That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

"My favourite song on that LP now is 'That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore'. I think Morrissey is incredible on that, the end is brilliant."

"On Smiths songs such as "How Soon Is Now?" and "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore", I turned the 2" tape over and learned to play the parts backward."

"I played the part, turned the tape over and learned it backwards, played the backward part with the tape the right way round then turned the volume up and down. The intro is a Martin D-28 acoustic with Lexicon Reverb on."

"'That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore' was always one of my favorites. It just fell through the roof. It was one of those lovely times when the feeling just falls down on you from the ceiling somewhere and it almost plays itself. It gives an almost esoteric feeling."

"When you go out live you want to give people at least a general impression of the whole thing, but if you're on your own, you end up compromising a lot of the chord inversions and inflections that were there in the overdubs. You generally end up being reduced to playing that big-sounding first position chord. With my one-man band approach I managed that fairly successfully for a while, but other times it didn't really work. From a guitar point of view 'That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore' could have been absolutely incredible live, but in the end it was only good."

-Johnny Marr

A Guitar Pro tab file has been uploaded here.


Here are the tabs from the Singles book:












Here are the scans from the Complete Chord Dictionary:





Here are the scans from the Meat Is Murder piano songbook with guitar chord boxes. Thanks to Ted Maul for these scans.










Current definitive version from karloslim:



He also does a slower tutorial version:




jl92509 plays the bass part along with karloslim's version above:




Another cool version from juttkeys::




Here's theglimpse with a really neat version... he plays the bass part with his feet on a synth. Pay attention to the outro where he uses a looping pedal of some kind, to amazing effect:




Here's a version by 00000999998888 on acoustic:




dhowellbassist does a nice multi-tracked version, with the backwards guitar parts at the end:




Daniel Earwicker does another amazing multi tracked version here:




Here's davidguitarist91 on his Les Paul:




Here's WilliamFs11 on acoustic: