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Lot Essay
There have been a few occasions when I've wandered into a guitar shop and just known that something special was going to happen. I got this guitar in Los Angeles in 2000. I'd been without a guitar for a few days and was really missing playing, so I went into the Guitar Center on Sunset Boulevard and immediately spotted this 12-string Roger McGuinn [model] among the hundreds of other guitars in the shop. I usually try to be pretty low-key when I'm in guitar shops, but as soon as I got this guitar in my hands, I had to have it. I plugged it in and turned it up really loud and started blasting for about thirty minutes. A memorable morning on Sunset. I used this guitar extensively with The Healers, Modest Mouse and onstage with R.E.M. for the songs 'Fall On Me' and 'Man On The Moon'.
JOHNNY MARR, MARR’S GUITARS, 2023
Already a Rickenbacker 6-string player, having acquired his famous 330 in late 1982, Johnny Marr first borrowed a Rickenbacker 12-string from Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera for The Smiths’ Top of the Pops debut in 1983 and afterwards purchased one of his own from John Entwistle in the mid-1980s. Along with the Rickenbacker 330, the Rickenbacker 12 became strongly associated with Marr’s signature sound and was used extensively in the studio from The Queen Is Dead onwards. Having largely set his trademark Rickenbackers aside in the wake of The Smiths’ 1987 breakup, Marr came across this Roger McGuinn signature model Rickenbacker 12-string at Guitar Center in Los Angeles in 2000, around the time that he was emerging as a frontman for the first time with The Healers. Many had accused Marr of sounding like The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn when The Smiths’ first records came out. Up until that point, I knew a fair bit about The Byrds, but I wasn’t trying to ape them by any means, Marr told guitar historian Tony Bacon in 2009. I went back and got into them and investigated. That was when that term [jingle-jangle Johnny] started to be used, which I’ve never been able to entirely shake off. Actually, I don’t mind it so much now – I quite like it.
Interviewed by Matthew Fritch for Magnet magazine in 2002, Marr revealed: I’ve started playing the 12-string Rickenbacker again. Someone passed me one in a shop and it just sounded like me. I went, “Ok. Guilty”. That memorable encounter with this very 12-string Rickenbacker was the spark that led Marr to embrace his signature sound again. I was going to make a record that was gonna be not layered and straight ahead, he told Fritch. When [The Healers] formed, I was listening to a lot of John Mayall. Very sparse blues rock, really. Once the record started to develop, I realized that I had an agenda and I just fucking dropped it. Layering guitars might not be de rigeur, but it’s what I do, it’s what gives me a buzz and therefore it’s genuine. I had to tell myself, “C’mon, Johnny, make the assumption that your audience want you to sound like you. It’s been quite a long time.”
Marr used the guitar extensively with The Healers over the next three years, most notably on the song ‘Down On The Corner’, which was released as the second single from the group’s 2003 studio album Boomslang. Marr used the guitar when he promoted the single with a live performance on the CBS late-night talk show The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn in Los Angeles on 10 February 2003. Layered with an acoustic 12-string, the Rickenbacker 12-string is also heard on the album track ‘You Are The Magic’, which was originally recorded as a psychedelic seventy-minute “aural movie” before it was cut down to just over seven minutes for the album release. Interviewed by Tony Bacon for the Rickenbacker Electric 12-String book in 2009, Marr revealed that he would pull this guitar back to an 11-string, removing the octave string from the G pair, which he found helped the clarity and intonation of that string for soloing and improved the overall sound of the guitar. On ‘Magic’ I run the 12-string clean through a Fender Deluxe, so it sounds like a hot acoustic, and throughout the track it gets hotter and hotter, he told Bacon. That’s the sound I really like and come back to more and more. I find with those gentle intros that the 12-string acoustic isn’t enough on its own, but the electric if it’s amped up can be too much – so I end up getting a compromise between the two of them. It’s a sound that’s pleasing to me, that cross between an electric and an acoustic.
Marr continued to play the McGuinn 370⁄12 for live performances of ‘Down On The Corner’ and ‘You Are The Magic’ throughout The Healers’ Boomslang Tour from 15 January to 25 May 2003. The band’s performance at the Troubadour club in Los Angeles on 3 February 2003 was recorded for a planned DVD release that has yet to materialise, although drummer Zak Starkey recently shared the footage of ‘You Are The Magic’ on his social channels. A bootleg recording of the band’s performance at Shinjuku Liquid Room in Tokyo on 1 March 2003, which was filmed for the Japanese television programme Our Favourite Shop, can currently be found circulating on YouTube. In late 2004 or early 2005, Marr used the McGuinn 370⁄12 when he guested on the recording of ‘The House I Grew Up In’ for the second album to be released by former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna under the name Tweaker, 2 a.m. Wakeup Call.
While the Fender Jaguar became the star player when Marr joined American indie rock band Modest Mouse in 2005, he brought the McGuinn 370⁄12 along to Mississippi’s Sweet Tea Studio when the band assembled to work on their next album together in summer 2006. Marr used the Rickenbacker 12-string to record the song ‘Missed The Boat’, which would ultimately be released as the second single from We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank on 1 May 2007. In addition to playing this guitar in the official music video for the song, Marr enlisted the Rickenbacker for a couple of live performances to promote the single on US late-night talk shows CBS’ The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on 16 May 2007, and NBC’s Late Night with Conan O`Brien on 7 August 2007, as well as an exclusive performance for Pepsi Smash on Yahoo! Music. We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank was released on 20 March 2007 and debuted at number one on the US Billboard charts, giving Marr his first number one record in America. Marr continued to use the Rickenbacker for performances of ‘Missed The Boat’ throughout the band’s epic 20-month We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank Tour from 5 November 2006 to 4 July 2008. When Modest Mouse linked up with R.E.M. to serve as their support act on the final North American leg of the tour, Marr regularly joined the alt rock legends on stage with his Rickenbacker 370⁄12 from around 29 May to 21 June 2008. Peter Buck from REM and I were already friendly, having hung out together in Portland, records Marr in his 2016 autobiography. I saw him holding his set list one day, and I grabbed a pen and wrote ‘Fall on Me’ on it because it was my favourite REM song. The band added it to their set, and they asked me to play it with them every night in the encore.
In need of a break from touring and itching to get back to the studio, Marr returned to the UK and began working with British indie rock group The Cribs. What began as a four-day session to record an EP morphed into Marr co-writing The Cribs’ fourth album Ignore The Ignorant and a three-year stint in the band. The McGuinn Rickenbacker 370⁄12 was among the arsenal of instruments that Marr used to record the album at Seedy Underbelly Studios in Los Angeles in spring/summer 2009. Marr is seen recording the song ‘Victim Of Mass Production’ on the Rickenbacker 12-string in Secrets Saved, a video documentary of the recording of the album that was included with the deluxe album box set The Roses Edition. The 370⁄12 has since remained one of Marr’s go-to guitars for 12-string sounds on his solo recordings, first showing up on the song ‘This Tension’ on 2014’s Playland. Used to record the songs ‘Day In Day Out’ and ‘A Different Gun’ on his 2018 solo studio album Call The Comet, the guitar features in the promotional video The Making of The Album, released on Marr’s social channels in August 2018. Marr was later photographed with the Rickenbacker 12-string at his Crazy Face Factory studio the following year while working on new material for his next album. The 370⁄12 would ultimately be heard on the tracks ‘Ariel’, Human’ and ‘Counter Clock World’ on Marr’s 2022 solo album Fever Dreams Pts 1-4.
Rickenbacker launched the 370/12RM Roger McGuinn Limited Edition in January 1988 at the Winter NAMM show. The model featured an active circuit to faithfully reproduce the sound of the original Byrds’ records and a revolutionary 12 saddle bridge, allowing for perfect intonation up the neck. Of the limited run of 1000, only 250 were produced in this Jetglo finish.
JOHNNY MARR, MARR’S GUITARS, 2023
Already a Rickenbacker 6-string player, having acquired his famous 330 in late 1982, Johnny Marr first borrowed a Rickenbacker 12-string from Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera for The Smiths’ Top of the Pops debut in 1983 and afterwards purchased one of his own from John Entwistle in the mid-1980s. Along with the Rickenbacker 330, the Rickenbacker 12 became strongly associated with Marr’s signature sound and was used extensively in the studio from The Queen Is Dead onwards. Having largely set his trademark Rickenbackers aside in the wake of The Smiths’ 1987 breakup, Marr came across this Roger McGuinn signature model Rickenbacker 12-string at Guitar Center in Los Angeles in 2000, around the time that he was emerging as a frontman for the first time with The Healers. Many had accused Marr of sounding like The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn when The Smiths’ first records came out. Up until that point, I knew a fair bit about The Byrds, but I wasn’t trying to ape them by any means, Marr told guitar historian Tony Bacon in 2009. I went back and got into them and investigated. That was when that term [jingle-jangle Johnny] started to be used, which I’ve never been able to entirely shake off. Actually, I don’t mind it so much now – I quite like it.
Interviewed by Matthew Fritch for Magnet magazine in 2002, Marr revealed: I’ve started playing the 12-string Rickenbacker again. Someone passed me one in a shop and it just sounded like me. I went, “Ok. Guilty”. That memorable encounter with this very 12-string Rickenbacker was the spark that led Marr to embrace his signature sound again. I was going to make a record that was gonna be not layered and straight ahead, he told Fritch. When [The Healers] formed, I was listening to a lot of John Mayall. Very sparse blues rock, really. Once the record started to develop, I realized that I had an agenda and I just fucking dropped it. Layering guitars might not be de rigeur, but it’s what I do, it’s what gives me a buzz and therefore it’s genuine. I had to tell myself, “C’mon, Johnny, make the assumption that your audience want you to sound like you. It’s been quite a long time.”
Marr used the guitar extensively with The Healers over the next three years, most notably on the song ‘Down On The Corner’, which was released as the second single from the group’s 2003 studio album Boomslang. Marr used the guitar when he promoted the single with a live performance on the CBS late-night talk show The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn in Los Angeles on 10 February 2003. Layered with an acoustic 12-string, the Rickenbacker 12-string is also heard on the album track ‘You Are The Magic’, which was originally recorded as a psychedelic seventy-minute “aural movie” before it was cut down to just over seven minutes for the album release. Interviewed by Tony Bacon for the Rickenbacker Electric 12-String book in 2009, Marr revealed that he would pull this guitar back to an 11-string, removing the octave string from the G pair, which he found helped the clarity and intonation of that string for soloing and improved the overall sound of the guitar. On ‘Magic’ I run the 12-string clean through a Fender Deluxe, so it sounds like a hot acoustic, and throughout the track it gets hotter and hotter, he told Bacon. That’s the sound I really like and come back to more and more. I find with those gentle intros that the 12-string acoustic isn’t enough on its own, but the electric if it’s amped up can be too much – so I end up getting a compromise between the two of them. It’s a sound that’s pleasing to me, that cross between an electric and an acoustic.
Marr continued to play the McGuinn 370⁄12 for live performances of ‘Down On The Corner’ and ‘You Are The Magic’ throughout The Healers’ Boomslang Tour from 15 January to 25 May 2003. The band’s performance at the Troubadour club in Los Angeles on 3 February 2003 was recorded for a planned DVD release that has yet to materialise, although drummer Zak Starkey recently shared the footage of ‘You Are The Magic’ on his social channels. A bootleg recording of the band’s performance at Shinjuku Liquid Room in Tokyo on 1 March 2003, which was filmed for the Japanese television programme Our Favourite Shop, can currently be found circulating on YouTube. In late 2004 or early 2005, Marr used the McGuinn 370⁄12 when he guested on the recording of ‘The House I Grew Up In’ for the second album to be released by former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna under the name Tweaker, 2 a.m. Wakeup Call.
While the Fender Jaguar became the star player when Marr joined American indie rock band Modest Mouse in 2005, he brought the McGuinn 370⁄12 along to Mississippi’s Sweet Tea Studio when the band assembled to work on their next album together in summer 2006. Marr used the Rickenbacker 12-string to record the song ‘Missed The Boat’, which would ultimately be released as the second single from We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank on 1 May 2007. In addition to playing this guitar in the official music video for the song, Marr enlisted the Rickenbacker for a couple of live performances to promote the single on US late-night talk shows CBS’ The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on 16 May 2007, and NBC’s Late Night with Conan O`Brien on 7 August 2007, as well as an exclusive performance for Pepsi Smash on Yahoo! Music. We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank was released on 20 March 2007 and debuted at number one on the US Billboard charts, giving Marr his first number one record in America. Marr continued to use the Rickenbacker for performances of ‘Missed The Boat’ throughout the band’s epic 20-month We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank Tour from 5 November 2006 to 4 July 2008. When Modest Mouse linked up with R.E.M. to serve as their support act on the final North American leg of the tour, Marr regularly joined the alt rock legends on stage with his Rickenbacker 370⁄12 from around 29 May to 21 June 2008. Peter Buck from REM and I were already friendly, having hung out together in Portland, records Marr in his 2016 autobiography. I saw him holding his set list one day, and I grabbed a pen and wrote ‘Fall on Me’ on it because it was my favourite REM song. The band added it to their set, and they asked me to play it with them every night in the encore.
In need of a break from touring and itching to get back to the studio, Marr returned to the UK and began working with British indie rock group The Cribs. What began as a four-day session to record an EP morphed into Marr co-writing The Cribs’ fourth album Ignore The Ignorant and a three-year stint in the band. The McGuinn Rickenbacker 370⁄12 was among the arsenal of instruments that Marr used to record the album at Seedy Underbelly Studios in Los Angeles in spring/summer 2009. Marr is seen recording the song ‘Victim Of Mass Production’ on the Rickenbacker 12-string in Secrets Saved, a video documentary of the recording of the album that was included with the deluxe album box set The Roses Edition. The 370⁄12 has since remained one of Marr’s go-to guitars for 12-string sounds on his solo recordings, first showing up on the song ‘This Tension’ on 2014’s Playland. Used to record the songs ‘Day In Day Out’ and ‘A Different Gun’ on his 2018 solo studio album Call The Comet, the guitar features in the promotional video The Making of The Album, released on Marr’s social channels in August 2018. Marr was later photographed with the Rickenbacker 12-string at his Crazy Face Factory studio the following year while working on new material for his next album. The 370⁄12 would ultimately be heard on the tracks ‘Ariel’, Human’ and ‘Counter Clock World’ on Marr’s 2022 solo album Fever Dreams Pts 1-4.
Rickenbacker launched the 370/12RM Roger McGuinn Limited Edition in January 1988 at the Winter NAMM show. The model featured an active circuit to faithfully reproduce the sound of the original Byrds’ records and a revolutionary 12 saddle bridge, allowing for perfect intonation up the neck. Of the limited run of 1000, only 250 were produced in this Jetglo finish.