Marr's Guitars: The Johnny Marr Collection
Earlier this year, Johnny Marr announced that he would be selling a huge part of his guitar collection, with around 80 instruments going under the hammer at Christie’s in London.
Calling them simply Smiths guitars, however, hardly tells the story.
Since The Smiths split in 1987, Marr has built one of the most varied careers of any British guitarist of his generation. He joined The Pretenders and The The, formed Electronic with New Order’s Bernard Sumner, fronted Johnny Marr + The Healers and later became a member of both Modest Mouse and The Cribs. Alongside those bands came his solo records, soundtrack work and collaborations across several generations of music.
His guitars travelled with him. Some were used on Smiths records before appearing years later with completely different bands; others were loaned to friends including Sumner, Radiohead, Noel Gallagher and Bernard Butler. Instruments associated with Manchester indie eventually found themselves on Oasis records, Bond soundtracks and Marr’s own solo albums. In that sense, the Christie’s collection was almost a physical map of his career.
The most important lot was Marr’s 1982 Rickenbacker 330 Jetglo. Bought during the early years of The Smiths, it became one of the defining instruments of the band’s sound and can be heard on ‘This Charming Man’, ‘What Difference Does It Make?’, ‘Still Ill’ and ‘Accept Yourself’.
It wasn't the guitar used for the distinctive opening riff of ‘This Charming Man’, which Marr played on a 1950s Telecaster, but its importance to those early Smiths recordings is hard to overstate.
Its story did not end there either. Marr later lent the Rickenbacker to Noel Gallagher during the early sessions for ‘Definitely Maybe’, and the guitar subsequently appeared in Gallagher’s hands on the cover of Oasis’s debut single, ‘Supersonic’. One instrument had therefore become connected to two different generations of Manchester guitar music.
The original estimate of £60,000 to £80,000 proved extremely conservative. When it was auctioned on 17 September 2026, a bidding battle lasting more than five minutes pushed the final price to £358,400.
Another of Marr’s most recognisable instruments, his Cherry Red Gibson ES-355, sold for £204,800.
The guitar had been bought for Marr in New York by Sire Records founder Seymour Stein after Marr joked that The Smiths would sign to the label if Stein bought him a new guitar. Marr took it back to his hotel and almost immediately began finding the chords that would become ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’. ‘Girl Afraid’, its B-side, followed from the same instrument.
That particular guitar became almost as visually associated with Marr as the Rickenbacker, appearing with him during some of The Smiths’ best-known television performances and influencing younger players including Noel Gallagher and Bernard Butler to later use red Gibson 355s of their own.
The decision to sell began with ‘Marr’s Guitars’, the 2023 book created with photographer Pat Graham. After bringing the instruments out to document them, Marr found the idea of putting everything back into storage increasingly unsatisfying.
Rather than leaving guitars that had spent decades being played locked away, he wanted them to begin another life with somebody else. That feels appropriate for instruments which have rarely stayed in one place anyway.
These guitars passed through The Smiths, Electronic, The The, The Healers, Modest Mouse, The Cribs and Marr’s solo career, while others ended up temporarily in the hands of the musicians who followed him.
They are not simply artefacts from The Smiths. They are objects that have travelled through more than forty years of British guitar music. If you are interested in seeing what sold and how much it sold for, click here