Johnny Marr’s Unknown Acoustic

This guitar was Johnny Marr’s first real instrument, though, unfortunately, the brand and model remain unknown at this time (the photo shown is just a placeholder). If you happen to have any information about the guitar, please feel free to share it in the comments below.

Before this guitar, he had a small toy guitar, which his mother bought for him after noticing his constant fascination with it in a shop window. In his autobiography Set the Boy Free, Johnny reminisces about the moment his mother took him inside to buy the toy guitar.

My mother had got used to having to stop at Emily’s, and she and my father had wondered about their son being so taken with the toy guitar. It was always the same – we’d stand outside the shop while I gazed up – until that morning, when my mother took me inside and gave the money for it to Emily, who took the guitar down from the shelf and handed it to me.

Johnny Marr – Set the Boy Free: The Autobiography

So years after getting his hands on that toy guitar, around 1970, Johnny finally got his first real acoustic guitar, purchased by his father at Reno’s guitar shop on Oxford Road.

Around a year later, he also bought his first record—a single of Jeepster by T. Rex. This would prove to be a milestone in his life, as both Jeepster and its B-side, Life’s a Gas, were the first songs he taught himself to play on the guitar. These tracks became the foundation of his early songwriting efforts.

The significance of owning that first record at that point in my life went deeper, as ‘Jeepster’ and the B-side ‘Life’s a Gas’ became the first songs I taught myself to play on the guitar, and that started me on the road to writing songs of my own.

A year earlier, my dad had taken me to Reno’s guitar shop on Oxford Road and bought me a new acoustic. It was decent enough to play properly, and the practice I was putting in was starting to pay off.

Johnny Marr – Set the Boy Free: The Autobiography