The Smiths held their label to ransom until Johnny Marr got this guitar: “As soon as I got that back to the hotel, I wrote Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now in about 10 minutes”

Johnny Marr has accumulated a fair few guitars since his time with British indie rock pioneers The Smiths. In fact, he’s gotten to the point where he’s auctioning off his four-decade guitar collection at Christie’s in London this September.

Yet, among them all, there’s one guitar – a 1960 Cherry Red ES-355 – that harks back to a very exciting time for Marr. It was 1984, around the time The Smiths started generating enough buzz to be wined and dined by the industry.

So, when legendary music executive Seymour Stein of Sire Records approached the band, Marr took the opportunity to coax him into acquiring his dream guitar.

“[It was] one night in 1984. It was a done deal we were going to sign to Sire,” Marr tells Guitarist. “We’d have happily paid him: it was our dream label. But I was asking about The Stones in the ’60s, and he made the mistake of telling me he’d always take Brian Jones to get a guitar. So I saw my opportunity. I told him if he bought me a guitar, The Smiths would sign to Sire.”