A few years ago, Johnny Marr picked the three guitarists who influenced his playing the most: Bert Jansch, Nile Rodgers and James Williamson. The first thing I thought when I read the list was, ‘Hold on, Johnny Marr doesn’t sound like any of them’. The second thing I thought was, ‘Actually, maybe he sounds like all of them, at once.’
There are loads of other six-stringers who The Smiths co-founder has saluted over the years too, from Pete Townshend to Johns McGeoch and Lennon to Marc Bolan and more, and he sounds like none of them either. The only guitarist Johnny Marr sounds like Johnny Marr, his distinctive style making it sound like he has six hands with 14 fingers on each, a mix of cascading arpeggios, warm melodic strumming, spatial atmospherics, jangly chord patterns and riffs that so sound satisfyingly simplistic you want to lie down in them and then you listen closer and realise you’re relaxing in the middle of labyrinth you have no way out of. It’s a lot.
