The Headmaster Ritual

The nuts and bolts of The Headmaster Ritual came together during the first album, and I just carried on playing around with it. It started off as a very sublime sort of Joni Mitchell-esque chord figure; I played it to Morrissey but we never took it further. Then, as my life got more and more intense, so did the song. The bridge and the chorus part were originally for another song, but I put them together with the first part. That was unusual for me; normally I just hammer away at an idea until I've got a song. It's in open D turning, with a capo at the second fret. Again, it was heavily overdubbed. It was a very exciting period for me - realising I could hijack 16 tracks all for myself.

I wrote 'The Headmaster Ritual' on acoustic. It's in an open-D tuning with a capo at the 2nd fret. I fancied the idea of a strange Joni Mitchell tuning, and the actual progression is like what she would have done had she been an MC5 fan or a punk rocker. I knew pretty much what every guitar track would be before we started. There are two tracks of Martin D-28, and the main riff is two tracks of Rickenbacker. I wasn't thinking specifically of the Beatles' 'Day Tripper' -- even though it sounds like it -- but I did think of it as a George Harrison part. The Rickenbacker belonged to Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music; I'm told that it was originally owned by Roger McGuinn. All the guitars are in open tuning, except for one of the chorus guitars, which is done on an Epiphone in Nashville tuning, capoed at the 2nd fret.

I've got an Epiphone Coronet with one pickup, and I string it with the high strings from a 12-string set. It's a really zingy, trebly guitar. I used that on a lot of things that people think are 12-string, like the end of 'The Headmaster Ritual'.

For my part, 'The Headmaster Ritual' came together over the longest period of time I've ever spent on a song. I first played the riff to Morrissey when we were working on the demos for our first album with Troy Tate. I nailed the rest of it when we moved to Earls Court.

'The Headmaster Ritual is one of my favorite guitar tracks.I wrote it over a period of two years, always looking for the next section I needed. I saw the Radiohead version, yeah. I showed Ed O'Brien the chords, but maybe he was looking out the window!

- Johnny Marr

First of all, here is a fairly recent video of Johnny playing the song on his old '85 Les Paul Standard:


I've located a Guitar Pro file for this that is pretty accurate, and I have uploaded it here.



Here are the scans from the Smiths Best Complete Score:













Here are the scans from the Complete Chord Dictionary:





Here are the scans from the Meat Is Murder piano songbook with guitar chords, for completists. Thanks to Ted Maul for these scans:









Daniel Earwicker's first take on the song:




And his second:




djs1986, on guitar and bass:




Here's Radioheads version:




Here's eluedy with his version, my favorite of these.




Here is chiasson65, with an amazing bass cover:




Here's WilliamFs11 on acoustic, in open E. Stunning.




Here's an awesome version by markpaterson on a Epiphone Elite Riviera through a JC-120:




Here's adameater doing the chorus part on acoustic:




Here's PinkMoonchild08 on a tele, appropriately phased-out:




Here's nicknoh69 on a goldtop les paul. He really nails it:




dhowellbassist does another great cover here:




abyface does a great full-length version:




Here's daveyc25 on a Ric 330:




Here's barjabulon with a close-up view:




Here's ecb97tp on acoustic:




Here's stereovaritone on a red hollowbody:




Here's Jonasmacca on a tele:

Bigmouth Strikes Again

"With 'Bigmouth Strikes Again', I was trying to write my 'Jumping Jack Flash.' I wanted something that was a rush all the way through, without a distinct middle eight as such. I thought the guitar breaks should be percussive, not too pretty or chordal -- I wanted a cheap, Les Paul sort of sound. The main riff is based on an Am shape, with a capo at the 4th fret. I buried this one little guitar part in just the right place, so it sounds like overtones of the main part, but it's really there. On the first of the two breaks, I'm playing slide through an AMS harmonizer, really high. For the second one, I used a Gibson Les Paul Black Beauty and a Rickenbacker together, playing a regular Em shape, but it's sampled and triggered off the snare drum roll."

"People sometimes ask me who Anne Coates is, but it's actually a name I made up. The high, synthetic-sounding backing vocal on that song was down to a bit of kit called an AMS Harmoniser."

"[Morrissey’s high-pitched vocals were] done with a harmoniser, we just put the vocal through it and set it at some strange interval. We tried a few intervals until we found one that was weird in the right way. Later on we invited Kirsty McColl to come down. Morrissey and I had wanted to meet her because we were fans of her single 'They Don’t Know'. It seemed like a good way to meet her, to invite her to come down and get in on the session, which was unusual because we didn’t have a lot of guest musicians. She came down and she only appeared on the "ooohs" that appear in the guitar break. That was the start of an amazing friendship and partnership that I had with her, so a lot happened on that day, it was a big day for me."

- Johnny Marr

Nanuke has been kind enough to provide these scans from the "Smiths Best" complete scores book published by Shinko Music in Japan. This book is even rarer than the Louder Than Bombs: Off The Record book, so this is just fantastic to have access to it. At this point, I think we have almost every published version of Bigmouth now available on this page.

lunachangue sent me this rough translation of the performance notes:

this is strong accoustic 16 beat cutting guitar tune. for this song side guitar(or 2nd guitar?) use capo 4 fret and C#m E F# A B chords turns to Am C D F G, so turns to simple chords to play, but this songs speed is so fast and need sustainable power, so you not to be strain, right hand need to be smooth and fast,

not only guitar, but also bass and drum as well need speed and keep 'groove'
drums high-hat and guitar cutting must be same timing

D part slide guitar is like string sound effect on this song, If you play improvised slide guitar, you really need to practice hard, but this songs slide play is simple so good to start slide play from this song as your first step.

C and G　part harmonized woman chorus gives mysterious effect on this song, if you play in band it will be good by woman chorus support.

On D part there's electric piano, but its not an important part so you can omit when you play in band.











Here is another tab, along with 2 backing tracks which have been uploaded here(right click to save as).











Here are the guitar and bass tabs from Guitar For The Practicing Musician, July 1990 issue. Notice the first guitar break calls for a slide part played at the 31st fret(!).










Here are the scans from the Singles tab book:









I have uploaded 2 Guitar Pro tab files here. Compare them to the tabs above.

I have also added the pages from the Queen Is Dead piano songbook with guitar chord boxes:










Here is Johnny doing a super quick run through on his Martin D-35:




Here is Daniel Earwickers awesome take, including the bass part:




Another cool version from lunachangue:




Daveyc25, rhythm on a Rickenbacker:




From nicknoh69, a pretty complete version:




thirdynumberone includes the second guitar break in his version:




Here's IFoughtTheLaw369, doing the whole song:




Here's a slowed down, simplified lesson from michaeltonge1:




Here's kusaka2580 on a Ric:




Here's dhowellbassist on a Ric 12. Awesome job on the break!




Here's 325C58 on acoustic, hofner bass and les paul:




Daniel Earwicker also added guitars and drums to 325C58's video:




Here's johnnymare, playing along to a backing track:




Here's sonofdrcross, doing Rourke's entire bass part:




Here's davidguitarist91 on his Les Paul: