It’s a guitar that is scuffed, chipped and bearing the marks of its owner taking a hacksaw and drill to it but all that adds to its value, Christie’s insisted, as it put the Black Strat on display.
The 1969 Fender Stratocaster is the centrepiece of a sale of more than 120 guitars belonging to Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, to be sold for charity in New York in June.
Purchased by Gilmour in 1970 from Manny’s Music store near Times Square in Manhattan, the Black Strat was his main studio and performance guitar for 15 years. He first used it on stage at the Bath festival of blues and progressive music in Shepton Mallet in June 1970.
It was used for the Comfortably Numb solo, as well as Money and Shine On You Crazy Diamond. After a decade on loan to the Hard Rock Cafe in Dallas, it was returned to Gilmour in the mid-1990s. He played it at Pink Floyd’s reunion at Live 8 in Hyde Park in 2005 and it became his guitar of choice for the next decade.
The instrument has been extensively modified over the decades, undergoing six neck changes. Gilmour once called it “my bodge-up guitar that nothing is sacred on”. He also said: “It’s pretty battered and beat up.”
All of which adds to its allure, said Caitlin Graham, Christie’s pop culture specialist. “In most of Christie’s sales perfect condition is a good thing. Wear and tear might decrease the value,” she said. “In this case, the wear and tear is going to increase the value of guitars as it shows that David Gilmour has played them a lot over the years and really loved them.”
Gilmour has built up a remarkable collection of mostly Fender guitars, which he regards as working tools. He is not reverent about them, said Graham.
The auction house is reverent, however, and has displayed the Black Strat at its London headquarters in a similar fashion to a Renaissance masterpiece. It comes with an estimate of $100,000–$150,000 (£75,000-£113,000), which is a large amount but some way short of the $2.4m paid in 2016 for John Lennon’s Gibson J-160E guitar, played on Love Me Do, which had been thought lost for 50 years.
Lower-priced lots from Gilmour’s collection include a George Washburn acoustic-electric guitar ($300-500 estimate), a Vega 5-string banjo ($1,000-2,000 estimate), and a double-neck electric lap steel guitar from about 1940 ($1,000-2,000 estimate).
Gilmour said it was time for the guitars to move on. “Guitars were made to be played and it is my wish that wherever they end up, they continue to give their owners the gift of music.”
The collection will be on display in London until 31 March and the sale takes place in New York 14-19 June.