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Lot Essay
This was my first Stratocaster. Always, I hoped that my latest guitar would make me do something new, as this Strat did when I wrote 'The Boy With The Thorn In His Side' on it.
JOHNNY MARR, 2026
Johnny Marr purchased this early 1960s Fender Stratocaster from A1 Repairs in Manchester in mid-1984. Formerly owned by Gary Shaughnessy from the eight-piece Manchester soul group Sweet Sensation, the guitar had been modified in the 1970s with a 5-way pickup selector switch and an additional 5-way switch mounted in parallel, the latter of which had apparently been disabled prior to Marr’s ownership. The appeal of this particular Strat was no doubt tied to the influence of Marr’s first musical hero Marc Bolan, who he remembered playing a white Strat. However, Marr’s preoccupation as a guitar player has always been about layering different sounds, rather than becoming associated with one particular guitar.
Marr told us: I pretty quickly learned, just by using my ears really, that different guitars did different things. So, almost straight out the gate on Smiths records, I was borrowing guitars from other musicians to work with the guitar that I owned. 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. So, in terms of my evolution in the Smiths, as soon as I could do it, I got a Strat, and that made me play differently. Things like ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ and ‘Shakespeare's Sister’. I used them all to create this wall of sound, really, and they did actually do that.
‘HOW SOON IS NOW?’
The Strat made it straight onto a record when Marr employed it to record the lead solo on perennial fan favourite ‘How Soon Is Now?’ at London’s Jam Studios in July 1984. Marr worked into the night to perfect a pulsing tremolo effect on the basic rhythm track he’d recorded with his Epiphone Casino (lot 15) before layering a howling two-note slide on top of the tremolo riff with a Telecaster. Marr recounted the session in his 2016 autobiography: It was around three in the morning and the rest of the band had gone, leaving me and John to the Guitarchestra [overdubs]… Occasionally, if you’re lucky, your work takes on a life of its own and pulls you along with it… ‘How Soon Is Now?’ took on a life of its own at around five in the morning… it sounded so good that I plugged in a white Stratocaster and improvised a wild lead solo to finish it off. Somewhat hidden away upon its original release as the 12-inch B-side to ‘William…’ in August 1984, ‘How Soon Is Now?’ began infiltrating the mainstream when it was featured on the 1984 compilation album Hatful of Hollow and has since been recognised as a modern masterpiece, consistently ranked among the greatest songs of all time.
When the Smiths assembled to record their second studio album Meat Is Murder at Liverpool’s Amazon Studios in October-November 1984, Marr used the white Strat for the muted electric guitar line on the acoustic-led ‘Well I Wonder’. Interviewed for Uncut in 2008, Marr recalled: I remember the start of the record because I moved back to Manchester very deliberately – to get the atmosphere right for the instrumental tracks I was writing. And that worked out immediately because ‘Well I Wonder’ came out of that, with the rain and everything. When we did it we knew it would be popular because it had that real sense of yearning in it.
‘SHAKESPEARE’S SISTER’
After completing work on Meat Is Murder, The Smiths returned to the studio in January 1985 to record their next single. The R&B and rockabilly inspired ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’ was put together by Marr and Morrissey on the way down to Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey. I was trying to draw on American music in a way that had been forgotten, Marr told author Daniel Rachel in 2013. [I had a] very deliberate and keen interest in finding rhythms that other bands around me were not using, that I liked hearing my parents play: Eddie Cochran; Elvis Presley; and because I was such a Stones nut, Bo Diddley. I always was obsessed by that beat. 'Nowhere Fast' has that rockabilly rhythm and 'Shakespeare's Sister' was written entirely from that rhythm; some idea of a fucked-up Johnny Cash on drugs. It sounds half like that. Marr used the white Strat to record the song’s lead guitar line, with considerable use of slide and wah wah. I copped [that] from [George] Harrison, Marr revealed to Total Guitar in 1995. That’s still really my favourite sound for a lead break. I used it loads on Shakespeare’s Sister. Interviewed by Smiths’ biographer Simon Goddard in 2004, Marr admits: I loved it. To me it had everything, those Stones echoes, exactly the feeling of 'Have You Seen Your Mother Baby?' Quite audacious and a little bit satanic. There was some weird stuff in there.
Marr made his first stage appearance with the white Strat when The Smiths debuted ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’ with a mimed performance on BBC Two’s Oxford Road Show on 22 February 1985, which they followed up with ‘The Headmaster Ritual’. The Strat was first seen on television the day before the Oxford Road Show, 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. Marr brought the Strat on the first three legs of the Meat Is Murder Tour spanning the UK, Europe and North America from 27 February to 29 June 1985, likely for performances of ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’. Photographer Andrew Catlin shot Marr on the Strat during the band’s show at the Oxford Apollo on 18 March 1985. Smiths’ lighting engineer John Featherstone captured a shot of Marr’s guitar line-up on stage during the US leg of the tour (see page 110).
‘THE BOY WITH THE THORN IN HIS SIDE’
Marr fully embraced the Stratocaster sound for the first time on a Smiths record when the band entered Manchester’s Drone Studios in August 1985 to record ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’. Marr had written the song on this Strat during the UK leg of the Meat Is Murder Tour in spring 1985 and had already begun rehearsing the instrumental track during soundchecks. This Strat made me play in a slightly different way, Marr told guitar historian Tony Bacon in 2022. When I wrote ‘Boy With The Thorn’, I really brought out that top-line melody – and because I was playing a Strat, I put more reverb on it. Speaking to Guitar Player’s Joe Gore in 1990, Marr revealed that he had hoped to achieve a twangy Hank Marvin sound from the Strat, but that it ended up sounding quite highlify. Marr maintained that any highlife influence was unintentional, telling Goddard: There was no other way of playing that tune. I just wanted that melody out of it and we did a really good job. It was just a chord change that I was kicking around at home and I was imagining a tune on top of it. It wasn't until we got the bass and drums behind it that I could play the topline. It just made me feel good. Speaking to The Guitar Magazine’s Michael Leonard in 1997, however, Marr enthusiastically confirmed a Nile Rogers influence: the rhythm part from verse two onwards - that chick-a-chick part - it's pure Nile Rogers. Interviewed by NME to celebrate 20 years of The Queen Is Dead in 2006, Marr reflected on the recording session: When we did it I was elated. We did this in a little 16-track demo studio in Manchester, which proves the point you don’t need a lot of technology to do something pretty good. It’s the song and the emotion inside that matters. Released as a single on 16 September 1985, the track was later reworked for inclusion on The Smiths’ third studio album The Queen Is Dead.
BRYAN FERRY
At the tail end of recording sessions for The Queen Is Dead, Marr used the Strat to record the instrumental B-side ‘Money Changes Everything’ at London’s Wessex Studios in December 1985. The track showcased Marr’s mastery of the Strat with its thumb-picked false harmonics, volume swells and bends. [False Harmonics is] a steel player's technique, he told Leonard. You touch the strings with a right-hand finger an octave higher than where you're fretting and then pluck the string with your thumb. Marr also employed the technique of swelling up and then engaging the whammy bar at the same time, he told Bacon. I guess some people might think that’s Hendrix-y, but to me its best proponent is Jeff Beck. And I used to do that on quite a lot of records… picking the harmonics with the volume down, swelling it up, and then doing the bend… The intro to ‘Money Changes Everything’ is the thumb-pick, strumming the chord, swelling it up, then hitting a little bit with the tremolo arm, with loads of delay on. So the Strat did facilitate a technique, and it brought music out. I wasn’t imposing my music on the guitar; the guitar was bringing out things. It was bringing out tunes, really.
The track was later reworked with lyrics and recorded by Bryan Ferry in collaboration with Marr in June 1986 for release as ‘The Right Stuff’ on Ferry’s 1987 album Bête Noire. I got an invitation to record from Bryan Ferry, who had been one of my favourite artists ever since I’d bought Roxy records in the glam days, wrote Marr in his 2016 autobiography. He’d heard an instrumental Smiths B-side and wanted to write with me. I was honoured to be asked, and I went over to AIR Studios on Oxford Street. Marr used this same Strat to record the Bryan Ferry version, telling Gore: The bass track and the Roland drum machine pattern had already been put down, so it was the first session where I did purely overdubs. Marr reflected: Working with Bryan Ferry was a great experience. There was a sense of discovery in his sessions, and at the age of twenty-two I was writing with one of my favourite ever singers. By the time the single was released in October 1987, The Smiths would have broken up.
THE QUEEN IS DEAD TOUR
This Strat formed a key part of Marr’s arsenal for The Queen Is Dead Tour, variously used for performances of ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’, ‘Vicar in a Tutu’, ‘I Know It’s Over’, ‘Cemetry Gates’, ‘Ask’, ‘Money Changes Everything’ and ‘The Draize Train’ throughout the tour from 16 July at Glasgow’s Barrowlands to 12 December 1986 at the Brixton Academy in London, which would turn out to be The Smiths’ last ever live performance. 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. The show at the National Ballroom in Kilburn, London, on 23 October 1986 was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 1 and later released as the 1988 live album Rank. Footage of the band’s performance of ‘Ask’ at the Kilburn show, featuring Marr on the white Strat, was issued for a 1988 promo video for Rank, directed by Peter Fowler.
‘SHOPLIFTERS OF THE WORLD UNITE’
Mere weeks before The Smiths’ Anti-Apartheid benefit show at London’s Brixton Academy, which would mark the end of The Queen Is Dead Tour as well as the last live appearance of the band, Marr enlisted the modified white Strat to record the lead guitar and solo/break on The Smiths’ next single ‘Shoplifters of the World Unite’, which was the first to be produced solely by Marr, at London’s Trident Studios in late November 1986. That was the first time I used harmonised layering, Marr told Gore. People have said it sounds like Brian May, but I was thinking of stacked Roy Buchanans. Marr also emphasised Nils Lofgren’s influence, telling Leonard: You can hear [his] influence on me in the solo… That's all done with false harmonics… Lofgren had this really melodic lead style, as opposed to a modal, bluesy style… He played across relative minors a lot of the time, which meant he could play a really poignant melody even in the middle of a straight-ahead rock track, and that was something that really interested me… [as] I was desperate not to play boogie or blues leads.
Marr confirmed his use of wah-wah on the track, telling Gore: I approach it like a tone pot. I find myself keeping my foot on it all the time, just letting it out slowly without thinking about it too much. Also, you can leave it on, opened slightly, without even touching it – that gives you a completely different tonal range. The ‘Shoplifters’ break was the first time that I really discovered that. And if the filter is open in just the right place, you can get a harmonic to sing like a bird. More generally, Marr acknowledged an affinity for the Stratocaster’s master volume control: I nearly always keep my little finger on the volume pot, so if I hear the glimmer of something really interesting, I turn the volume right up; if it's not happening, I turn it down and try to find another note. I don't use a volume pedal – it's all volume knob. That's inspired by Roy Buchanan, Nils Lofgren, and Jeff Beck. Released as a non-album single in January 1987, ‘Shoplifters of the World Unite’ was a critical and commercial success, reaching number 12 in the UK singles chart, and has since been rated among the band’s best songs.
REFINISH TO BLACK
As Marr had loved the original slab board neck that was still at the time united with the present body, it was discussed that he should have copies of that favourite neck made, either with the intention of using them with one or two of the various vintage Strats he had by that time acquired or as a backup for that favourite neck, which was perhaps becoming a little knackered from extensive tour use. It’s believed that at some point in 1987, guitar tech Alan Rogan – acting as Marr’s agent – arranged for luthier Roger Giffin to make several copies of the favoured slab board neck and delivered said neck to Giffin’s workshop for duplication. For whatever reason, the original slab board neck was never reunited with this guitar and its current whereabouts remain unknown. The Giffin copies, however, did materialise. Around the same time, Marr commissioned luthier Bill Puplett to refinish the body in black. The refinished guitar was fitted with EMG pickups and an unknown neck – probably one of the Giffin copies. Around this time, Marr also began replacing the volume pots on his Strats with larger vintage style Precision bass knobs as he found that he could get a better grip on them for volume swells. It was in this state that the Strat was next seen when Marr travelled to Paris in September 1987 to shoot the official music video for ‘The Right Stuff’ with Bryan Ferry. Although Marr and his guitar were only glimpsed in the video, set photographer Andre Csillag captured several great shots of Marr with the black Strat. The guitar remained easily identifiable thanks to its double switch modification.
TALKING HEADS
Marr went straight from the set of ‘The Right Stuff’ into the studio to collaborate with American new wave band Talking Heads on their 1988 album Naked. Talking Heads invited me to record with them for their new album in Paris, Marr recalled in his 2016 autobiography. They had a few songs already down for me to play on… They’d been such an important band to my generation and had managed to pull off the rare feat of being one of the biggest bands in the world while still maintaining their artistic integrity. I knew their stuff inside out, and I was flattered and excited to be asked to make a contribution to one of their records… Steve Lillywhite, who was producing the album, was in the control room when I arrived to start recording, and it was good to have someone there who I knew. I wanted to get straight into playing and I got my sound going quickly, using a Fender Strat for a suitably funky Talking Heads approach, and told him to roll the tape. Marr used this Strat to record the song ‘Ruby Dear’ and ‘Mommy Daddy You and I’ during the Paris sessions. The Talking Heads called me in specifically because the song ‘Ruby Dear’ had a Bo Diddley groove – that's incredibly flattering, he remarked to Gore. ‘Ruby Dear’ was recorded live, Marr continued, with the original four members and me on guitar. I hadn’t recorded live with anyone other than The Smiths before. It was a learning curve, and as a learning curve goes, Talking Heads was a good way to start.
The refinished Strat remained a favourite when Marr joined Matt Johnson’s The The and formed the alternative dance supergroup Electronic with New Order’s Bernard Sumner in 1988. A 1991 feature in The Guitar Magazine listed Marr’s main gear during this period: Main guitars for The The are Strats, including a midnight blue American Standard, and a JM Custom, which was a white ’63 Strat, now in black with Bill Lawrence blade pickups. Around the same time, Marr found himself in the studio with this Strat, contributing to a session with London based dance act Stex for their 1990 single ‘Still Feel The Rain’. I was in a rehearsal room in London and Stex's manager – Stevo from Some Bizzare – dragged me into a session, Marr told Uncut in 2022. He said, “Play!” I stood on the studio floor and the riff was the first thing I thought of. Through the control room window, I could see all these people, dressed up, grooving around. It was like being in Sly And The Family Stone for the afternoon.
At some point in the late 2000s, Marr commissioned Puplett to restore the Strat back to a white finish, refit the 1960s pickups that were used in the guitar during the Smiths era, and unite the body with a suitable early 1960s neck. The present composite Strat, therefore, comprises an associated 1963 neck with the original circa 1962 body. A replacement pickguard was made for the guitar around the time that photographer Pat Graham shot Marr’s collection for Marr’s Guitars and is pictured on the guitar in the book. The original pickguard has since been restored to the guitar.
When asked about the many iconic guitars from his past by Premier Guitar magazine in 2018, Marr reported that he still had all the old favourites including a white ’63 Fender Strat from those days, and noted: All of those guitars had a real direct effect on my songwriting back then, simply because it was so incredible to me that I was able to own each one of them. I had been so broke as a kid that I wrote a whole load of songs as soon as I got one of those guitars, and that was a rule I had for myself to justify buying one.
See lot 22 for additional images of this lot.
JOHNNY MARR, 2026
Johnny Marr purchased this early 1960s Fender Stratocaster from A1 Repairs in Manchester in mid-1984. Formerly owned by Gary Shaughnessy from the eight-piece Manchester soul group Sweet Sensation, the guitar had been modified in the 1970s with a 5-way pickup selector switch and an additional 5-way switch mounted in parallel, the latter of which had apparently been disabled prior to Marr’s ownership. The appeal of this particular Strat was no doubt tied to the influence of Marr’s first musical hero Marc Bolan, who he remembered playing a white Strat. However, Marr’s preoccupation as a guitar player has always been about layering different sounds, rather than becoming associated with one particular guitar.
Marr told us: I pretty quickly learned, just by using my ears really, that different guitars did different things. So, almost straight out the gate on Smiths records, I was borrowing guitars from other musicians to work with the guitar that I owned. 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. So, in terms of my evolution in the Smiths, as soon as I could do it, I got a Strat, and that made me play differently. Things like ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ and ‘Shakespeare's Sister’. I used them all to create this wall of sound, really, and they did actually do that.
‘HOW SOON IS NOW?’
The Strat made it straight onto a record when Marr employed it to record the lead solo on perennial fan favourite ‘How Soon Is Now?’ at London’s Jam Studios in July 1984. Marr worked into the night to perfect a pulsing tremolo effect on the basic rhythm track he’d recorded with his Epiphone Casino (lot 15) before layering a howling two-note slide on top of the tremolo riff with a Telecaster. Marr recounted the session in his 2016 autobiography: It was around three in the morning and the rest of the band had gone, leaving me and John to the Guitarchestra [overdubs]… Occasionally, if you’re lucky, your work takes on a life of its own and pulls you along with it… ‘How Soon Is Now?’ took on a life of its own at around five in the morning… it sounded so good that I plugged in a white Stratocaster and improvised a wild lead solo to finish it off. Somewhat hidden away upon its original release as the 12-inch B-side to ‘William…’ in August 1984, ‘How Soon Is Now?’ began infiltrating the mainstream when it was featured on the 1984 compilation album Hatful of Hollow and has since been recognised as a modern masterpiece, consistently ranked among the greatest songs of all time.
When the Smiths assembled to record their second studio album Meat Is Murder at Liverpool’s Amazon Studios in October-November 1984, Marr used the white Strat for the muted electric guitar line on the acoustic-led ‘Well I Wonder’. Interviewed for Uncut in 2008, Marr recalled: I remember the start of the record because I moved back to Manchester very deliberately – to get the atmosphere right for the instrumental tracks I was writing. And that worked out immediately because ‘Well I Wonder’ came out of that, with the rain and everything. When we did it we knew it would be popular because it had that real sense of yearning in it.
‘SHAKESPEARE’S SISTER’
After completing work on Meat Is Murder, The Smiths returned to the studio in January 1985 to record their next single. The R&B and rockabilly inspired ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’ was put together by Marr and Morrissey on the way down to Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey. I was trying to draw on American music in a way that had been forgotten, Marr told author Daniel Rachel in 2013. [I had a] very deliberate and keen interest in finding rhythms that other bands around me were not using, that I liked hearing my parents play: Eddie Cochran; Elvis Presley; and because I was such a Stones nut, Bo Diddley. I always was obsessed by that beat. 'Nowhere Fast' has that rockabilly rhythm and 'Shakespeare's Sister' was written entirely from that rhythm; some idea of a fucked-up Johnny Cash on drugs. It sounds half like that. Marr used the white Strat to record the song’s lead guitar line, with considerable use of slide and wah wah. I copped [that] from [George] Harrison, Marr revealed to Total Guitar in 1995. That’s still really my favourite sound for a lead break. I used it loads on Shakespeare’s Sister. Interviewed by Smiths’ biographer Simon Goddard in 2004, Marr admits: I loved it. To me it had everything, those Stones echoes, exactly the feeling of 'Have You Seen Your Mother Baby?' Quite audacious and a little bit satanic. There was some weird stuff in there.
Marr made his first stage appearance with the white Strat when The Smiths debuted ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’ with a mimed performance on BBC Two’s Oxford Road Show on 22 February 1985, which they followed up with ‘The Headmaster Ritual’. The Strat was first seen on television the day before the Oxford Road Show, 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. Marr brought the Strat on the first three legs of the Meat Is Murder Tour spanning the UK, Europe and North America from 27 February to 29 June 1985, likely for performances of ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’. Photographer Andrew Catlin shot Marr on the Strat during the band’s show at the Oxford Apollo on 18 March 1985. Smiths’ lighting engineer John Featherstone captured a shot of Marr’s guitar line-up on stage during the US leg of the tour (see page 110).
‘THE BOY WITH THE THORN IN HIS SIDE’
Marr fully embraced the Stratocaster sound for the first time on a Smiths record when the band entered Manchester’s Drone Studios in August 1985 to record ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’. Marr had written the song on this Strat during the UK leg of the Meat Is Murder Tour in spring 1985 and had already begun rehearsing the instrumental track during soundchecks. This Strat made me play in a slightly different way, Marr told guitar historian Tony Bacon in 2022. When I wrote ‘Boy With The Thorn’, I really brought out that top-line melody – and because I was playing a Strat, I put more reverb on it. Speaking to Guitar Player’s Joe Gore in 1990, Marr revealed that he had hoped to achieve a twangy Hank Marvin sound from the Strat, but that it ended up sounding quite highlify. Marr maintained that any highlife influence was unintentional, telling Goddard: There was no other way of playing that tune. I just wanted that melody out of it and we did a really good job. It was just a chord change that I was kicking around at home and I was imagining a tune on top of it. It wasn't until we got the bass and drums behind it that I could play the topline. It just made me feel good. Speaking to The Guitar Magazine’s Michael Leonard in 1997, however, Marr enthusiastically confirmed a Nile Rogers influence: the rhythm part from verse two onwards - that chick-a-chick part - it's pure Nile Rogers. Interviewed by NME to celebrate 20 years of The Queen Is Dead in 2006, Marr reflected on the recording session: When we did it I was elated. We did this in a little 16-track demo studio in Manchester, which proves the point you don’t need a lot of technology to do something pretty good. It’s the song and the emotion inside that matters. Released as a single on 16 September 1985, the track was later reworked for inclusion on The Smiths’ third studio album The Queen Is Dead.
BRYAN FERRY
At the tail end of recording sessions for The Queen Is Dead, Marr used the Strat to record the instrumental B-side ‘Money Changes Everything’ at London’s Wessex Studios in December 1985. The track showcased Marr’s mastery of the Strat with its thumb-picked false harmonics, volume swells and bends. [False Harmonics is] a steel player's technique, he told Leonard. You touch the strings with a right-hand finger an octave higher than where you're fretting and then pluck the string with your thumb. Marr also employed the technique of swelling up and then engaging the whammy bar at the same time, he told Bacon. I guess some people might think that’s Hendrix-y, but to me its best proponent is Jeff Beck. And I used to do that on quite a lot of records… picking the harmonics with the volume down, swelling it up, and then doing the bend… The intro to ‘Money Changes Everything’ is the thumb-pick, strumming the chord, swelling it up, then hitting a little bit with the tremolo arm, with loads of delay on. So the Strat did facilitate a technique, and it brought music out. I wasn’t imposing my music on the guitar; the guitar was bringing out things. It was bringing out tunes, really.
The track was later reworked with lyrics and recorded by Bryan Ferry in collaboration with Marr in June 1986 for release as ‘The Right Stuff’ on Ferry’s 1987 album Bête Noire. I got an invitation to record from Bryan Ferry, who had been one of my favourite artists ever since I’d bought Roxy records in the glam days, wrote Marr in his 2016 autobiography. He’d heard an instrumental Smiths B-side and wanted to write with me. I was honoured to be asked, and I went over to AIR Studios on Oxford Street. Marr used this same Strat to record the Bryan Ferry version, telling Gore: The bass track and the Roland drum machine pattern had already been put down, so it was the first session where I did purely overdubs. Marr reflected: Working with Bryan Ferry was a great experience. There was a sense of discovery in his sessions, and at the age of twenty-two I was writing with one of my favourite ever singers. By the time the single was released in October 1987, The Smiths would have broken up.
THE QUEEN IS DEAD TOUR
This Strat formed a key part of Marr’s arsenal for The Queen Is Dead Tour, variously used for performances of ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’, ‘Vicar in a Tutu’, ‘I Know It’s Over’, ‘Cemetry Gates’, ‘Ask’, ‘Money Changes Everything’ and ‘The Draize Train’ throughout the tour from 16 July at Glasgow’s Barrowlands to 12 December 1986 at the Brixton Academy in London, which would turn out to be The Smiths’ last ever live performance. 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. The show at the National Ballroom in Kilburn, London, on 23 October 1986 was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 1 and later released as the 1988 live album Rank. Footage of the band’s performance of ‘Ask’ at the Kilburn show, featuring Marr on the white Strat, was issued for a 1988 promo video for Rank, directed by Peter Fowler.
‘SHOPLIFTERS OF THE WORLD UNITE’
Mere weeks before The Smiths’ Anti-Apartheid benefit show at London’s Brixton Academy, which would mark the end of The Queen Is Dead Tour as well as the last live appearance of the band, Marr enlisted the modified white Strat to record the lead guitar and solo/break on The Smiths’ next single ‘Shoplifters of the World Unite’, which was the first to be produced solely by Marr, at London’s Trident Studios in late November 1986. That was the first time I used harmonised layering, Marr told Gore. People have said it sounds like Brian May, but I was thinking of stacked Roy Buchanans. Marr also emphasised Nils Lofgren’s influence, telling Leonard: You can hear [his] influence on me in the solo… That's all done with false harmonics… Lofgren had this really melodic lead style, as opposed to a modal, bluesy style… He played across relative minors a lot of the time, which meant he could play a really poignant melody even in the middle of a straight-ahead rock track, and that was something that really interested me… [as] I was desperate not to play boogie or blues leads.
Marr confirmed his use of wah-wah on the track, telling Gore: I approach it like a tone pot. I find myself keeping my foot on it all the time, just letting it out slowly without thinking about it too much. Also, you can leave it on, opened slightly, without even touching it – that gives you a completely different tonal range. The ‘Shoplifters’ break was the first time that I really discovered that. And if the filter is open in just the right place, you can get a harmonic to sing like a bird. More generally, Marr acknowledged an affinity for the Stratocaster’s master volume control: I nearly always keep my little finger on the volume pot, so if I hear the glimmer of something really interesting, I turn the volume right up; if it's not happening, I turn it down and try to find another note. I don't use a volume pedal – it's all volume knob. That's inspired by Roy Buchanan, Nils Lofgren, and Jeff Beck. Released as a non-album single in January 1987, ‘Shoplifters of the World Unite’ was a critical and commercial success, reaching number 12 in the UK singles chart, and has since been rated among the band’s best songs.
REFINISH TO BLACK
As Marr had loved the original slab board neck that was still at the time united with the present body, it was discussed that he should have copies of that favourite neck made, either with the intention of using them with one or two of the various vintage Strats he had by that time acquired or as a backup for that favourite neck, which was perhaps becoming a little knackered from extensive tour use. It’s believed that at some point in 1987, guitar tech Alan Rogan – acting as Marr’s agent – arranged for luthier Roger Giffin to make several copies of the favoured slab board neck and delivered said neck to Giffin’s workshop for duplication. For whatever reason, the original slab board neck was never reunited with this guitar and its current whereabouts remain unknown. The Giffin copies, however, did materialise. Around the same time, Marr commissioned luthier Bill Puplett to refinish the body in black. The refinished guitar was fitted with EMG pickups and an unknown neck – probably one of the Giffin copies. Around this time, Marr also began replacing the volume pots on his Strats with larger vintage style Precision bass knobs as he found that he could get a better grip on them for volume swells. It was in this state that the Strat was next seen when Marr travelled to Paris in September 1987 to shoot the official music video for ‘The Right Stuff’ with Bryan Ferry. Although Marr and his guitar were only glimpsed in the video, set photographer Andre Csillag captured several great shots of Marr with the black Strat. The guitar remained easily identifiable thanks to its double switch modification.
TALKING HEADS
Marr went straight from the set of ‘The Right Stuff’ into the studio to collaborate with American new wave band Talking Heads on their 1988 album Naked. Talking Heads invited me to record with them for their new album in Paris, Marr recalled in his 2016 autobiography. They had a few songs already down for me to play on… They’d been such an important band to my generation and had managed to pull off the rare feat of being one of the biggest bands in the world while still maintaining their artistic integrity. I knew their stuff inside out, and I was flattered and excited to be asked to make a contribution to one of their records… Steve Lillywhite, who was producing the album, was in the control room when I arrived to start recording, and it was good to have someone there who I knew. I wanted to get straight into playing and I got my sound going quickly, using a Fender Strat for a suitably funky Talking Heads approach, and told him to roll the tape. Marr used this Strat to record the song ‘Ruby Dear’ and ‘Mommy Daddy You and I’ during the Paris sessions. The Talking Heads called me in specifically because the song ‘Ruby Dear’ had a Bo Diddley groove – that's incredibly flattering, he remarked to Gore. ‘Ruby Dear’ was recorded live, Marr continued, with the original four members and me on guitar. I hadn’t recorded live with anyone other than The Smiths before. It was a learning curve, and as a learning curve goes, Talking Heads was a good way to start.
The refinished Strat remained a favourite when Marr joined Matt Johnson’s The The and formed the alternative dance supergroup Electronic with New Order’s Bernard Sumner in 1988. A 1991 feature in The Guitar Magazine listed Marr’s main gear during this period: Main guitars for The The are Strats, including a midnight blue American Standard, and a JM Custom, which was a white ’63 Strat, now in black with Bill Lawrence blade pickups. Around the same time, Marr found himself in the studio with this Strat, contributing to a session with London based dance act Stex for their 1990 single ‘Still Feel The Rain’. I was in a rehearsal room in London and Stex's manager – Stevo from Some Bizzare – dragged me into a session, Marr told Uncut in 2022. He said, “Play!” I stood on the studio floor and the riff was the first thing I thought of. Through the control room window, I could see all these people, dressed up, grooving around. It was like being in Sly And The Family Stone for the afternoon.
At some point in the late 2000s, Marr commissioned Puplett to restore the Strat back to a white finish, refit the 1960s pickups that were used in the guitar during the Smiths era, and unite the body with a suitable early 1960s neck. The present composite Strat, therefore, comprises an associated 1963 neck with the original circa 1962 body. A replacement pickguard was made for the guitar around the time that photographer Pat Graham shot Marr’s collection for Marr’s Guitars and is pictured on the guitar in the book. The original pickguard has since been restored to the guitar.
When asked about the many iconic guitars from his past by Premier Guitar magazine in 2018, Marr reported that he still had all the old favourites including a white ’63 Fender Strat from those days, and noted: All of those guitars had a real direct effect on my songwriting back then, simply because it was so incredible to me that I was able to own each one of them. I had been so broke as a kid that I wrote a whole load of songs as soon as I got one of those guitars, and that was a rule I had for myself to justify buying one.
See lot 22 for additional images of this lot.