Ha ha, thanks! Yeah, the tabs are my own take on them…
however two important credits to give. First, I regularly trade work and ideas with a good friend of mine who used to also play in the band with me: Peter Weldon. He also used to contribute guitar tabs to the old Micturion site if you've seen that. He's the only guy I know that's as neurotic about this stuff as I am, and I think it's fair to say anything I write here about my process probably applies to him as well. There have been some songs he's worked out before me, and I have made very few edits to before deeming them accurate. I'd say well over half that tabs I have are implicitly a joint effort with him. Our arguments about the most minute details of this stuff are legendary.
The other credit: I didn't start from absolute scratch on any song unless I had to. It's been half research and half grunt work. Certain songs more on one side of that balance than the other, depending on how much information was already out there about it. It all ends up feeling like archaeology. Piecing together bits and pieces from many sources, taking the good, leaving the bad, and hopefully ending up with the most complete picture possible. Forgive the lengthy response, I figured I'd just explain since I talk so much shit about accuracy on these forums. My approach has been this...
As you know, there are many books out there, all of which are at best only semi-accurate. I think I've owned them all over the years, that
Louder Than Bombs: Off The Record being the best, though still not flawless. (
Side note: I first picked up a couple of used copies many years ago on eBay, and that was the holiest of grails at the time... until it showed up on your site, accessible to everyone. Oh well, the monopoly was fun while it lasted. ) So anyhow, the books -- even just the piano chord books -- are a good place to start to at least get the broad basics. And in some cases like the LTB book, you get pretty far along just from that. On your site, I know you have sagely made use of the various interviews where Johnny had mentioned how he used this or that tuning, or used a certain guitar when recording a certain part. Simon Goddard's
Songs That Saved Your Life is an incomparable resource for that kinda stuff too, and in fact any time I'd take on learning a new song, that's usually where I would start. To get the context of the song as well as hear about any rare alternate takes, live variations, bootlegs, etc. Coupled with actually tracking down and hearing the live bootlegs, it's a great way to find what little things Johnny occasionally threw in (special intro to Miserable Lie, the "Day Tripper" solo in Jeane, etc.), which I then try to sneak in at my own shows as a nod to any die-hards in the crowd who might actually know where I got it.
And then there are the average tabs that people have put out there on the web in various places. And then in the past couple years when so many people started posting their own attempts on YouTube, it only made sense to give them a watch and see what they may have figured out which I may have missed myself. And even other tribute bands' respective fake Johnny Marrs were good places to get ideas. I maintain that These Charming Men's guitarist is the most accurate out there... well, he and I anyway.
So all that's the research or "standing on the shoulders of giants" part of it.
Then in terms of the grunt work, for each song I'd take all that stuff I found and see how close it was to the album. In some cases, the available tabs were pretty close, or else someone out there already did most of the work pretty accurately in a video (marrzipan's "Suffer Little Children" and "I Don't Owe You Anything" come to mind, as well as pljnr's "Reel Around The Fountain" as you pointed out... all great but rare examples of complete and relatively accurate renditions). So I'd compare to the album and start trying to figure out which parts were dead on, and which needed refining. And of course in some cases, there's nowhere to start. No one out there had a tab for "Never Had No One Ever" or "Work Is A Four-Letter Word" and so on. Those less popular songs I'd end up having to do from scratch. I'd take the studio version(s) and listen to them on loop in my car for a few days, mentally picking out the layered parts in my head. Then of course live bootlegs are great because you know it's just one guitar part isolated (or two if Craig was there too), so you can really hear what's going on. Slowing those down on the computer to work out some of the tricky parts. Watching bootleg videos of their live shows to catch a glimpse of Johnny's left hand to see where it was on the neck (helpful for those songs where you could potentially play identical notes in a few different positions but you want to know how
he chose to play it). So ultimately it just comes down to a ton of patience to really go note by note. Starting with what others have done (whenever possible), then trying to improve it. I've never run across a tab or video that I thought was perfect as-is.
What I've tried to end up with is what I believe to be the most accurate transcriptions out there (though admittedly some of the first few songs I learned years back could probably use a revisit... I'm much better at picking this stuff out now than when I started). I've got 70 of the 72 Smiths songs "done" at the moment, and I like to think that by now I'm in Johnny's head at least a little so they come a bit easier than the used to. That being said, of course I'd love to sit down with the man himself for a few days and have him lay down the law about this stuff once and for all, but short of that, I think I've got a lot of them pretty damn accurate. Again, no song ever feels "done" though. After a couple months, I'll go back and listen to it and hear something else I missed. Such is the magic of Marr. But as I said, someday when it no longer feels like that excruciating accuracy and attention to detail is a crucial differentiator for
This Charming Band, and with Peter's blessing and credit duly noted of course, I'd love to share our humble tabs with the world... most likely through you.
P.S. If you ever start a Morrissey Solo tab site, I've got a few dozen of those worked out too. Usually way easier to pick out because the individual guitar parts are typically simpler and even panned hard stereo left and right... so you can listen to one channel at a time and hear what each guitar is doing. That's a good tip even for some Smiths material and especially with live albums like Rank and Beethoven Was Deaf. You can often hear each guitar virtually isolated. (You're welcome, competing tribute band guitarists. Heh heh...
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