Johnny Marr Sig Jaguar

[amv]

All fair points.

For the record, when I'm referring to Johnny Marr as if he were some kind of indie rock messiah, I'm really just talking about The Smiths. In my mind, I like to pretend the rail skinny, ~20-year-old Marr from 1985 or thereabouts, sheepishly peering out form behind Morrissey, is the real namesake of his signature Jaguar. I tend to forget there's also the "modern day Marr", in full-on Dad Mode, floating around out there as we speak, and I can understand some confusion if it sounded like I was making a 51-year-old with a bowl haircut out to be the bleeding edge of musical innovation. His contemporary solo career is... well I'm glad he's keeping busy, I suppose.

And just so I don't come across as mean spirited, I have to say I am enormously impressed with Taylor Swift as an entertainer in general. The music industry is all but dead, no one pays for music, and even the best bands seem to have trouble maintaining relevance and press coverage for more than a year or two, and yet somehow she's put out platinum album after platinum album going back what—nearly a decade now? I have absolutely no idea how she's done it, but you gotta hand it to her.

[MKR]

i love modern day marr.

[zakmaster]

I tend to forget there's also the "modern day Marr", in full-on Dad Mode, floating around out there as we speak, and I can understand some confusion if it sounded like I was making a 51-year-old with a bowl haircut out to be the bleeding edge of musical innovation. His contemporary solo career is... well I'm glad he's keeping busy, I suppose.

Johnny Marr has made a number of mistakes. He has gotten older. He had children. He continues to play music that made him popular, and new music in a style he likes. He has kept his personal style. He is still trying to make music. Bastard.

[ThemBones75]

Gonna leave this here....

[MiHu]

I love guitar fashion and I love Jaguars partly because of their association with 'alternative' bands as well as a half-ironic hommage to 60s pop culture (I think in the 60s they weren't associated with anything progressive or alternative).

...and I kind of like Taylor Swift's music, so everything is fine with me

The Jaguar to me is a guitar for pop music, whatever that is exactly.

[callum]

Good lord I love Taylor Swift.

[scottT]

In my mind, I like to pretend the rail skinny, ~20-year-old Marr from 1985 or thereabouts, sheepishly peering out form behind Morrissey, is the real namesake of his signature Jaguar.

I hear you, and that is undoubtedly part of the appeal--the heyday of a player we respect and admire and all that is associated with it. I haven't read all 80+ pages of this thread, but I'm sure it's already been pointed out somewhere that he never played a Jaguar in the Smiths (that I'm aware of). I know that's obvious to you. I'm just saying that for me, as much as I love The Smiths, this isn't the guitar I would necessarily buy to get that sound. (I would get a Tele, Les Paul, or some kind of 335 style hollow body.) That's why I personally think of this signature Jaguar as very much the guitar of the contemporary Marr.

I've avidly followed the development of this guitar since the day it was announced, and have eagerly anticipated it. What especially wins me over about it was first of all, his unabashed love of the Jaguar as seen in a couple of video clips that can be seen. It's clear in listening that he just truly fell in love with the thing. Second, he chose to put his name to a guitar which (outside of OSG and the surf crowd) was seen as a bit of a red-headed step child of the Fender line. And third, he could have simply spec'ed some unusual color, put his name on it and called it good, but he had the integrity to really rethink the Jaguar, what worked for him, and what didn't in real-world performance, and to make the guitar something he would exclusively play himself. He spent at least a year I think just testing pick-ups, and road testing the prototype.

I've always liked the Jag before this, but the changes he made, and the fact that I can't think of a better player to be "associated by guitar" with, has me often considering one.

[amv]

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

To me, The Smiths have a footprint in music history that I don't really see in other bands; their ENTIRE career is compressed into basically 1982-1987 (or thereabouts), and yet you wouldn't call them "an eighties band" the way you'd classify Whitesnake or Duran Duran. So even though Morrissey remains a hugely known figure, and Johnny Marr has been seen here and there in the intervening years, the short lifespan and abrupt breakup of the band means the image of The Smiths as a collective unit is sorta frozen in this youthful snapshot, like Hendrix or Cobain or Buddy Holly. And every generation since has had a young contingent of fans, all the way up through some small but dedicated percentage of today's high school kids wearing their t-shirts to school and listening to The Queen is Dead through iPhone earbuds, probably blending pretty damn smoothly with the rest of their playlists despite being 30 years older.

Anyway, my point is that there's no other band from decades ago that I can so easily forget isn't contemporary, so even though the Jaguar probably never made it within a mile of their original recording sessions, it's a perfect fit for that "overall snapshot" of how I see them musically.

But this is all subjective, so who knows. Just my view of things.

[Maggieo]

Man, you guys aren't giving Johnny Marr's long and exceptional career its due. After The Smiths, there was a stint in Talking Heads, The The, Electronic and a slew of other guest spots.

The guy is the epitome of a musician- he's more like a Jazz cat, who just keeps playing and doesn't tun down gigs, just like my other offset hero, Nels Cline.

[JazzmasterJonny]

Man, you guys aren't giving Johnny Marr's long and exceptional career its due. After The Smiths, there was a stint in Talking Heads, The The, Electronic and a slew of other guest spots.

The guy is the epitome of a musician- he's more like a Jazz cat, who just keeps playing and doesn't tun down gigs, just like my other offset hero, Nels Cline.

Bang on! He's at the peak of his powers right now!

[amv]

This is where I wish I could agree more than I do. While his playing in The Smiths STILL sounds revelatory to me, with its intricate arpeggiations and ostinatos, I hear almost none of that in his modern work. I actually really did enjoy his first solo record from 2013 because of what I thought was some pretty strong songwriting (New Town Velocity, The Messenger, The Crack-Up were all original and fresh sounding), but even then, the actual guitar playing felt very bland. It's ironic that he's embracing such an awesome signature guitar just as the playing on his new music seems to be taking a backseat to being an all-around singer/frontman. All I hear on his new records is a lot of distorted chords, even on the best songs. He really made a name for himself as a true guitar composer, with riffs that almost sounded classical in their detail and depth, but still totally compatible with indie rock/pop/whatever. Now it's mostly strumming to my ears, which is a drag.

The dude still seems like an awesome guy and I'd lose my mind if I ever got a chance to meet him, but I wish his 80's guitar persona would wake back up.

(Notice I avoided the use of term "jangly" at any point in the above)

[Mechanical Birds]

I got to meet johnny at a modest mouse show in Columbus one year. While Isaac Brock is one of my guitar heros, the smiths just sound hilarious to me, and while it took Isaac Brock literally like 2 hours to come out and talk to the 4 of us who wanted to meet him, johnny was there waiting from the beginning, so I gained a lot of respect for him and found him to be a really, really cool guy. We talked about guitars and factory records and how he came to join MM and I even joked by telling him "I really loved the cure man!" Which he took like a champ and said something to the effect of "yeah we made some great records."

Though that period of MM and The smiths are goofy to me, THAT GUY is an amazing person and I really wish I could run into him again so we could talk shop about his custom jag.

[Ro_S]

what value capacitors are used on the Johnny Marr signature Jaguar in respect of (i) the standard stangle switch and (ii) the additional high pass filter switch thing it has?

thanks

[Squareball]

Well thats ensured a couple of thousand Taylor Swift fans clicking on the OSG site. Google ranking UP!
Her PR company aren't stupid. This is product placement like drinking a can of pepsi.
Ticks all the right trendy boxes, Offset (tick), JM sig - 80's coolness (tick) white and shiney (tick)

Fender’s PR team are clever too. They are promoting Johnny’s Jaguar on the merit of his Smiths career whilst pushing his new music with said guitar.
He has made tons of music in-between but it’s the Smiths music that made him famous and is celebrated now.

In interviews He often stated trying to re-write rock guitar playing in the early days, and in many ways he did, so its not really fair to criticise his new music for being lame and not cutting edge.
He influenced a generation of indie guitar kids in the 80’s and beyond. (yes, I think the Smiths are an archetypal 80’s band.)

I absolutely love his Sherwood green Jag and whilst I pine for the day i can afford one it would not be so I could authentically play Smiths covers.
Anyway I thought that to really recreate Johnny’s Jangley sound one would reach for a Semi-hollow or a Rickenbacker…?

[Ro_S]

I absolutely love his Sherwood green Jag and whilst I pine for the day i can afford one it would not be so I could authentically play Smiths covers.
Anyway I thought that to really recreate Johnny’s Jangley sound one would reach for a Semi-hollow or a Rickenbacker…?

I think a lot of the The Smiths' early stuff was recorded with a Telecaster.