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Lot Essay
This Gun Metal Blue American Standard Strat was given to me by Fender in 1988. It became one of my main onstage guitars with The The and was the start of my relationship with the Fender guitar company as an endorsee artist.
JOHNNY MARR, 2026
THE THE
After touring with The Pretenders for a short time following the breakup of The Smiths, Marr began collaborating with post-punk singer-songwriter Matt Johnson in 1988, forming a new group under Johnson’s The The moniker, which had been operating as a solo project for some time. I'd actually met Matt Johnson before The Smiths, Marr told The Guitar Magazine’s Michael Leonard in 1997, it was just finances and geography that kept us apart… He was the only other person I knew playing in a similar sort of style as me… The way we got together was amazing synchronicity… I really wanted to play with [drummer] David Palmer and [bassist] James Eller and I talked about putting a band together with them, but at the same time Matt talked to each of us individually about playing with The The – and hey presto, we all joined The The. It was perfect for me in many ways, because it allowed me to continue to be a musician and do something intense, but to stay completely away from the media hullabaloo that was going on around The Smiths' split.
Speaking to BAM the previous year, Marr had revealed his interest in the new American Standard Stratocaster models that were being produced at Fender post-CBS: At the moment, I'm searching the new Fenders for one that is as good as the old ones because I really like Strats. Marr began working with Fender’s UK rep Tom Nolan, who presented him with this Gun Metal Blue 1987 American Standard Strat when Marr signed up as their youngest endorsee artist in 1988, marking the start of a long relationship with Fender that would lead to the successful launch of the Johnny Marr Signature Jaguar in 2012.
This Strat became his main guitar with The The until the arrival of an Arctic White 1988 American Standard ahead of the band’s world tour in 1989. My main guitar with The The is a standard gun-metal blue Fender Stratocaster, Marr told Guitar Player’s Joe Gore in 1990. It's an absolutely fantastic guitar with a really beautiful zing to it. The new Fenders are really good. Marr switched the standard volume control for a knurled brass Precision bass knob, telling Gore: On all my guitars, I change the volume pot for an old-style Precision bass knob because they're bigger and you can get a better grip on them. On tour, I put a couple of rubber bands around it for when my hands get wet. Interviewed for Total Guitar in 2003, Marr elaborated: With The The I was doing a lot of swells and I was paranoid about not getting them right, so l wanted something nice and big that I wouldn’t have any problems grabbing in the dark - and it worked. I was using Strats at that time because with The The, and to an extent with The Pretenders as well, I was having to get a lot of sounds. With The The, we were recreating ten years of Matt putting weird instruments through weird effects at four in the morning. A decade later, he wouldn't be able to remember exactly what he did, but I was expected to be able to reproduce it! I figured that you could probably make a Strat sound like another guitar, but you can't make another guitar sound like a Strat.
Marr would ultimately record two albums with The The before leaving the group in 1994. The first, Mind Bomb, was released in May 1989 and debuted at No. 4 in the UK Albums Chart. A second, Dusk, followed in 1993, debuting at No. 2 in the UK and producing three top 40 singles. This was Marr's main Strat throughout the recording of Mind Bomb, used on all but two tracks (‘The Beat(en) Generation' and 'Kingdom of Rain'). Usually, I find that the false harmonics I use just ring truer on a Strat, he explained to Gore. Marr went on to highlight the song ‘Beyond Love’ as particularly memorable: [it] has a passionate, intense erotic feel, and there was plenty of room for some really nice noises, wails, and atmospheres. It's my favourite bit of volume-knob work – I think I got it right that time. I played a harmonic D at the 7th fret of the G string on a new stock Strat, then, without a whammy bar attached, I pressed down on the bridge, raising it. The sounds at the end are harmonics, swelled up with the volume knob, and with the echo kicked in.
Speaking to The Guitar Magazine’s Paul Trynka in 1991, Marr revealed: There are a lot of things on [Mind Bomb] that people think are synthesisers or samplers, but they’re guitars. I started to get into textures and noises in a way I hadn't really explored before. There's a lot of effects there, like the [Nils] Lofgren thing of moving harmonics using a thumb pick. Marr used a thumb-pick for the harmonics when he recorded the single ‘Jealous of Youth’ on this guitar. I did [that] quite a bit on ‘Jealous Of Youth’, which has all these bell sounds, he told guitar historian Tony Bacon in 2022. Rather than do it as an octave thing, I was ignoring the left hand and – not exactly tapping – I was picking out the octave harmonic by using the thumb-pick. ‘Jealous of Youth’ was released in February 1990 and later included on the 1991 studio EP Shades of Blue and the 1993 US compilation Solitude.
The band embarked on a mammoth 12-month The The Versus The World Tour from July 1989 to July 1990. I decided it was time to concentrate on playing just one guitar onstage through an entire set and letting technology do the rest of the work, Marr told Leonard. To me, that was a logical step. In the Smiths I used to take 14 guitars out on the road; in The The I'd just take two Strats… my rack cost more than the entire guitar collection! But it was all about playing, which was great. Limited photographs indicate that Marr would switch between this Gun Metal Blue, the Arctic White, and an Olympic White Strat on the 1989 legs of the tour, but by the time the band played three nights at the Royal Albert Hall in London at the end of the tour, he was seen playing the white Strats for the majority of the set. Matt really wanted me to get into melodic, atmospheric orchestration, which worked particularly well live, Marr continued. By the time I'd done 50 gigs I was really adept at the harmonic stuff - hitting a couple of false harmonics on a chord, then swelling the volume up on the guitar with wah, then pushing down on the Strat's bridge for a weird divebombing effect. Other people have done that, but not with chords. In conversation with author Martin Kelly for Marr’s Guitars, Marr reflected: Playing in The The was a pioneering time for me as a guitar player. I didn't feel like I was any less involved in The The than I was in The Smiths, believe it or not. It was just that my role was different, and I welcomed that role because it actually made me a better guitar player… The The was the band that I would have been in around 1982 had I not started The Smiths.
ELECTRONIC
Alongside recording with The The, Marr linked up with New Order’s Bernard Sumner in 1989 to form the alternative dance supergroup Electronic, blending guitars, synthesisers and other studio wizardry to explore new ground in guitar driven synth-pop. We'd get together in my home studio a few nights a week every week, and nine years later we were still writing together, Marr told Kelly. I was keen on working with synthesizers and technology and was getting very interested in them as part of my development… We were both at a point in our lives where we wanted to go for something new, and the touchstones for both me and I think Bernard were David Byrne and Brian Eno - the idea of collaboration and using the studio as an instrument… We didn't think about being ‘ex-Smiths’ and ‘ex-New Order’ either, but we were constantly being reminded of that wherever we went. When [we] got together… 'rave' hadn't happened yet and the word 'Madchester' was still a few years away. House music was just about to be a thing in everyone's lives… I was in The The at the time, and Bernard was taking a break from New Order. So, I sort of had two day jobs but it worked out fine… [We] didn't know that this tsunami of a new movement was coming along behind us… I was twenty-four at the time, and there was a total revolution going on in my hometown. Electronic's first album coincided with that.
Since Electronic I've pretty much reverted to the guitars I was using a couple of years ago, Marr told Trynka, two '63 Strats and a modern US Standard Strat which is really good. According to Marr, the Gun Metal Strat was used to record Electronic’s first release – the hit Pet Shop Boys’ collaboration ‘Getting Away With It’. Released in December 1989, the catchy pop single hit the UK top 20 and remains Electronic’s most successful release to date. ‘Getting Away With It’ happened because Pet Shop Boys and Bernard and I had some mutual friends, Marr told Music Radar in 2021. And the word kind of got around that Bernard was doing something aside from New Order, and he was doing it with me… I’ve always tried to arrive at any kind of collaboration not empty-handed… We needed something to start with, so I wrote the chorus, this chunk of music… which became the chorus of ‘Getting Away With It’. I think Neil [Tennant] very quickly had the lyrical hook, and he was going to go away and write the words. So within probably about 20 minutes, we started working on it. And then Bernard came up with the verse chords, and I remember Chris [Lowe] doing the bassline, and then Neil arranging it… and so all four of us just really kind of got in with the ingredients and we had this backing track. And then we all went out to the Haçienda, as you as do. The song has since become a staple of Marr’s live set. Marr recalls that this guitar was also used to record the song ‘Idiot Country’ on Electronic’s 1991 debut album and their 1992 single ‘Disappointed’ featuring the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant. The latter became an international dance hit for Electronic, reaching the top ten on the US Billboard dance charts and peaking at number six on the UK singles chart. Marr played this Gun Metal Blue Strat when Electronic appeared on BBC’s Top of the Pops to support the single release with a mimed performance of ‘Disappointed’ on 2 July 1992.
SESSIONS
Outside of his work with Electronic and The The, Marr collaborated with singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl, playing this Strat on the Kinks’ cover ‘Days’ for her 1989 album Kite, and the songs ‘Walking Down Madison’ and ‘Children of the Revolution’, both of which Marr co-wrote with MacColl, for her 1991 album Electric Landlady. Writing in his 2016 autobiography, Marr recalled: I’d written an instrumental track and sent it to Kirsty to get her opinion on it. She called me back the next day and said, “I’ve written a vocal on it and it’s a single”. We did the song, which was called ‘Walking Down Madison’, and it became a hit. The other sessions I did at that time were with Pet Shop Boys, continued Marr. I always looked forward to them, and I never knew what I’d be called on to play.
Sometimes the records would be symphonic and orchestral, and sometimes they would be hi-tech crafted pop… Neil and Chris are never short of ideas, and I’ve ended up employing a lot of different guitar styles. I’ve played on more Pet Shop Boys songs than any other musician, my favourite song being ‘This Must Be the Place’, from the album Behaviour, but there have been so many good ones. Marr used this Strat on his favourite Pet Shop Boys song ‘This Must Be The Place I Waited Years To Leave’ as well as ‘My October Symphony’ for the 1990 Pet Shop Boys album Behaviour. I learned so much during that period, Marr told Paste magazine in 2023, playing with Pet Shop Boys on their records and working with Bernard, that has really made me able to make records on my own now. I mean, completely on my own. I wanted to learn how to write those kinds of hits.
JOHNNY MARR, 2026
THE THE
After touring with The Pretenders for a short time following the breakup of The Smiths, Marr began collaborating with post-punk singer-songwriter Matt Johnson in 1988, forming a new group under Johnson’s The The moniker, which had been operating as a solo project for some time. I'd actually met Matt Johnson before The Smiths, Marr told The Guitar Magazine’s Michael Leonard in 1997, it was just finances and geography that kept us apart… He was the only other person I knew playing in a similar sort of style as me… The way we got together was amazing synchronicity… I really wanted to play with [drummer] David Palmer and [bassist] James Eller and I talked about putting a band together with them, but at the same time Matt talked to each of us individually about playing with The The – and hey presto, we all joined The The. It was perfect for me in many ways, because it allowed me to continue to be a musician and do something intense, but to stay completely away from the media hullabaloo that was going on around The Smiths' split.
Speaking to BAM the previous year, Marr had revealed his interest in the new American Standard Stratocaster models that were being produced at Fender post-CBS: At the moment, I'm searching the new Fenders for one that is as good as the old ones because I really like Strats. Marr began working with Fender’s UK rep Tom Nolan, who presented him with this Gun Metal Blue 1987 American Standard Strat when Marr signed up as their youngest endorsee artist in 1988, marking the start of a long relationship with Fender that would lead to the successful launch of the Johnny Marr Signature Jaguar in 2012.
This Strat became his main guitar with The The until the arrival of an Arctic White 1988 American Standard ahead of the band’s world tour in 1989. My main guitar with The The is a standard gun-metal blue Fender Stratocaster, Marr told Guitar Player’s Joe Gore in 1990. It's an absolutely fantastic guitar with a really beautiful zing to it. The new Fenders are really good. Marr switched the standard volume control for a knurled brass Precision bass knob, telling Gore: On all my guitars, I change the volume pot for an old-style Precision bass knob because they're bigger and you can get a better grip on them. On tour, I put a couple of rubber bands around it for when my hands get wet. Interviewed for Total Guitar in 2003, Marr elaborated: With The The I was doing a lot of swells and I was paranoid about not getting them right, so l wanted something nice and big that I wouldn’t have any problems grabbing in the dark - and it worked. I was using Strats at that time because with The The, and to an extent with The Pretenders as well, I was having to get a lot of sounds. With The The, we were recreating ten years of Matt putting weird instruments through weird effects at four in the morning. A decade later, he wouldn't be able to remember exactly what he did, but I was expected to be able to reproduce it! I figured that you could probably make a Strat sound like another guitar, but you can't make another guitar sound like a Strat.
Marr would ultimately record two albums with The The before leaving the group in 1994. The first, Mind Bomb, was released in May 1989 and debuted at No. 4 in the UK Albums Chart. A second, Dusk, followed in 1993, debuting at No. 2 in the UK and producing three top 40 singles. This was Marr's main Strat throughout the recording of Mind Bomb, used on all but two tracks (‘The Beat(en) Generation' and 'Kingdom of Rain'). Usually, I find that the false harmonics I use just ring truer on a Strat, he explained to Gore. Marr went on to highlight the song ‘Beyond Love’ as particularly memorable: [it] has a passionate, intense erotic feel, and there was plenty of room for some really nice noises, wails, and atmospheres. It's my favourite bit of volume-knob work – I think I got it right that time. I played a harmonic D at the 7th fret of the G string on a new stock Strat, then, without a whammy bar attached, I pressed down on the bridge, raising it. The sounds at the end are harmonics, swelled up with the volume knob, and with the echo kicked in.
Speaking to The Guitar Magazine’s Paul Trynka in 1991, Marr revealed: There are a lot of things on [Mind Bomb] that people think are synthesisers or samplers, but they’re guitars. I started to get into textures and noises in a way I hadn't really explored before. There's a lot of effects there, like the [Nils] Lofgren thing of moving harmonics using a thumb pick. Marr used a thumb-pick for the harmonics when he recorded the single ‘Jealous of Youth’ on this guitar. I did [that] quite a bit on ‘Jealous Of Youth’, which has all these bell sounds, he told guitar historian Tony Bacon in 2022. Rather than do it as an octave thing, I was ignoring the left hand and – not exactly tapping – I was picking out the octave harmonic by using the thumb-pick. ‘Jealous of Youth’ was released in February 1990 and later included on the 1991 studio EP Shades of Blue and the 1993 US compilation Solitude.
The band embarked on a mammoth 12-month The The Versus The World Tour from July 1989 to July 1990. I decided it was time to concentrate on playing just one guitar onstage through an entire set and letting technology do the rest of the work, Marr told Leonard. To me, that was a logical step. In the Smiths I used to take 14 guitars out on the road; in The The I'd just take two Strats… my rack cost more than the entire guitar collection! But it was all about playing, which was great. Limited photographs indicate that Marr would switch between this Gun Metal Blue, the Arctic White, and an Olympic White Strat on the 1989 legs of the tour, but by the time the band played three nights at the Royal Albert Hall in London at the end of the tour, he was seen playing the white Strats for the majority of the set. Matt really wanted me to get into melodic, atmospheric orchestration, which worked particularly well live, Marr continued. By the time I'd done 50 gigs I was really adept at the harmonic stuff - hitting a couple of false harmonics on a chord, then swelling the volume up on the guitar with wah, then pushing down on the Strat's bridge for a weird divebombing effect. Other people have done that, but not with chords. In conversation with author Martin Kelly for Marr’s Guitars, Marr reflected: Playing in The The was a pioneering time for me as a guitar player. I didn't feel like I was any less involved in The The than I was in The Smiths, believe it or not. It was just that my role was different, and I welcomed that role because it actually made me a better guitar player… The The was the band that I would have been in around 1982 had I not started The Smiths.
ELECTRONIC
Alongside recording with The The, Marr linked up with New Order’s Bernard Sumner in 1989 to form the alternative dance supergroup Electronic, blending guitars, synthesisers and other studio wizardry to explore new ground in guitar driven synth-pop. We'd get together in my home studio a few nights a week every week, and nine years later we were still writing together, Marr told Kelly. I was keen on working with synthesizers and technology and was getting very interested in them as part of my development… We were both at a point in our lives where we wanted to go for something new, and the touchstones for both me and I think Bernard were David Byrne and Brian Eno - the idea of collaboration and using the studio as an instrument… We didn't think about being ‘ex-Smiths’ and ‘ex-New Order’ either, but we were constantly being reminded of that wherever we went. When [we] got together… 'rave' hadn't happened yet and the word 'Madchester' was still a few years away. House music was just about to be a thing in everyone's lives… I was in The The at the time, and Bernard was taking a break from New Order. So, I sort of had two day jobs but it worked out fine… [We] didn't know that this tsunami of a new movement was coming along behind us… I was twenty-four at the time, and there was a total revolution going on in my hometown. Electronic's first album coincided with that.
Since Electronic I've pretty much reverted to the guitars I was using a couple of years ago, Marr told Trynka, two '63 Strats and a modern US Standard Strat which is really good. According to Marr, the Gun Metal Strat was used to record Electronic’s first release – the hit Pet Shop Boys’ collaboration ‘Getting Away With It’. Released in December 1989, the catchy pop single hit the UK top 20 and remains Electronic’s most successful release to date. ‘Getting Away With It’ happened because Pet Shop Boys and Bernard and I had some mutual friends, Marr told Music Radar in 2021. And the word kind of got around that Bernard was doing something aside from New Order, and he was doing it with me… I’ve always tried to arrive at any kind of collaboration not empty-handed… We needed something to start with, so I wrote the chorus, this chunk of music… which became the chorus of ‘Getting Away With It’. I think Neil [Tennant] very quickly had the lyrical hook, and he was going to go away and write the words. So within probably about 20 minutes, we started working on it. And then Bernard came up with the verse chords, and I remember Chris [Lowe] doing the bassline, and then Neil arranging it… and so all four of us just really kind of got in with the ingredients and we had this backing track. And then we all went out to the Haçienda, as you as do. The song has since become a staple of Marr’s live set. Marr recalls that this guitar was also used to record the song ‘Idiot Country’ on Electronic’s 1991 debut album and their 1992 single ‘Disappointed’ featuring the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant. The latter became an international dance hit for Electronic, reaching the top ten on the US Billboard dance charts and peaking at number six on the UK singles chart. Marr played this Gun Metal Blue Strat when Electronic appeared on BBC’s Top of the Pops to support the single release with a mimed performance of ‘Disappointed’ on 2 July 1992.
SESSIONS
Outside of his work with Electronic and The The, Marr collaborated with singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl, playing this Strat on the Kinks’ cover ‘Days’ for her 1989 album Kite, and the songs ‘Walking Down Madison’ and ‘Children of the Revolution’, both of which Marr co-wrote with MacColl, for her 1991 album Electric Landlady. Writing in his 2016 autobiography, Marr recalled: I’d written an instrumental track and sent it to Kirsty to get her opinion on it. She called me back the next day and said, “I’ve written a vocal on it and it’s a single”. We did the song, which was called ‘Walking Down Madison’, and it became a hit. The other sessions I did at that time were with Pet Shop Boys, continued Marr. I always looked forward to them, and I never knew what I’d be called on to play.
Sometimes the records would be symphonic and orchestral, and sometimes they would be hi-tech crafted pop… Neil and Chris are never short of ideas, and I’ve ended up employing a lot of different guitar styles. I’ve played on more Pet Shop Boys songs than any other musician, my favourite song being ‘This Must Be the Place’, from the album Behaviour, but there have been so many good ones. Marr used this Strat on his favourite Pet Shop Boys song ‘This Must Be The Place I Waited Years To Leave’ as well as ‘My October Symphony’ for the 1990 Pet Shop Boys album Behaviour. I learned so much during that period, Marr told Paste magazine in 2023, playing with Pet Shop Boys on their records and working with Bernard, that has really made me able to make records on my own now. I mean, completely on my own. I wanted to learn how to write those kinds of hits.