The guitar that was the secret to the sound of The Smiths’ Johnny Marr
It’s an image that has been burned into the brain of millions of British indie fans: Johnny Marr, with Rickenbacker guitar in hand, plucking out the iconic opening riff to The Smiths‘ ‘This Charming Man’ during the band’s first appearance on Top of the Pops in 1983. The look is almost as iconic as the sound itself: a bright red Beatles throwback cranking out jangly riffs that would soundtrack an entire decade of change in the music world.
But the main riff to ‘This Charming Man’ wasn’t recorded with a Rickenbacker. In fact, when it came to most of The Smiths’ work, Marr didn’t reach for his most iconic instrument first. Instead, it was a green Fender Telecaster that provided the jangly sound that was immediately identifiable as Marr’s signature.
“My most famous one is my green sunburst Roger Giffin,” Marr told Total Guitar in 2021. “My wife, who was then my girlfriend, very kindly wanted to get me a gift and the great Alan Rogan [Pete Townshend’s guitar tech] tipped her off to this one-off that Roger Giffin had made.”
“A lot of people remember it because it is very distinctive-looking, but Alan recommended it to me because it sounded very unusual,” he added. “It’s maple, so it weighs an absolute ton, and it has a lot of brass on it. It has a very distinctive sound. I was only a little slip of a thing when I got it [laughs], so I could only play two songs with it before I had to go and lie down.”
“I still have that guitar. It has a coil-tap on it, which I disabled. To this day, I do not know what the pickups are on there,” Marr explained. “They might be really early Seymour Duncans – knowing Roger. The first time I ever used a Telecaster was the day I recorded ‘This Charming Man’.”
“The sound of that intro was always assumed that it was a Rickenbacker because that is what I was most known for at the time, but it is actually – mostly – a ’54 Tele, maybe ’53, that belonged to the producer [John Porter] tracked with a Rickenbacker, so it is quite an interesting sound,” Marr revealed. “That was a refinished ’53 or ’54 Tele and it was the first time I had used one. It really suited my super-clean sound. But it still had plenty of attitude.”
“The combination of that ’50s Tele sound and the Rickenbacker was perfect for what I was looking for. That was my first experience with a Tele. Quite quickly, I was lucky enough to acquire a few different guitars, but I made it my business to get a Tele,” Marr said. “That’s why Angie knew I needed one. The green one I used mostly on Meat Is Murder – ‘Nowhere Fast’ and the title track. I guess by the time of the last [Smiths] album, I acquired a mid-’60s Tele which had been customised with a humbucker in the neck position.”
Even though Marr eventually gravitated over to the Fender Jaguar as his main axe, Telecasters still occupy a special place in his arsenal of instruments. “Right now I have got four or five Telecasters, mostly ’60s models,” Marr says. “I’ve got a ’64, and I really like that period, because I want that clean, classic Tele thing but they’re just slightly darker. It’s a combination of the bodies and the fingerboard being rosewood. I like that darker clang. I’ve still got the black and white Custom one, and in the 2000s, Fender gave me a Custom Shop early ’60s reissue, Olympic [White] with the black ‘guard.”
