RISE OF THE READER | Kirkus Reviews

A celebration of more than 50 guitars from Marr’s personal collection.

Marr founded the seminal 1980s British band the Smiths and later went on to play with the Pretenders, Electronica, and Modest Mouse, among many other musicians. “Some instruments come with songs in them,” he writes in this lovingly photographed book. These include a 1980 Gibson Les Paul, the first professional guitar that Marr owned, chosen because his “first hero,” Marc Bolan of T. Rex, played one. Marr wrote the first Smiths songs on a 1977 Gretsch Super Axe that is now on exhibit at the British Pop Archive in Manchester. Drawn to music with guitar hooks, Marr writes, “I still regard the guitar as the star” of any band. His instruments receive the full glamour treatment in Graham’s “guitar portraits,” which present them in more than 320 photos as true fetish objects. “Always, I hoped that my latest guitar would make me do something new,” writes Marr, and one example is a 1963 acoustic Gibson that “brought a bit of a beat group sensibility to my writing.” By the 2000s, Marr became a Fender endorsee, and the company produced his own signature guitar made to his exact specifications. This inventory of gorgeous electric and acoustic instruments is supplemented by music writer Martin Kelly’s interview, in three parts, with Marr, in which he discusses the influence of 1960s girl-group sounds on the Smiths songs he wrote. Marr also acknowledges his influences and friendships with many famous musicians, including Nile Rodgers, Pete Townshend, and Johnny Thunders—but, tellingly, not with his Smiths bandmate Morrissey, with whom he had a notorious falling-out. Though his 1963 Epiphone Casino produced the famous tremolo riff on “How Soon Is Now?,” he has nothing to say about the song’s star vocalist.

A great choice for any aficionado of rock guitar.