Hendrix’s ‘flaming’ guitar sold for 280,000
A collector has paid 280,000 at auction for the first guitar set alight on stage by rock legend Jimi Hendrix.
A delighted Daniel Boucher, 51, of Boylston, Massachusetts, said: “I thought I’d have to pay a little bit more for the guitar, actually. I am going to play it, I hope some of it rubs off on me.
He added: “It changed music, he raised the bar so high you couldn’t get over it. Obviously it is an investment, it couldn’t not be an investment for that amount of money, but I bought it because I like it.”
Mr Boucher who plays the guitar himself said that he would have the get the instrument converted for right hand playing - Hendrix was left-handed.
Hendrix torched the 1965 Fender Stratocaster at the end of his show at the Astoria in Finsbury Park, north London, in March 1967.
But roadies put out the flames while Hendrix was being treated for minor burns and his press officer, Tony Garland, stored it in his parents’ garage in Hove, East Sussex.
Hendrix later became famous for burning his guitars on stage but this instrument remained undiscovered until last year when it was unearthed by Garland’s nephew.
Another bidder at the auction in east London spent 240,000 on the first management contract between The Beatles and their manager Brian Epstein at the the Fame Bureau’s It’s More Than Rock And Roll auction at the Idea Generation Gallery.
The document, billed as the most important music contract of all time, belonged to Epstein, the businessman who helped launch the band after seeing them play at Liverpool’s now famous Cavern Club.
Jim Morrison’s last notebook of lyrics and poetry penned in Paris in 1971 just months before he died sold for 58,000.
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