‘Can you just move that Ricky?” says Johnny Marr, gesturing towards the jetglo Rickenbacker 330 guitar resting on the stand next to me, as we rearrange the room for a photoshoot. This Rickenbacker? The one I’ve heard several thousand times on various songs by the Smiths? The one Marr used to write the music for Still Ill and What Difference Does It Make? The Rickenbacker pictured lying on a studio floor on the sleeve of Oasis’s debut single, Supersonic? That Ricky? “Yeah,” he says. “Can you just bring it over here?” I begin to move. It’s only a few steps but I’ve rarely taken more care. It’s like Van Gogh asking you to pass him his favourite paintbrush.
We’re in Marr’s studio in Stockport and he is standing in the centre of a semicircle of guitars which will be instantly familiar to many of his fans. Wherever you look, in fact, there is an important musical artefact. Slightly incongruously there is also a drum kit in the corner, but he’s quick to distance himself from it. “That thing is not mine,” he says. “I’ve probably sat behind a drum kit three times in my life. It just looks totally wrong.”
