If people can finally recognize you on radio without being told who it is, that’s what you aim for- Johnny Marr
There are very, very few guitarists that really can really deconstruct the stereotypical image of the guitar can do. The ordinary quick chord thrashing sound is what most associated with the guitar.A guitar should always, in my view reflect what your feeling, not being afraid to throw a bit of vulnerability into your playing.
Now I don’t hate that style at all, but it gets tiresome fast. It takes real talent and musicianship to go against that style and develop something that reflects you as a person.
This is seen in the guitarist Johnny Marr, most famously of The Smiths and who is the best guitar player of all time, in my opinion anyway!
What Johnny Marr can do with a guitar is incredible. Going away from the rudimentary chord playing that most guitarists use, the use of picking in a poppy style quickly highlights Marr the moment the listener his the first few notes of his guitar playing.
Marr always wanted to disassociate himself from that typical image guitar rock sound. One thing that went out was…….. the solo.
It takes balls to take the standard normal solo out as its almost the basic focal point you are taking away from yourself, so it showed that Marr could have full confidence in what he was doing. It can be most seen in The Smiths song ‘This Charming Man’.
What really makes ‘This Charming Man’ so unique is that it’s almost like a melodic dreamy picture that Marr creates with his playing. Marr creates a heavenly melodic sound that is something that blew my mind when I first listened to it and made me obsessed to listen to everything that The Smiths had ever recorded.
It’s the notion
Marr also had the perfect frontman to compliment his style in Morrissey. The two are greatest songwriting partnerships in the history of music. They blended a perfect style of the alternative and pop music.
Morrissey’s lyrical prowess could really help to add a new edge to Marr’s musical talent. Morrissey typically wrote with the view as the outsider, the unpopular one with an eye for creating great emotional stories. This was used to full effect in ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’.
Morrisey and Marr. The most perfect team in music history.
Marr’s quite gentle guitar playing perfectly compliments Morrissey’s need to be apart of the crowd, almost a desire to be normal like all the other people he wishes to be with. The best music is the music that you can’t exactly describe how great it is but in your mind you could go for days on end about how much you love it.
Marr’s playing also could be heavily grove based as well, something that most guitar players tend to ignore. In ‘How Soon is Now?’, Marr’s swampy groovy playing takes on the quality of an anthemic tone, interspersed with paranoid sounding guitar lines.
The song demonstrates Marr’s ability to take on the role of the one man orchestra. The ability to create specific phrases that come in and out is akin to classical music. The way they repeate themes based on a specific rhythm is the way Marr demonstrates his playing in ‘How Soon Is Now?’.
It showed that Marr was always thinking outside the box, how to top himself and not become cliché, as he continued to experiment with The Smiths from funk in ‘Barbarianism Begins at Home’ and punk in ‘London’.
Marr once said that playing the guitar for him was almost a way turning his daydreams into reality. Not being afraid of conforming to the male macho guitar playing, to expressing the hope and fantasies a guitarist can hold and expressing he feels in certain moments, as Marr himself best describes in this clip about writing The Smiths classic ‘This Charming Man’.
When The Smiths did end, it didn’t mean the end of that style for Marr, even though he would always try and differentiate from what people had known him for.
His solo career has hints of his past work in The Smiths, but he’s developed his music now to be a bit more standard playing through his eyes to represent a punkier kind of vibe.
One example that highlighted his Smiths style was in his later years is ‘Forbidden City’ by Electronic, a supergroup Marr founded with New Order’s Bernard Sumner. It was examples like these that Marr wasn’t always ashamed of going back to what had brought him to the dance to create such a great bittersweet sound.
Johnny Marr’s sense of thinking outside the box, mixed with that perfect pop sense that isn’t really examined when talking about his guitar style, makes him the most perfect guitar player every in my opinion.
Nostalgic Beat 
