johnny-marr-headmaster-ritual

watch Johnny Marr teach you how to play The Smiths' "The Headmaster Ritual"

johnny-marr-headmaster-ritual

With everybody stuck inside quarantining, it’s a good time to learn a new skill, or get better at one. Like cooking, or playing the guitar. On that latter front, here’s Johnny Marr with an instructional video on how to play “The Headmaster Ritual,” the brilliant opening track on The Smiths‘ 1985 album, Meat is Murder. It’s one of the Smiths’ best songs (and this blogger’s all-time favorite Smiths song) and a prime example of the innovation Marr brought to guitar music in the early ’80s. Demonstrating on his signature Fender Jaguar, Johnny notes the song came about with him fooling around with an open E tuning. “I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote it but I quite liked that. It’s a handy device for cutting out the brain static that gets in the way of coming up with chord changes.” Watch Johnny’s tutorial, and listen to The Smiths’ original, below.

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