The Guardian - Friday August 25, 2006

Bernard Butler talking to Amy Fleming

"Return of the axe"

It's the most popular instrument in schools and sales are at an all-time high. What is it about the guitar? Bernard Butler, the musical genius behind Suede, celebrates the glory of six strings.

When I heard today that guitar sales are significantly up - they hit a record £110m last year, and guitars are now the most popular instruments in schools - I thought it was great, and I can't say I was surprised. When I was eight, I played the violin, and I used to get beaten up and spat at on the bus for it. But now my eight-year-old son, who attends a school in the same London borough, is taught the guitar along with most of his classmates. Some days it seems as if every kid you pass is carrying a huge guitar over their shoulder. There they are, learning music on £30 instruments, and then boring old dad will play the Stones in the car one day and they'll make the connection. They'll hear the riff to Satisfaction and realise they know how it works.

The guitar music that kids are listening to today is very inspiring. Jack White's riffs for the White Stripes and the Raconteurs are just what kids want to learn. If I was learning now, the riff to Seven Nation Army is the first thing I'd want to master, and it's really simple. You could get it in a day, with a bit of dedication, just repeating it because you love the primal sound of it.

I've never had a lesson in my life. When I was 13 my brothers got a terrible electric guitar from a catalogue but they got bored of it. So I took it and sat down with a chord book, and tried to work it out. Then I heard Johnny Marr playing with the Smiths and that was it. From then on, every record I got, I listened to once, then worked out the guitar parts. To this day I can play every Smiths song, something of which I am very proud.

And that's the traditional folk way of learning. Dylan did it. Bert Jansch [an acoustic folk legend who inspired Jimmy Page, among others] grew up listening to this canon of Scottish folk songs and when he made his first record he had to borrow a guitar to do it because he didn't own one. My folk music was the Smiths, New Order and Joy Division, who were pretty alternative at the time. That was my secret life as a teenager.

I've not bought a new guitar for 10 years. I've got 13 or 14, but I use two all the time. The one I play the most is my 1960 Gibson 355, which cost me £4,000 in the early 90s - I wouldn't be able to afford it now. I always wanted it. There's a photo of my dad from before I was born in which he has a big DA [duck's ass haircut] and shades and this bumcreaser suit, and I was convinced he was Roy Orbison. He played Orbison records a lot. Orbison had a big red semi-acoustic, too.

It turned out my dad wasn't Orbison after all. But at the start of 1984, Johnny Marr started using a 355, and I remember making this connection when I saw it on the telly and thought, "Right, OK, that's what I want do, and I want do it with that thing as well."

I got one as soon as I could afford it and I use it to death. It's 46 years old now, and an amazing instrument. It's a posher version of the 335. It has more controls and it has double binding on the headstock, where the tuners go, with mother-of-pearl inlay, an ebony fingerboard and a beautiful neck. It feels great under your fingers.

I've tried other guitars since then and they're just wrong. I hardly ever change my strings. I've dropped my guitars loads of times on stage and they look better and better the more chipped they become. A guitar is like a pair of boots. They've got to be a bit battered, and that takes a few years.

Johnny Marr gave me one of his own guitars, and it's my pride and joy. It's a 12-string Gibson 335 that he played on most of Strangeways Here We Come, and a few records before that. I remember watching the Smiths on The Tube playing Sheila Take a Bow, admiring Johnny's 12-string. Fast-forward 10 years: I became friends with him and he gave that guitar to me. I almost died. He knows I'm a huge fan and wouldn't have even made a record if it wasn't for him.

Now it's cool to have a cheap guitar again, and with technology you can get good stuff for cheap, and get modelling pedals and amps that digitally re-create the sound of vintage guitars and amps. Some boring old 50-year-old in a shop might say, "It's not the same," but to a kid who can afford it, they'd think, "Wicked, I can play something straight away." Most kids have computers and you can plug a guitar into a computer and make a record easily. And through MySpace you can target the people who would want to hear your record, which is great.

It's not cool right now to be technically extraordinary. The Libertines couldn't play guitar to save their lives. The attitude that you can pick up an instrument that's out of tune and thrash away at it, singing to your heart's content, is massively inspiring. We're fed up with supershiny pop records, and the monster stadium-rock bands. When I produced some of the Libertines' records, Carl Barat would come up with the simplest riffs and he'd not be able to play them properly, and it was brilliant. He didn't think in terms of complex scales and notes, just something to sing along to.

Even Bert Jansch hates the "extraordinary, legendary folk guitarist" stuff that's written about him. He has incredible character in his playing, which is actually kind of of slapdash, inspired by odd things he happened to pick up on, but he's not the most technically adept.

I met him six or seven years ago at his London flat. I said hello, he gave me a cup of tea, and then we just started playing. He's a man of very few words, which I love. He lives near me and when everything's a bit crazy in my life I can go there, and you can pretty much guarantee he won't say anything all afternoon - we'll just drink some tea and play.

I don't go into guitar shops often. They are notoriously full of arseholes. You should never be intimidated by them. They hang their guitars on their walls. What's the point of having encyclopaedic knowledge of guitars if you do that?

If you want to learn, my advice is to buy the Smiths back catalogue and learn it and let it set you on fire. You reach a point where it gets hard but that was the stage I started writing my own stuff. Everyone has their own sound. You'd never mistake Jimi Hendrix or Jack White's sound.

I'd encourage anyone to get into it the cheapest way possible. I work at Edwyn Collins' studio - I'm sitting here now - and there are 20 guitars in front of me. They're all stuff you can find on eBay. They're not in the best state, but I'd rather that than a wall of polished Stratocasters.

I think music should be accessible. I hate people seeing it as a career option, where you must know all the references and read the right books. All that matters is the spark of creativity and injecting personality into it, which you can't do if you're just emulating Coldplay.

And it doesn't matter if you don't form a band. It's just good to have a musical instrument in your life, without thinking you have to be really successful at it. I hope these kids grow up having great experiences with guitar, because music leads to film, books, clothes. When they're 50 they can still be doing this very creative, soothing thing.

· Bernard Butler was talking to Amy Fleming.