YAMAHA CORPORATION, HAMAMATSU, JAPAN, 1977

Inspired by the guitarists of the late 70s art-rock movement, Johnny Marr began hunting down Yamaha SGs around the time that he released his first solo studio album The Messenger in 2013 (see footnote to lot 89). With the help of Richard Henry Guitars, Marr assembled a collection of three SG-1000s, two SG-1300s and one SG-700, all of which he employed in his studio recordings from 2014’s Playland onwards. Marr told us: People think the guitars on my solo records are mostly the Signature Jags, but they’re mostly Les Paul Customs and Yamaha SGs. Marr used this SG-700 to record the songs ‘Back in the Box’ on his 2014 studio album Playland and ‘Jeopardy’, originally released as the vinyl B-side to his 2018 single ‘Hi Hello’. In a 2020 Q&A with Classic Pop magazine, Marr called ‘Jeopardy’ one of the coolest songs I’ve ever made and declared it glam for the new century – you can hear the 12-year-old me in ‘Jeopardy’.