Two pickups, four dials, and a slab of mahogany. Itās a classic rock ānā roll guitar format. Players have dug it since 1955, when Gibson introduced the Les Paul Special as a cheaper alternative to its flagship solidbody, the Les Paul. In the decades since, guitarists from John Lennon to Johnny Thunders have championed the Special. Why? Because itās simple and itās badass.
Simple and badass are good ways to describe the new Heritage H-137SC, too. The two P-90s and the single-cutaway mahogany body are clear homage to the Special. (Little surprise, given that Heritage was started by Gibson defectors in 1985). And just like that Gibson classic, this guitar is a ticket to rock ānā roll happiness.
Nuts ānā Bolts
Our review example arrived in a sturdy hardshell case and was aglow in a nitrocellulose tobacco sunburst finish. (Itās also available in TV yellow.) Heritage touts the H-137SC as ālightweight,ā but thatās subjective. The 1-piece mahogany body weighs in at about 9.5 poundsāa pound more than my own ā58 Les Paul Special and about 2.5 pounds heavier than the average Stratocaster. The weight feels worth it, though. It adds to the sturdy feel of the build and, quite possibly, the guitarās tone.
The fretboard of the 24 3/4" scale-length mahogany neck is rosewood and has a 12" radius. Itās got 22 frets, in the Gibson and Heritage traditions, and theyāre Jescar medium jumbos, which encourage swaggering string bending. The neck profile is a shallow C shape, which is quite easy to mange for pickers that favor thin necks. The nut is Corian and the guitar has a wraparound bridge and Grover tuners, finished in shiny nickel. The 500k pots are made by CTS, and the caps are .022 µF Vishaysāboth dependable and widely used brands. The setup, by the way, was excellent.
The Playoff
Most of my guitars are pretty basic, so with its comfy neck, medium-jumbo frets, and simple controls, the H-137SC felt and sounded instantly gratifying. I took the guitar straight to a gig, and it proved very tuning stableāholding standard and open-G tunings while I smacked it around with abandon, just as an axe like this should be.
With its comfy neck, medium-jumbo frets, and simple controls, the H-137SC felt and sounded instantly gratifying.
Really, though, smacking the heck out of this guitar isnāt a requirement. Itās not just for punk and rough-and-tumble rock. Tone attenuation makes it sweet and tubby, and you can flip the 3-way selector switch for country, jazz, or whatever-yāall-want sounds thanks to the versatile pair of Lollar P-90s. That said, this guitarās voice sounded most classic when plugged into a Marshall or my Carr Vincent with the overdrive circuit on. With these toothy amp tones, the Heritage just plain snarls.
My own ā58 Gibson Les Paul Special is a familiar favorite. So I had to let these two instrumentsāwhich have an identical 1 3/4" body thickness, near-identical necks, and double P-90sāwrestle. Both guitars sounded ace, plugged into just about anything, and the Heritage more than easily held its own against the vintage Gibson. I played both instruments into an Orange Micro Terror powering up a 1x12 Celestion 25-watt custom cabinet, a Fender Twin Reverb, a Marshall Super Lead paired with the same Celestion, and the Carr Vincent, which has an Eminence Red Coat the Wizard 75-watt speaker. The Heritage has a bold voice that sounds like it could cut through just about any live mix, with plenty of edge and sustain, and the sonic difference between the new Heritage and the vintage Gibson was minimal. The ā58 had a slightly brighter profile overall, with a lot of air in the notes, while the Heritage had a darker, slightly fatter toneābut the contrast was a matter of aural microns. Iād play either guitar any day, anywhere, anytime.
The Verdict
Guitarists who want a classic-sounding, classic-playing, and classic-looking 6-string will dig the Heritage H-137SC. Period. Itās a no-frills, well-built, rock ānā roll machine that should withstand many decades of hard playing. At $1,899, it costs more than Gibson USAās most affordable Les Paul Special, which retails for about a grand, but itās much less than a Gibson Custom Shop version. Itās a matter of taste and budget. If P-90 tones arenāt your bagāor youāre looking for the versatility of coil tapping, or a fresher body designāthis aināt your rig. But the Heritage H-137SC is 100 percent ready to rock if you are.
Johnny Marrās latest LP spans influences from New Order to the Staple Singers while staying rooted in his clockwork timing and copious talents as arranger and melodicist.
When the great Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes passed away earlier this year, I thought a lot about Johnny Marr. Marr was moved deeply by the girl groups of the ā60sātheir positivity, energy, and the convergence of ecstasy and melancholy in the music. He was even fired up by the audaciousness of their style: The impressive beehive hairdo worn by Spectorās bandmate Estelle Bennett famously inspired the jet-black pile Marr wore at the height of Smiths fame.
But the most lasting influence of the girl groups on Marr is probably the musical playground that Ronnie once made her own: the wall of sound. In the decades since Phil Spector concocted the wall of sound from an orchestra of guitars, strings, drums, pianos, chimes, castanets, and whatever else was gathering dust in the closets of Gold Star Studios, scores of musiciansāfrom Brian Wilson to the Beatles to Bruce Springsteenāhave chased its elusive, ineffable magic.
Johnny Marr - Spirit Power and Soul (Live)
Johnny Marrās versions of the wall of sound, however, are highly original and distinctive. They are marked by deep resourcefulness and a gift for achieving wall-of-sound grandeur and scale through the humble medium of multitracked guitar. And from the Smithsā first LPs to his latest release, Fever Dreams Pts 1-4, Marr achieved this wizardry by mining a seemingly endless vein of riffs and through his penchant for guitar arrangementātalents cultivated through intuition, passionate listening, and a boundless, post-modern knack for tastefully blending influences.
As formidable as Marrās arranging abilities, melodic instincts, and sense of musical recall are, they all find realization in hands driven by Swiss-watch timing, economy, and percussive potency. And though heāll be the first to tell you heās not a musical technician, he is, in many ways, as complete a musician as you could ever know.
Johnny Marr with his closest comrade, the Fender Jaguar, at L.A.ās Teragram Ballroom.
Photo by Debi Del Grande
I was really struck by the bigness of Fever Dreams Pts 1-4. I pictured you making this record, amid lockdown, making music for the clubs we hoped to return to again. Even the picture of you on the coverāyou next to the Fender Showmanāseemed like a totemic suggestion of longing for big sounds. I think that was subconscious. I say subconscious because I started writing it before Covid and had this idea that I wanted to do a double LP, and because it was going to be a double, I thought it could be expansive. I just had this idea that (the double LP format) would give me a lot of space. But, of course, with the way things turned out, I ended upāand I must confess, illegallyāgoing alone into my studio space, which is the top floor of an old factory, staring out at my Mini, which was the only car in this vast parking lot, and working like that for weeks.
So, I ended up very aware of all this idea of space, which is even why the sky is so blue on the cover. I took all the equipment in the space out for that shoot to signify the way I was feeling about all that. There were also these nocturnal themes that emerged. I think a lot of people were lying awake wondering if they still had a job and worrying about their businesses. So, a lot of the songs reference those feelingsālike āLightning People:ā āI canāt sleep/static sheets/cries that put me on my kneesāāthat idea of a storm coming.
I made the assumption that the part of my audience that listens most closely and that Iāve built up over the last 40 years or whatever, that they are living similar lives to what I was talking about. So, I didnāt have a concept, but I did have a sort of nagging agendaāthat the album would be expansive and that I would tackle feelings about the psychology and predicaments of being a modern person.
āYou know that concept of work/life balance? I donāt really have that concept. I hear good things about it and maybe I should try it out.ā
The rhythmic drive and dance feel of many of the tunes also struck me as nocturnal. Was that a conscious thing? Well, itās funny how some things turn out. I started writing the album and just a few weeks into it, got the call to work on the Bond film [No Time to Die]. Thereās a lot of downtime in that kind of situation, so I started working on the song āReceiver.ā And as you said, it sounded to me like the atmosphere of being in a nightclubālike those I used to go to in [London neighborhood] Euston at the end of the ā80sāfinding myself, you know, still there at 5:40 in the morning. So that song is about transmitting and receiving erotic signals.
Thatās the beauty of songwriting. Sometimes you mix and match images or sometimes a concept comes first. The same thing happened with āLightning People.ā I had that title, which to me sounded like a Staple Singers song or something, so it ended up with a sort of choir/gospel feel. Musically, you can still tell that itās coming from an indie rocker from Manchester, but the whole idea started from just that title. Lots of stuff still comes via the way people probably expect I write songs, too, which is to just sit down with a guitar. The last song, āHuman,ā is like that.
All the way back to the Smiths, youāve always evoked feelings vividly through purely instrumental meansāparticularly those feelings that that cross sadness and positivity. But you really went after it lyrically here. Well, in working with lyricists and paying attention to the ones I havenāt worked with, Iāve noticed that as a lyricist you have to be very self-aware and ask yourself, āWell, what am I really saying?ā And in the case of this album, I was asking myself how I was going to top an album that was really well-liked among my fans. I know what that feeling is like. I donāt like to call that āpressure,ā but thatās what it is.
Johnny Marrās Gear
Marr never tires of the guitar. āIf for some reason I was going to move to Bali and retire,ā he says, āit would be to play for eight or nine hours a day and really expand my vocabulary.ā
Photo by Debi Del Grande
Guitars
Signature Fender Jaguar
1973 Les Paul Custom
Gibson EDS-1275 doubleneck
Yamaha SG-1000
Yamaha SG-700
1963 Fender Jazzmaster
Martin D12-28
Auden acoustics, 6-string and 12-string
1984 or ā85 Gibson Les Paul with Bigsby
Gretsch 6120
Strings & Picks
Ernie Ball Power Slinky strings (.011ā.048)
DāAddario acoustic strings (.012ā.053)
Ernie Ball Medium picks
Amps
1969 Marshall plexi
HH Electronics transistor combo
Roland JC-120
1965 Deluxe Reverb
Fender Twin Reverb (black panel)
Kemper Profiler
Fender Bassman
Effects
MXR Flanger
Carl Martin AC-Tone
Carl Martin Plexitone
Carl Martin HeadRoom Reverb
Carl Martin Delayla
Carl Martin Chorus XII
Boss RT-20 Rotary Ensemble
Youāve experienced that pressure before: Trying to top Meat Is Murder with The Queen Is Dead. Before The Queen Is Dead, I remember a moment where I was walking through my kitchen and stopped in my tracks, just literally frozen, realizing what it was going to take to do that. And when I was doing Dusk with The The, I remember the feeling when Matt Johnson and I realized the record was going to completely dominate our lives for two years. And with this record, in particular, I probably was feeling the pressure of following Call the Comet, because I was literally writing 48 hours after the last show to support that record.
Was the decision to background guitars in some cases on this album also a response to that record? Deciding where guitars should sit in more electronic music is a balancing act. Itās very easy to get it wrong. One way Iāve done it wrong in the past is by not putting enough guitar on. Like with Electronicās second album, I was trying to make my guitar sound like a synth. But at the time, that was part of my agendaātaking guitars out, seeing what filters did, things like that.
But honestly, I donāt really like a lot of music that blends electronic music and guitars. So, when I do it, it has to be appropriate and really capture a feeling. I think I know enough to do that well now. A song like āArielāāa lot of people hear that as very ā80s, and the riff is built on a sequencer. But I made the riff really loud and itās a very ā80s, Roland Jazz Chorus riff. So, there I really doubled down on the contrast between the electronic and guitar elements. On āSpirit Power and Soul,ā if you take the guitar out, itās a totally different kind of track, and the guitar is backgrounded. So, I think I know how to find the right blend better these days.
Given that newfound freedom, did you write a lot more of these tracks from rhythmic underpinnings? It seems like working alone may have forced your hand in that respect. Yeah. I donāt mean to take any credit away from my amazing band, which has been with me for more than 10 years now. But the entire record was demoād and programmed with me playing everything on it. Then the band came in to make it sound more like āusā as a band. But things like āSpirit Power and Soul,ā I was hearing that sequencer pattern in my head long before I wrote the song, and I knew I wanted very much for it to sound like Giorgio Moroder, Kraftwerk, or Cabaret Voltaire but with guitars on it.
For Fever Dreams Pts 1-4, Johnny Marr worked alone in his studio, on the top floor of an old factory.
When I was in my teens, I had a tape player that I could overdub onāthis was before I had a Portastudioāand Iād get into obsessively layering. This album is really the grown-up version of that. Itās that same guy, but heās now been in The The, Modest Mouse, and all that stuff. And again, because I knew it was going to be a double album, I allowed myself to do whatever the hell I wanted. So, something like āLightning Peopleā and that gospel vibeāI never wouldāve done that on The Messenger or Playland because on those records I had these very specific and deliberate parameters I was trying to work within. Which can be a very good thing.
When youāre a writer, and particularly when youāre very young, things often become very much about what youāre not. But in this day and age, when you have a universe of plug-ins, instruments, and directions at your fingertipsānot only can you get option fatigue, but your music can become a stylistic hodgepodge. So usually, with the band I impose some restrictions that limit that. On this LP, though, I just stripped them away.
What did that feel like to embrace that freedom? Honestly, I didnāt even know I was doing it until much later. Because of the lockdown I was usually alone in the studio, so I thought, āWell, letās see what all these virtual keyboards and synths and machines that Iāve been buying for the past five years do.ā First, I had to spend a week getting really frustrated doing all the updates to the point where I donāt even really want to make music. But then Iād wake up after three hours of sleep with a song in my head and be ready to go.
Youāre a writer that famously goes on hot streaks and creative runs. Do you still experience that zombie-like sense of creative possession? And how readily are you able to tap into it? What tools do you use when you canāt tap into it? This thing youāre talking aboutāfinding inspiration and hopefully, some otherworldly placeāfinding that place is something that has driven me since I was a kid. But you know that concept of work/life balance? I donāt really have that concept. I hear good things about it and maybe I should try it out.
But without mythologizing things too much, when I make records, I tend to lock myself out of the house, or forget where Iāve left the car. I develop very odd sleeping patterns if I sleep at all. I decided many years ago that drugs, particularly cocaine, donāt do any good, and alcohol isnāt really good for my creative processāmaybe when youāre younger.
So, it gets back to that quote of Picassoās: āInspiration exists, but it has to find you working.ā In my own process, that means Iāll work on a songāand for it to snag me, the initial feeling has to be something like, āThis is the greatest thing that no one has ever heard.ā Thatās entirely subjective, but that energy will keep you locked in for a couple hours and if youāre really lucky youāll get on a real roll and youāll end up with something inspired. Sometimes you do something for a couple hours and you realize, āAh, this isnāt so great,ā and you have to drop it. Emotionally, that can take you down. Especially when you work with a band and spend a few weeks on something and decide, āNope, this isnāt cutting it.ā But things donāt always have to start out as esoteric to become esoteric. And as my friend Nick Cave says, āJust do the fucking work.ā
āYou still have to get in and do the work. This idea that a songwriter is walking in a supermarket one day, and someone in the next aisle says something and it instantly turns into a whole songā¦well, yeah, well that might work if youāre Smokey Robinson!ā
And alchemy can come from any stage of the creative processāwriting, mixingā¦. Yeah. One of the positive things that comes of being around and doing this for so long is you can look back and say, āOh, okay, thatās a song people still really like that Iām still playing in my set.ā And Iāll realize that it came about from fucking about on a bass line for 20 minutes. But then there are songs like āThe Headmaster Ritualā where I carried around a bit of it for a couple years, and then one day we needed a song, and I sped the fucking thing up and I heard it in a totally different way.
Neil Finn, who is a masterful songwriter, nailed it when he said: āThere is no formula for writing a song. Itās a mystery. Embrace the mystery.ā But you still have to get in and do the work. This idea that a songwriter is walking in a supermarket one day, and someone in the next aisle says something and it instantly turns into a whole song ⦠well, yeah, that might work if youāre Smokey Robinson!
But in my case, and certainly in the case of something like āSpirit Power and Soul,ā I really had to craft that one over weeks and weeks. So that one is an example of tenacity and staying true to a vision. If you get caught up too much in divine intervention, youāll wander around forever waiting for some melody that no oneās ever heard before. Itās in doing the work that you get there. Loads of great artists just write and write. I mentioned Nick Cave, he does it. Thom Yorke, he does it. Isaac Brock from Modest Mouseāhe would write an amazing string of lyrics and then just rinse it and start again.
Weāve talked a lot about how your songs have been part hard work, and part unexpected sources of inspiration. Do you find you have to sometimes pull away from the guitar to reignite your relationship with the instrument? Do you ever get alienated from the guitar? No. If anything, if for some reason I was going to move to Bali and retire, it would be to play for eight or nine hours a day and really expand my vocabulary. Generally, Iāll put a guitar [on a record] wherever I can. Because yāknow, when I was a kid, if you bought a Thin Lizzy record, when you dropped the needle on that record, you expected to hear guitar. But because Iām also a producer, I have to find where that guitar fits appropriately. I learned guitar at the same time that I was learning about production. I also learned how to play guitar by playing along with 45s. I never had a lesson and never bought books. So I think of myself as someone who makes records, and the way I make records is to write songs. But I love guitar records. So while Iāll try other things, Iāve also been known to turn to my band while weāre working on something and say, āThis needs a new intro, because weāre a guitar band.ā
The Smiths - Live The Tube Studio 1984 HD (Full Show)
At the height of their creative and performa- tive powers, Johnny Marr and the Smiths could effortlessly span mutated folk-rock jangle and deep indie-dance funk, as Marr does here with his legendary 1959 ES-355āa gift from Sire Records boss Seymour Stein.
Do you think the idiosyncrasies and individuality in your playing comes from being self-taught? What about your natural proclivities as an arranger? As a boy, a few of my pals were into playing guitar. They were really focused on āVoodoo Chileā or on what Steve Howe was doing. But I would listen to, say, the Patti Smith Groupās Radio Ethiopia, something like āAsk the Angels,ā a song thatās really simple and straightforwardājust an A minor and an Fāand Iād think: āThatās a really cool song, it starts with power chords, okay, thatās a little like the Who. Cool I get that.ā But all of the sudden Iād notice thereās a piano playing eighth-notes that sounds like the Velvet Underground or the Stooges, so Iād end up trying to play the whole recordāthe guitar sand the pianoārather than just the guitar part.
I was also very into Sparks, which isnāt guitar music per se, but the way the guitar is integrated is very, āOkay, now were going to use a fucking guitar!ā I was just really into the sound of records as a whole. So I thought a lot about layering and when I got a machine I could overdub on, I started layering 18 guitars. By the time I got the Smiths together I had it down to 15 while trying to make it sound like just eight.
Part of that ability to layer and not create a complete mess seems related to your acute sense of rhythm and timing. Thatās especially apparent in some of the Smithsā licksāin a single part I can sometimes hear not only Keith Richards, but Keith Richards and Brian Jones, with some Steve Cropper sixths on top and Leo Nocentelliās right hand in the same song. Was that skill cultivated from the intellectual process of breaking down how a record works? I found around 14 that the Rolling Stones records from the ā60s, in particular, really blew my mind. Back then, that was unusual. Because my friends were jumping around to the British pop groupsāthings like the English Beat. But Iād hear records like āThe Last Time,ā and even though I knew it was old, I just thought, āWow, this sounds better than anything around now.ā So I really studied thatāreally getting into those singles, how they were put together, and the sound of them. I realized that Keith and Brian were doing this meshing thing. āThe Last Timeā is a good example; so is āItās All Over Now.ā I really picked up the soul stuff from those guys. But a lot of the rhythmic drive youāre talking about is just my personality and plain exuberanceāhyperactivity really. Thereās a song on The Messenger, āGenerate, Generate.ā I mean, thatās really a tribute to my hyperactivity (laughs). I was quite into being hyper!
Youāve always valued art and seem to have derived a lot of your energy from the notion of a bohemian life. I was always moved by your relationship and loyalty to Manchester and what that place meant as sort of a creative organism and catalyst to your development. If youāve got an artistic temperament, you can find inspiration in almost any place. But yeah, Manchester being so urban and musically orientatedāthere was a lot to rally around. When my kids were teens, me and their mother brainwashed them into having weekend jobs in Manchester, so they knew what it was to finish their shift in the city on a summerās night, just before the clubs were opening, when all the shop workers are starting to go to the bars and exchange ideas, and all the fashionistas are lurking around. Itās really magical. Urban life is changing and subterranean life is changing. But young eyesāthey donāt know different. They donāt know that a place isnāt Cleveland in the ā70s or New York in the ā60s. Theyāll make the best of it. There are always great bands coming out. Right now, as we speak, thereās some band of girls and boys getting together in Williamsburg, finding their voiceāand it will be great.
The Deep Cuts: Johnny Marrās Gear in His Own Words
Anyone thatās followed Johnny Marrās career knows the man is a certifiable guitar addict, with a Fort Knox worth of killer vintage instruments to utilize at the turn of a whim. Marr rather religiously used his signature Fender Jaguar over the last several years, but he reached deeper into his collection for the many less quintessentially Marr sounds on Fever Dreams Pts 1-4. Marr explains what he used in great detail below.
āA lot of my gear for this record was really deliberately selected, and I really honed in on a few things. Iāve got two 1973 Les Paul Customs I used for some of the darker sounds. You hear that on āReceiver.ā I ran those through my old MXR Flanger and either my Marshall Plexi or my HH transistor combo. Those things were part of the stylistic structure I wanted to maintain.
I played my signature Jaguar quite a lot. But since I got more into the movie soundtrack work, Iāve used a lot more 12-string, and for that Iāve been playing a Gibson EDS-1275 doubleneck because itās the best 12-string sound. With all that mass, and the humbuckersāand if you can get it together rightāall the extra resonance from the 6-string pickups, you get all kinds of overtones. Thereās a couple Yamaha SG-1000s and an SG-700 on the record, which all have the Spinex pickups but sound pretty different. I used my ā63 Jazzmaster, too.
For acoustics, I played a few guitars by Auden, a company here in the UKāa 12- and 6-stringāas well as the Martin D12-28 Iāve used since the Smiths. I also used the guitar that Iāve probably played more than any guitar in my lifeāthe red 1984 or ā85 Les Paul with a Bigsby that I played a lot with the Smiths. I got that around the Meat Is Murder album. Itās great for clean stuff. A lot of stuff that folks think is a Rickenbacker is the Les Paul tracked with my Jaguar or tracked with itself in coil (split) mode. If I want to get a little natural chorus, that guitar is perfect because Iāll put a part down with both pickups on one side of the stereo image then put a split-coil track on the other side. The effect of the same guitar with these slightly different tones helps create that sound. For whammy-stuff and dive bombs, Iāll often use a Gretsch 6120 from the Smiths days. Another big part of this album, and the movie stuff, is one of my signature Jags with a Fernandes sustainer pickup in it.
Amp-wise, apart from the HH, I used a lot of the same amps Iāve had since the Smiths: my Roland JC-120, a ā65 Deluxe Reverb, a black-panel Fender Twin Reverb that I use with the Gretsch. Occasionally Iāll use the Kemper for overdubs or a Bassman or the ā69 Marshall Plexi and Super Reverb amps I used with Modest Mouse. Effects-wise, I use a lot of Carl Martin stuff: The AC-Tone, Plexitone, HeadRoom Reverb, Delayla, and Chorus XII are all great. And Iāll use the Boss RT-20 Rotary Sound a lot, too.
Iāve gone down the weird road before. But if I canāt use all this stuff and my fingers to squeeze out the right sound, Iām either not trying hard enough, or what Iām looking for is wrong. Someday Iād like to find something that will replicate the weirdness of Johnny Thundersā 2-string bends. But Iām always looking for something that will walk the line between musical and radical.ā āJohnny Marr
How does a legacy artist stay on top of his game? The pianist, hit singer-songwriter, producer, and composer talks about the importance of musical growth and positive affirmation; his love for angular melodicism; playing jazz, pop, classical, bluegrass, jam, and soundtrack music; and collaborating with his favorite guitarists, including Pat Metheny and Jerry Garcia.