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Lot Essay
Following the four-year development and successful release of the Fender Johnny Marr Signature Jaguar in January 2012 (see footnotes to lot 82 and 83), Fender built three custom colour variants for Johnny in June 2013. Intended for use on the festival circuit that summer, the three one-off signature Jags were finished in Fender’s Sonic Blue, Sherwood Green and Candy Apple Red. After Marr removed his signature from the headstock, the Sherwood Green Signature Jaguar became a favourite and was used extensively on tour from November 2013 to March 2016.
An appropriate and deliberate choice for a show on the Emerald Isle, Marr was first seen playing the Sherwood Green Jag at the Electric Picnic festival at Stradbally Hall Estate near Dublin on 1 September 2013. Marr then brought this guitar on the second US leg of The Messenger Tour from 1 to 26 November 2013 and used it regularly for Smiths and Electronic numbers, including for a memorable performance of ‘How Soon Is Now?’ with old friend and ex-Smiths’ bassist Andy Rourke at Webster Hall in New York on 16 November 2013. It became something of a tradition that whenever I played in New York Andy Rourke would come onstage and play a couple of Smiths songs, recounts Marr in his 2016 autobiography. It’s always a special thing for us. There’s something that happens when we play together that works exactly the same as it did in when we were in The Smiths. Another notable performance of ‘How Soon Is Now?’ was recorded by producer Bob Clearmountain as part of an intimate set at his Apogee Studio in Los Angeles on 4 November and the footage broadcast by KCRW FM on their website on 18 November 2013.
Travelling and working so much inspired me, writes Marr, and before I finished touring with The Messenger I was making another album, called Playland. I would write songs on the road and then record them in between dates. It was on the road between Los Angeles and Austin in early November 2013 that Marr wrote and recorded ‘Easy Money’ on the Sherwood Green Jag at the back of the tour bus. On that song the record was literally recorded on the back lounge of the bus, except for drums of course, Marr told Donald Gibson of Write on Music in 2014. I went in the studio to make the record and I just could never beat what I’d done on the bus, the guitars and the vocals. All the singing is what I did at two-thirty in the morning on the way to El Paso. I had to keep getting the bus driver to stop so I didn’t get the sound of the bus on the vocal track. It’s got that enthusiasm of when you just write something and it’s all new and you think it’s the greatest thing. ‘Easy Money’ was released as the lead single from Marr’s second solo studio album Playland in June 2014 and would turn out to be one of his most successful. The official music video, which sees Marr perform with this guitar at a Blackpool amusement arcade, has been viewed almost 3 million times on YouTube, making it Marr’s most viewed solo music video to date. Back in Manchester, Marr would also lay down the album’s shimmering third single ‘Candidate’ on the favoured Sherwood Green, as seen in the song’s official music video shot at the recording studio.
Ahead of the album release, Marr made several notable appearances with this guitar. On 24 April 2014, Marr performed with Hans Zimmer and soundtrack supergroup The Magnificent Six at the afterparty of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 premiere in New York City, having written and recorded the score together some months before. The following evening, he appeared on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to perform the film’s closing theme ‘It’s On Again’ with Alicia Keys, Kendrick Lamar and Hans Zimmer. From the date that Marr began including Playland material in his set at Camp Bestival on 1 August 2014, the Sherwood Green Signature Jaguar effectively superseded his Olympic White models (see lot 83) and became his main stage guitar. As a precursor to the football season, lifelong Man City fan Marr strapped on the Sherwood Green to headline the Man City FC Season Launch Party – City Live – at Manchester Central on 14 August 2014. To coincide with the release of Playland on 6 October 2014, Marr and his guitar kicked off the fifth season of the BBC’s 6 Music Live at Maida Vale Studios with a seven-song live set that included new releases ‘Easy Money’ and ‘Candidate’, alongside The Smiths’ classic ‘Still Ill’ and an updated arrangement of Electronic’s Getting Away With It’, the latter of which can currently be found on BBC Radio 6 Music’s YouTube channel.
Following the release of Playland, which would become his second Top 10 solo album, Marr set out on the first few legs of a worldwide Playland Tour, which kicked off in Lincoln, UK, on 13 October and ran through to 4 December 2014 in Calgary, Canada. Throughout the tour, Marr’s Sherwood Green Jag served as his primary guitar for the main set, after which he would switch to his custom Black on Black Jag (lot 88) for the encore. Highlights of the UK leg included his largest London solo headline show to date at the O2 Academy Brixton on 23 October and an eagerly awaited homecoming show at the O2 Apollo in Manchester on 25 October 2014. When I got to Manchester on the Playland tour, I played at the Apollo, Marr recalled in his 2016 autobiography. It had been a dream of [my manager] Joe’s that I should play there, as he knew all about my history with the place as a boy and because we’d never done it with The Smiths… As I walked off the stage I went over to him and he hugged me and said, “Well done, Johnny … not bad for a kid with a guitar”. The Manchester Apollo, Glasgow Academy and Brixton Academy shows were recorded for the live album Adrenalin Baby, which would be released in October 2015.
To launch the North American leg of the tour and promote the album release, Marr appeared on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on 11 November 2014, wielding the Sherwood Green Jag to perform his single ‘Easy Money’ and The Smiths’ ‘Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before’, and followed up with an appearance on CBS This Morning: Saturday to perform the album track ‘Generate! Generate!’ on 16 November 2014. A cover of the 1993 Depeche Mode classic ‘I Feel You’, which Marr first began playing in his dressing room on the US leg of the Playland Tour, was later recorded on this guitar and released for Record Store Day on 18 April 2015. I’ve surprised myself that it sounded so like me and my band, he commented on release. When you cover a song you have to bring something of yourself to it. I was playing it on tour, just in my dressing room, and it sounded good, and then I started to sing it and we worked it up in a soundcheck and played it immediately in the encore that night… I was invited to do something for Record Store Day and it was a really good fit. The song turned out surprisingly well. The B-side was a hauntingly beautiful live rendition of The Smiths’ ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’, which had been recorded – on this guitar – at the Manchester Apollo show on 25 October.
Amid a busy touring schedule over the course of 2014, Marr found time for a handful of collaborations, enlisting the Sherwood Green signature Jag to record the song ‘Soldier of Fortune’ on Bryan Ferry’s 2014 album Avonmore, as well as the track ‘Heisenberg’ on Chris Spedding’s 2015 album Joyland. Notably, Marr used this guitar when he collaborated with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds on ‘The Ballad of the Mighty I’, released on 13 January 2015 as the second single from the band's second studio album, Chasing Yesterday. When he unveiled the music video in January 2015, Gallagher revealed: I tried to get [Marr] to play on the last album but it never happened. So when I put this track together and knew he would be perfect for it I called him and asked if I could send him the rough mix. He said: “No, I don’t want to hear it. I’m just going to react to it on the day.” He didn’t even want any pointers. Well, that was brave of him. He just arrived with two guitars and a bag of effects pedals. And I have to say, he’s unbelievable. He’s way up there, on another level to the rest of us. The result is a burst of energy that helped make ‘Mighty I’ one of the best songs I’ve ever written. The pair performed the track together publicly for the first time when Marr joined Gallagher on stage with this guitar during the encore of the High Flying Birds show at Manchester Arena on 9 March 2015. Later that month, Marr played a handful of warm up shows in the north of England from 19 to 26 March before supporting Paul Weller at the Royal Albert Hall in London for the Teenage Cancer Trust on 27 March 2015.
From 15 June to 30 July 2015, Marr set out to play a series of re-scheduled shows for the penultimate leg of the Playland Tour, hitting South America, Australia and Japan. By this time, Marr was using the favoured Sherwood Green Jag as his main guitar for the entire set, only subbing in a Metallic KO occasionally when he played ‘The Messenger’. A series of summer festivals were slotted in between the re-scheduled tour dates, including two huge summer shows supporting The Who at British Summer Time in London’s Hyde Park on 26 June and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds at Summer In The City at Manchester’s Castlefield Bowl on 11 July 2015. In support of Adrenaline Baby, Marr announced a final run of UK headline shows from 18 September to 22 October 2015 to round out the re-scheduled Playland Tour and closed the year with a one-off homecoming show supporting Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds at Manchester’s O2 Apollo on 2 December 2015 as part of the Radio X Road Trip. He continued to favour the Sherwood Green Jag during a short California Jam Tour from 28 February to 8 March 2016 in support of the live album. While the guitar was then retired from touring, it’s probable that it remained in regular studio use during the writing and recording of Marr’s third solo album Call The Comet, until he acquired his custom Comet Sparkle Jaguar in late 2017. Marr’s last known stage appearance with the Sherwood Green Jag saw him join the Pet Shop Boys for an orchestral performance with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra at London's Royal Albert Hall on 2 April 2017 to benefit the Teenage Cancer Trust.
Inspired by Marr’s much loved custom model, a special limited edition production run of the Johnny Marr Signature Jaguar in Sherwood Green was released by Fender in September 2014. One of the most popular of the custom colour series, notes Marr. They are now very collectible.
An appropriate and deliberate choice for a show on the Emerald Isle, Marr was first seen playing the Sherwood Green Jag at the Electric Picnic festival at Stradbally Hall Estate near Dublin on 1 September 2013. Marr then brought this guitar on the second US leg of The Messenger Tour from 1 to 26 November 2013 and used it regularly for Smiths and Electronic numbers, including for a memorable performance of ‘How Soon Is Now?’ with old friend and ex-Smiths’ bassist Andy Rourke at Webster Hall in New York on 16 November 2013. It became something of a tradition that whenever I played in New York Andy Rourke would come onstage and play a couple of Smiths songs, recounts Marr in his 2016 autobiography. It’s always a special thing for us. There’s something that happens when we play together that works exactly the same as it did in when we were in The Smiths. Another notable performance of ‘How Soon Is Now?’ was recorded by producer Bob Clearmountain as part of an intimate set at his Apogee Studio in Los Angeles on 4 November and the footage broadcast by KCRW FM on their website on 18 November 2013.
Travelling and working so much inspired me, writes Marr, and before I finished touring with The Messenger I was making another album, called Playland. I would write songs on the road and then record them in between dates. It was on the road between Los Angeles and Austin in early November 2013 that Marr wrote and recorded ‘Easy Money’ on the Sherwood Green Jag at the back of the tour bus. On that song the record was literally recorded on the back lounge of the bus, except for drums of course, Marr told Donald Gibson of Write on Music in 2014. I went in the studio to make the record and I just could never beat what I’d done on the bus, the guitars and the vocals. All the singing is what I did at two-thirty in the morning on the way to El Paso. I had to keep getting the bus driver to stop so I didn’t get the sound of the bus on the vocal track. It’s got that enthusiasm of when you just write something and it’s all new and you think it’s the greatest thing. ‘Easy Money’ was released as the lead single from Marr’s second solo studio album Playland in June 2014 and would turn out to be one of his most successful. The official music video, which sees Marr perform with this guitar at a Blackpool amusement arcade, has been viewed almost 3 million times on YouTube, making it Marr’s most viewed solo music video to date. Back in Manchester, Marr would also lay down the album’s shimmering third single ‘Candidate’ on the favoured Sherwood Green, as seen in the song’s official music video shot at the recording studio.
Ahead of the album release, Marr made several notable appearances with this guitar. On 24 April 2014, Marr performed with Hans Zimmer and soundtrack supergroup The Magnificent Six at the afterparty of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 premiere in New York City, having written and recorded the score together some months before. The following evening, he appeared on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to perform the film’s closing theme ‘It’s On Again’ with Alicia Keys, Kendrick Lamar and Hans Zimmer. From the date that Marr began including Playland material in his set at Camp Bestival on 1 August 2014, the Sherwood Green Signature Jaguar effectively superseded his Olympic White models (see lot 83) and became his main stage guitar. As a precursor to the football season, lifelong Man City fan Marr strapped on the Sherwood Green to headline the Man City FC Season Launch Party – City Live – at Manchester Central on 14 August 2014. To coincide with the release of Playland on 6 October 2014, Marr and his guitar kicked off the fifth season of the BBC’s 6 Music Live at Maida Vale Studios with a seven-song live set that included new releases ‘Easy Money’ and ‘Candidate’, alongside The Smiths’ classic ‘Still Ill’ and an updated arrangement of Electronic’s Getting Away With It’, the latter of which can currently be found on BBC Radio 6 Music’s YouTube channel.
Following the release of Playland, which would become his second Top 10 solo album, Marr set out on the first few legs of a worldwide Playland Tour, which kicked off in Lincoln, UK, on 13 October and ran through to 4 December 2014 in Calgary, Canada. Throughout the tour, Marr’s Sherwood Green Jag served as his primary guitar for the main set, after which he would switch to his custom Black on Black Jag (lot 88) for the encore. Highlights of the UK leg included his largest London solo headline show to date at the O2 Academy Brixton on 23 October and an eagerly awaited homecoming show at the O2 Apollo in Manchester on 25 October 2014. When I got to Manchester on the Playland tour, I played at the Apollo, Marr recalled in his 2016 autobiography. It had been a dream of [my manager] Joe’s that I should play there, as he knew all about my history with the place as a boy and because we’d never done it with The Smiths… As I walked off the stage I went over to him and he hugged me and said, “Well done, Johnny … not bad for a kid with a guitar”. The Manchester Apollo, Glasgow Academy and Brixton Academy shows were recorded for the live album Adrenalin Baby, which would be released in October 2015.
To launch the North American leg of the tour and promote the album release, Marr appeared on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on 11 November 2014, wielding the Sherwood Green Jag to perform his single ‘Easy Money’ and The Smiths’ ‘Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before’, and followed up with an appearance on CBS This Morning: Saturday to perform the album track ‘Generate! Generate!’ on 16 November 2014. A cover of the 1993 Depeche Mode classic ‘I Feel You’, which Marr first began playing in his dressing room on the US leg of the Playland Tour, was later recorded on this guitar and released for Record Store Day on 18 April 2015. I’ve surprised myself that it sounded so like me and my band, he commented on release. When you cover a song you have to bring something of yourself to it. I was playing it on tour, just in my dressing room, and it sounded good, and then I started to sing it and we worked it up in a soundcheck and played it immediately in the encore that night… I was invited to do something for Record Store Day and it was a really good fit. The song turned out surprisingly well. The B-side was a hauntingly beautiful live rendition of The Smiths’ ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’, which had been recorded – on this guitar – at the Manchester Apollo show on 25 October.
Amid a busy touring schedule over the course of 2014, Marr found time for a handful of collaborations, enlisting the Sherwood Green signature Jag to record the song ‘Soldier of Fortune’ on Bryan Ferry’s 2014 album Avonmore, as well as the track ‘Heisenberg’ on Chris Spedding’s 2015 album Joyland. Notably, Marr used this guitar when he collaborated with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds on ‘The Ballad of the Mighty I’, released on 13 January 2015 as the second single from the band's second studio album, Chasing Yesterday. When he unveiled the music video in January 2015, Gallagher revealed: I tried to get [Marr] to play on the last album but it never happened. So when I put this track together and knew he would be perfect for it I called him and asked if I could send him the rough mix. He said: “No, I don’t want to hear it. I’m just going to react to it on the day.” He didn’t even want any pointers. Well, that was brave of him. He just arrived with two guitars and a bag of effects pedals. And I have to say, he’s unbelievable. He’s way up there, on another level to the rest of us. The result is a burst of energy that helped make ‘Mighty I’ one of the best songs I’ve ever written. The pair performed the track together publicly for the first time when Marr joined Gallagher on stage with this guitar during the encore of the High Flying Birds show at Manchester Arena on 9 March 2015. Later that month, Marr played a handful of warm up shows in the north of England from 19 to 26 March before supporting Paul Weller at the Royal Albert Hall in London for the Teenage Cancer Trust on 27 March 2015.
From 15 June to 30 July 2015, Marr set out to play a series of re-scheduled shows for the penultimate leg of the Playland Tour, hitting South America, Australia and Japan. By this time, Marr was using the favoured Sherwood Green Jag as his main guitar for the entire set, only subbing in a Metallic KO occasionally when he played ‘The Messenger’. A series of summer festivals were slotted in between the re-scheduled tour dates, including two huge summer shows supporting The Who at British Summer Time in London’s Hyde Park on 26 June and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds at Summer In The City at Manchester’s Castlefield Bowl on 11 July 2015. In support of Adrenaline Baby, Marr announced a final run of UK headline shows from 18 September to 22 October 2015 to round out the re-scheduled Playland Tour and closed the year with a one-off homecoming show supporting Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds at Manchester’s O2 Apollo on 2 December 2015 as part of the Radio X Road Trip. He continued to favour the Sherwood Green Jag during a short California Jam Tour from 28 February to 8 March 2016 in support of the live album. While the guitar was then retired from touring, it’s probable that it remained in regular studio use during the writing and recording of Marr’s third solo album Call The Comet, until he acquired his custom Comet Sparkle Jaguar in late 2017. Marr’s last known stage appearance with the Sherwood Green Jag saw him join the Pet Shop Boys for an orchestral performance with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra at London's Royal Albert Hall on 2 April 2017 to benefit the Teenage Cancer Trust.
Inspired by Marr’s much loved custom model, a special limited edition production run of the Johnny Marr Signature Jaguar in Sherwood Green was released by Fender in September 2014. One of the most popular of the custom colour series, notes Marr. They are now very collectible.