I had to work past that. A former Les Paul devotee in teen homage to musical hero Marc Bolan, Marr had traded his first Les Paul Custom for a Gretsch mere months before forming The Smiths in line with a general post-punk rejection of 1970s blues-rock culture among young British guitarists at the time. Before I formed the band I was a Les Paul freak, Marr told Steve Rosen for Ultimate Guitar in 2012, because everybody in the UK was, and in the new wave days over here it was all about Les Pauls into Fender Twins. Quite quickly I wanted to return to the Les Paul, but I was playing clean sounds… songs like ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, ‘Meat is Murder’ and those kinds of things were clean Les Pauls, which most players know have a much more jazzy, different sort of aspect to them.
Marr’s preoccupation as a guitar player, however, has always been about layering different sounds, rather than becoming associated with one particular guitar. He told us: I pretty quickly learned that different guitars did different things… When I was just starting out in the industry, I owned a guitar and a backup – the Rickenbacker and the Gretsch – and then went for an acoustic straight away, so it gives you some variety of sound. But then I would want a Les Paul, because that would have a heavier sound. And then I needed a Strat. So, as time went on, whatever money I was making, the first thing I would do was buy a guitar, but I would be buying each different guitar to do the job of layering… I used them all to create this wall of sound, really, and they did actually do that.
MEAT IS MURDER
This 1984 Les Paul is all over the Meat Is Murder album and I used it on tour all the time, Marr told us. It crops up everywhere, and it surprises people, because when people assume that a ringing, clean, jangly sound is happening, they think it's a Rickenbacker. The clean Les Paul would play a key role in shaping the sound of the album as it came together across Amazon Studios in Liverpool and Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey from October-November 1984, with Marr acting as producer and Stephen Street as engineer. As well as album opener ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, Marr would use the Les Paul to write and record ‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’, ‘What She Said’, and ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’.
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. I wrote "The Headmaster Ritual" on acoustic, Marr told Guitar Player in 1990. It's in an open-D tuning with a capo at the 2nd fret. 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. Speaking to Another Man magazine in 2018, Marr continued: I knew The Smiths’ song ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ was a happening piece of music, and was quite inspired, but, because I’d been playing it on an acoustic guitar for months, I just couldn’t get away from it sounding like Joni Mitchell. But when we came to make the Meat is Murder record, and I had the red Les Paul, I kind of put that in the tune and it then sounded like a Smiths song, and it all came together.
Marr cites ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, which was heavily overdubbed, as a prime example of his trademark layering technique. After the main body of the guitar was laid down on his Roger Giffin Telecaster in open-D tuning (lot 10), Marr overdubbed several layers of guitar including two tracks of Martin D-28 (lot 21) and a top line melody on this Les Paul. Layering was a big part of what I was known for from the outset and what I'm still into now, really, he notes. 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 on the Telecaster] in this open tuning style. So I put that main guitar down there, and then I used this [Les Paul] in a regular tuning [plays melody]. I would never have come up with that top line on ‘Headmaster Ritual’ had I not picked up this particular guitar. It's just something about the way it makes me play. Most people would assume that when they hear those guitar parts, that they're all done on the Rickenbacker because of the sort of sound of it in the chime, and also because they saw me on television using the Rickenbacker. But in fact, from 1985 onwards, a lot of that sound and that approach was this red Les Paul. The song 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.
Speaking to The Guitar Magazine in 1997, Marr enthused I really like ‘That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore’, and ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, as guitar pieces they took me a long time to do, and songs like that don't come around that often. Marr still remembers being blown away by both songs 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 two songs: When we did [‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’] and [‘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 those songs in the studio, I genuinely thought “No one can touch this, no one else is doing anything like this.” I’ve always got stuck on [‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’] because it’s just so dramatic and quite pretty. And 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 those songs were particularly unique. Released on 11 February 1985, Meat Is Murder became the band's only studio album to reach number one on the UK Albums Chart.
HATFUL OF HOLLOW AND MEAT IS MURDER TOURS
The 1984 Les Paul was first seen on The Smiths’ short Hatful Of Hollow Tour of Ireland from 11-22 November, which included two shows at Dublin’s SFX Centre and closed with a final date at the Parc Des Expositions in Paris on 1 December 1984. Bootleg video recording from the Paris show indicates that Marr used his new Les Paul for the majority of the set, including ‘What She Said’, ‘Nowhere Fast’, ‘How Soon Is Now?’, ‘This Charming Man’, and ‘Still Ill’. Photographer Paul Slattery captured several superb photographs of Marr with the Cherry Red Les Paul at the Paris show, one of which is included in the lot. The guitar was next seen during an interview segment with Tony Wilson for British regional news service ITV News Granada Reports, filmed during rehearsals for The Smiths’ upcoming Meat Is Murder Tour on 21 February 1985, during which Marr talks through his guitar influences and demonstrates on the Les Paul. The Les Paul formed part of Marr’s arsenal throughout The Smiths’ Meat Is Murder Tour from 27 February to 1 October 1985, used for performances of ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, as seen in footage from the show at Paseo De Camoens in Madrid on 18 May 1985, which was filmed for broadcast on Spanish television channel TVE.
Inspired by Neil Young’s “Old Black” Les Paul, it’s believed that Marr retrofitted the Bigsby vibrato at some point between the North American leg of the tour, which closed on 29 June, and the seven-date Scottish leg which kicked off on 22 September 1985. Speaking to guitar historian Tony Bacon in 2022, Marr explained: Like a lot of guitar players, the look is very important, and I like the look of a Bigsby on a Les Paul. It’s quite unusual. I won’t lie: a lot of it was about how it looked. I’d written the song ‘Nowhere Fast’ on an Epiphone Casino with a Bigsby for a very ‘50s kind of thing… I didn’t want to take it out on the road, so I just thought well, I’ve got this new Les Paul, so I’ll put a Bigsby on that and be able to play ‘Nowhere Fast’ and a few of the other twangy things. That was my logic. The Bigsby was evident when The Smiths appeared on Top of the Pops for a mimed performance of their latest single ‘The Boy with the Thorn in His Side’ on 10 October 1985, which the band have since repurposed as their official music video for the song. Considering Marr’s logic behind the Bigsby, it seems probable that he used the Les Paul to perform ‘Nowhere Fast’ during 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 well as the handful of Irish shows that rounded out the Meat Is Murder Tour in mid-February 1986, of which there are a sprinkling of photographs that confirm the guitar was seen on stage.
Marr next enlisted the guitar for a performance of the band’s new single ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ on the BBC music television programme The Old Grey Whistle Test on 20 May 1986, followed by another just over six weeks later when The Smiths performed their latest single ‘Panic’ alongside album track ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’ on a special five-hour episode of Channel 4’s The Tube, “Euro-Tube”, broadcast around Europe on 5 July 1986. The performance was particularly memorable for the addition of the young schoolboy who joined the band on stage to sing the refrain “Hang the DJ” alongside Morrissey.
THE QUEEN IS DEAD TOUR
Whilst Marr chiefly used his 1978 Les Paul Custom during the recording of the band’s third studio album The Queen Is Dead, the present Les Paul was one of three that rotated regularly throughout the set list on the subsequent tour from 16 July to 12 December 1986. Marr generally used this 1984 Les Paul with Bigsby for performances of ‘The Queen Is Dead’, ‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’, ‘Rusholme Ruffians’, ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’, ‘What She Said’, ‘London’, ‘How Soon Is Now?’, and ‘Still Ill’. Several Video8 bootleg recordings were made by Steve Catterall of Soundsville International when he unofficially toured with the band during the second UK leg of the tour in October 1986. At the close of The Queen Is Dead Tour, The Smiths played what would end up being their last ever live concert together for Artists Against Apartheid at the Brixton Academy in London on 12 December 1986. By chance, it was the 1984 Les Paul that Marr played on the last song The Smiths played together in concert, which was fittingly their debut single ‘Hand In Glove’.
THE PRETENDERS
Marr later used the 1984 Les Paul with The Pretenders when he became a member of the band for a short time in the aftermath of The Smiths when their guitarist Robbie McIntosh left the band mid-tour. In conversation with Martin Kelly for Marr’s Guitars, Marr recalled: Someone from The Pretenders' office sent me a message saying, The Pretenders want to continue with the U2 tour and they need someone who can stand in. How about it? … It was an amazing opportunity and a challenge, and just one of those things that happened in my life that was both pretty abstract and quite a big deal when I look back on it. Marr stayed on when the band returned to London, where they went into the studio in 1988 to record two songs for the soundtrack to the film 1969, which would be released as the 1988 single ‘Windows Of The World’. Marr used this guitar to record the B-side ‘1969’. Writing in his 2016 autobiography, Marr reflected: It turned out to be a perfect document of how The Pretenders sounded with me in the band.
MODIFICATIONS
In 1989, Marr commissioned expert luthier and guitar technician Bill Puplett to replace the original Gibson humbuckers with a set of Seymour Duncan Alnico 2 Pro “zebra” humbucking pickups and to add a coil-tap activated by push-pull pots, which Marr would utilise when doubling-up arpeggios. Marr told Bacon that while the usual method is to double with a different guitar for textural and sonic variation, this modified Les Paul allows him to stick with the same guitar and simply flick the coil-tap to dial in a different tone. The guitar was first seen with its new pickups in promo shots of Marr with The Cult’s Billy Duffy for their collaboration on the Ennio Morricone cover ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ for the 1992 charity compilation album Ruby Trax – The NME's Roaring Forty.
THE THE AND ELECTRONIC
The Les Paul remained a favourite when Marr joined Matt Johnson’s The The alongside forming the alternative dance supergroup Electronic with New Order’s Bernard Sumner in the late 1980s. Marr used this guitar to record The The songs ‘Dogs of Lust’ and ‘Slow Emotion Replay’, which would be released as the first and second singles from the band’s 1993 album Dusk. Marr also plays this Les Paul in the official music video for ‘Dogs of Lust’. Marr told Kelly A song like ‘Slow Emotion Replay' has the arpeggio hook, which brought a sort of joy and an uplifting vibe to an already lovely track. When I came up with the part, I was playing my feelings in the moment… It was a very happy time and I loved the song… Playing in The The was a pioneering time for me as a guitar player. Among numerous recording sessions with Electronic, the Les Paul is notably heard on the song ‘Twisted Tenderness’, the title track of the group’s 1999 studio album of the same name. Marr reports that longtime collaborator Bernard Butler also borrowed this guitar to record the riff on New Order’s 1993 hit single ‘Regret’, which was released as the lead single from their 1993 album Republic and has since become one of their most iconic songs.
THE CRIBS
Marr brought the Les Paul to Seedy Underbelly Studios in Los Angeles in March 2009 to record the 2009 album Ignore The Ignorant with British indie rock group The Cribs, of which he was an official member from 2008-2011. He used the Les Paul on the album’s second single ‘We Share The Same Skies’, which was released on 6 November 2009. Marr told Bacon that he came up with the riff on a Jazzmaster but cut it on the Les Paul, adding The band were excited that it was a very typical ‘me’ kind of riff, so I just thought OK, I’ll make it sound like I’m supposed to sound [and] recorded it on the Les Paul. There’s a documentary online about the making of that album, and you can see me using that guitar quite a lot. Marr is also seen recording the song ‘Cheat On me’ on this guitar in said documentary Secrets Saved, which was included with the deluxe album box set The Roses Edition.
SOLO CAREER AND COLLABORATIONS
The Cherry Red Les Paul has remained one of Marr’s all-time favourite studio guitars throughout his career and into his solo era, featuring on every solo studio album from 2013-2026. Of particular note, Marr used the Les Paul to record the song ‘Generate! Generate!’ on debut solo album The Messenger in 2013 and to lay down the riff on ‘Bug’ on 2018 solo album Call The Comet. When interviewed by Guitar World about the gear used on his 2022 solo album Fever Dreams Pts 1-4, Marr noted I also used my Smiths 1980s red Les Paul with the Bigsby. That’s always on the records. That’s been on more records than any other guitar, including Meat Is Murder. I use that a lot to play clean arpeggios and to double [track] the Jag. It adds a real creaminess.
Marr picked out the riffs to New Order’s ‘Regret’ and The Smiths’ ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’ on this 1984 Les Paul during an interview about his guitar collection with Daniel Steinhardt and Mick Taylor for their YouTube series That Pedal Show in October 2023 and declared: this is the one that I'd run into a burning building for. In 2022, Marr collaborated with Noel Gallagher, using this 1984 Les Paul to contribute guitar parts for the songs ‘Pretty Boy’ and ‘Council Skies’ on the 2023 Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds album Council Skies. Speaking to NME in 2023, Gallagher enthused For the three tracks that he plays on, I had the idea that Johnny would be able to play something great on it – I could just hear it and knew it. With ‘Pretty Boy’, it’s so linear and gets to that point where it just motors along. He’s the G.O.A.T.! He elevates my songs. Marr is seen working on the title track ‘Council Skies’ in the four-part docuseries ‘‘The Making of Council Skies’ on Noel Gallagher’s YouTube channel. After Marr joined Franz Ferdinand on stage to perform their new album track ‘Build It Up’ for Amazon Music’s City Sessions in 2025, the collaboration was so successful that the band subsequently recorded a new studio version of ‘Build It Up’ featuring Marr on this 1984 Les Paul for single release. Frontman Alex Kapranos stated: Johnny is an inspiration. Literally. I sat in my bedroom as a teenager trying to work out how to play his melodies. To hear his distinctive playing on our song is glorious. He’s elevated it in that way only he can.
Evidently, this guitar has remained in action right up to the moment Marr sent it to Christie’s for auction. Most recently, Marr used the Les Paul to record the tracks ‘The Empty Dream Machine’, ‘The Plastic Guru’, ‘Casablanca’, and ‘The Sweet Prince’ as one of the featured collaborators on Gorillaz’ 2026 album The Mountain. The treasured Les Paul even features on Marr’s as yet unreleased fifth solo studio album Age of Everything and will be heard on the track ‘It’s Time’, as well as the recently released lead single ‘Spin’. In February 2025, Gibson released a super limited edition run of 20 Les Pauls based on this very Bigsby-equipped '84 Les Paul Standard, with all proceeds going to the Teenage Cancer Trust.
When I've been asked which out of all my guitars is the main go-to, reflects Marr, there's two that come to mind really, because they were pivotal in my career, I think, and became really well known and associated with me. One is the red 355 that I got in 1984 in The Smiths’ days (lot 7), and the other, which has been on more records I've made than any of the others, is the red Les Paul. These two are the ones that I sort of gulp when I think I'm really going to let them go, but I've been playing my signature Jaguars for a long time now. And I think I’ve had some pretty good use out of this one.
See lots 22 and 36 for additional images of this lot.