NAMM 2021: Boss honours Johnny Marr with lifetime achievement award

NAMM 2021: Boss has honoured former The Smiths guitar player Johnny Marr with their lifetime achievement award at the brand’s sixth-annual award ceremony, as part of NAMM’s 2021 Believe In Music Week.

Famed for his work in The Smiths, Marr has gone on to be one of the most revered guitar players in the world, with a respectable solo career under his belt alongside major contributions to Modest Mouse, The Cribs and his recent work with the composer Hans Zimmer and Bille Eilish.

In a video curated for Believe In Music Week, members of the Boss team congratulated Marr on his achievement, outlining his lengthy relationship with the brand and his continued use of Boss pedals. Jamie Franklin, head of artist relations for Roland Europe, congratulated Johnny Marr on the achievement, outlining the reasoning for his award: “Going back to the Boss Flanger, DD-3 and up to the JC120, in terms of inspiring a generation to pick up a guitar and think differently in terms of tone, melody and writing life-chaning music, no one comes to mind more than Johnny Marr in my opinion.”

Elsewhere, his peers and fellow Boss artists congratulated him on his achievement, with Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick simply saying: “Congratulations on your lifetime achievement award, sweet!”

Stephen Street, producer for The Smiths, The Cranberries amongst others also contributed: “Just want to congratulate you on this much deserved award. I remember working alongside you on many sessions where you were always interested in pushing the boundarise of what you could do with your guitar… it’s only right that you should be getting this award. I look back on those times very fondly and took a lot of inspiration from you.”

Iggy Pop added: “Johnny is the last great innovative electric guitar stylist who is able to put it over in popular music.”

Marr himself also spoke to the panel, revealing that “it’s a great honour to be given this award, it’s not something that I expected. It’s come as a great surprise. The first pedal I ever got was the purple BF-2 Flanger, in 1980. The other thing that occurred to me was that buying those pedals, they were affordable but didn’t break!”

Watch the full ceremony above.

For more news from NAMM 2021, click here.