“He would always show me this really horrible Stratocaster that had nine pickups on it”: The Cribs' Ryan Jarman explains why a guitar swap with Johnny Marr didn't work out

Over the years, Johnny Marr has developed a reputation for gifting and lending out his guitars to his musician friends – including the likes of Oasis' Noel Gallagher and Radiohead's Thom Yorke, to name a select few.

Now The Cribs have shared a story about a “talismanic” guitar trade that Marr proposed during the time he joined the British indie rockers – from 2008 to 2011, spawning the album Ignore the Ignorant – recalling Marr’s ‘joke’ attempt to swap Ryan Jarman's tasty ’70s Mustang for his nine-pickup Stratocaster.

“Me and Johnny were supposed to do a guitar swap when we first started working together, because I had this white ’70s Mustang,” Jarman tells Guitar World in an upcoming interview.

“It was my main guitar at the time, and he really liked the album that was on, The New Fellas. He kept saying, ‘We should do a guitar swap!’ And also, it was like a talismanic kind of thing, as he was joining the band.

“Eventually, I was like, ‘Let's do it!’ Then, the next time we'd be at his house, I'd be like, ‘Come on then Johnny, what guitar you gonna give me [for the trade]?’

“He had an amazing guitar collection... and he would always show me this really horrible Stratocaster that had nine pickups on it… this stupid guitar that was in his studio. It became a joke that every time I would bring up swapping the guitars, he would be like, ‘I've got it for you here!’”

As for whether the swap did actually happen, well, let's just say that Jarman never ended-up with a nine-pickup Strat.

“It was one of those things where it was joked about so often that you started to think, 'Is this actually what the swap's going to be?’” recalls bassist Luke Jarman. “[But] I think he likes that guitar now. That black Strat with all the pickups!”

Indeed, Marr memorably put the guitar to use in his video for Spirit Power and Soul.

“It weighed an absolute ton,” recalls Ryan. “I remember the first time he showed me... we were stoned in his studio – when I first started going up there, after we decided we were going to write songs together. We would just sit in his studio all night. It was really fun – and he'd be showing me, like, ‘Who in their right mind built this?’”

Guitar World’s interview with the Cribs will be published in the coming days.

And, speaking of vintage guitars, Jarman recently recounted how one of his other Mustangs miraculously ended up in the hands of contemporary British indie powerhouses The 1975 and Beabadoobee nearly two decades after it was stolen.