Dylan's Electric Guitar From Newport Folk Up For Auction
posted in: Music News
There is controversy over the controversy… While the popular story has it that there was much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments when Bob Dylan plugged in at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, with folkie Pete Seeger supposedly trying to take an axe to the power lines backstage, Dylan’s organ player, Al Kooper, relates his memory (in his great memoir Backstage Passes And Backstabbing Bastards) that it was not a big deal at all, and that the crowd quite enjoyed the whole thing.
But when have facts gotten in the way of a popular legend? Dylan at the ’65 festival will forever be noted as a crucial, symbolic moment in rock and roll history, myth or not. And now, the symbolic key to that moment, the focus of all that supposed anguish and rebellion, Bob Dylan’s Fender Stratocaster guitar, is going on the auction block.
Dylan is no longer the owner of the guitar – he apparently left it on a plane decades ago, and after some legal back-and-forth, the pilot’s family ended up with it. The guitar will be auctioned off in New York today, and it’s expected to get up to $500,000.
Anyone want to go in on this with me?
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