we drank the blood of a groupie. Which isn’t actually what happened. I’d just said, ‘You can borrow this guitar for a bit until you get some money.’ But he fell in love with the guitar, so I didn’t really have the heart to ask for it back.”. Noel Gallagher does nothing to detract from the legendary aura of the moment. “He lent me the Les Paul that he wrote The Queen Is Dead on. The first night I got my hands on it, I wrote Slide Away, fully formed, like the song was already in that
“I check in with him every now and again, on a musical side, too. Radiohead’s had a lot of self-doubt, and he’s always encouraged us to continue that journey of exploration” - Ed O’Brien
guitar” (Mojo, 2013). Recently, some of Johnny’s guitars still contributed to the sound of a Radiohead’s record, “In Rainbows”. As Ed O’Brien told Mojo: “I check in with him every now and again, on a musical side, too. Radiohead’s had a lot of self-doubt, and he’s always encouraged us to continue that journey of exploration. When we finalized the track order for In Rainbows, I had to drive up to Manchester that night to check in, as he’d been part of the gestation, including lending us three guitars, one of them a 1957 Gold Top Les Paul that I discovered was worth something like $ 150.000. I wanted to tell him I’d come out the other end, and
Johnny himself says that “whenever I’m asked whether I give bands advice, I always feel uneasy about it. It seems like a very patronizing, pompous, self-elevating position to take. However, if you’re around your friends, you just pop ‘em straight: ‘The live sound sucks because the guitar player’s got a bad amp.’ You just give them the amp… I’ve given a lot of people a lot of equipment because I don’t like waste. Not because I’m particularly an angel, but because I got helped out by a few nice people along the way… if it just takes a phone call to give someone a little bit of encouragement, it’s not a difficult thing to do.” ( Johnny Marr, 2003).
what did he think of the record? I can’t
Moreover, the influence and the presence
overstate his importance.” (2013).
of Johnny in these musicians’ lives were
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