Dylan’s electric guitar sets auction record
Fender Stratocaster he used to make rock history in 1965 sells for $965,000
NEW YORK —TheguitarBobDylan played at Newport when he famously went electric has been sold at auction for $965,000.
The lot was sold Friday to an absentee buyer. Christie’s says it surpassed pre-sale estimates and set a record for a guitar sold at auction.
Dylan’s sunburst Fender Stratocaster made rock history when he played it at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The festival was a defining moment that marked Dylan’s move from acoustic folk to electric rock ’n’ roll.
Now viewed as a moment that irrevocably changed popular music, Dylan’s three-song electric set at the Rhode Island festival was met by boos from folk purists who viewed him as a traitor.
He returned for an acoustic encore with It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.
The pre-sale estimate by Christie’s auction house for the guitar, which was sold with its original black leather strap and Fender hard shell case, was $300,000 to $500,000.
The previous record for a guitar sold at auction is Eric Clapton’s Fender, nicknamed “Blackie,” which sold at Christie’s for $959,500 in 2004.
Christie’s also sold five lots of hand- and typewritten lyric fragments found inside the guitar case — early versions of some of Dylan’s famous songs.
The lyrics for sale include In the Darkness of Your Room, an early draft of Absolutely Sweet Marie from Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde album and three songs from the record’s 1965 recording session that weren’t released until the 1980s: Medicine Sunday (the draft is titled Midnight Train), Jet Pilot and I Wanna Be Your Lover.
With a classic sunburst finish and original flat-wound strings, Dylan’s guitar has been in the possession of a New Jersey family for nearly 50 years. Dylan left it on a private plane piloted by the owner’s late father, Vic Quinto, who worked for the musician’s manager.
His daughter, Dawn Peterson, has said that her father asked the management company what to do with the guitar but nobody ever got back to him.
Last year, she took it to the PBS show History Detectives to try to have it authenticated. The program enlisted the expertise of Andy Babiuk, a consultant to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and owner of an upstate New York vintage instrument shop, and Jeff Gold, a Dylan memorabilia expert. Both men unequivocally declared the artifacts belonged to Dylan.
“I was able to match the wood grain on the body of the guitar ... and the unique grain of the rosewood fingerboard,” Babiuk said, noting no two wood grains are alike.
“Based on the sum of the evidence, I was able to identify that this guitar was the one that Bob Dylan had played in Newport.”
Dylan and Peterson recently settled a legal dispute over the items. The terms weren’t disclosed.