The Edge fro U2's Gibson electric guitar, Bono from U2's signed Irish Falcon Gretsch guitar and Jim Croce Martin D-21 acoustic guitar are on display at Julien's Auctions Icons & Idols: Rock 'N Roll
Getty ImagesGuitars owned by U2’s the Edge, Eddie Van Halen, Elvis Presley and Eric Clapton were among the highest-bid items at a rock-themed auction that raked in over $5 million this weekend.
Julien’s Auctions’ Icons & Idols: Rock N’ Roll event also featured David Gilmour’s stage-used guitar from Pink Floyd’s Momentarily Lapse of Reason era ($200,000, doubling its pre-auction estimate) and Amy Winehouse’s Fender Stratocaster, which the late singer played onstage in and in the “Take the Box” music video; that guitar sold for $153,000.
Despite the controversy surrounding Clapton’s stance on vaccination mandates and Covid lockdowns, people still really like the song “Layla,” as Clapton’s stage-used acoustic guitar from his time with Derek & the Dominoes sold for an auction-high of $625,000, beating its $500,000 pre-auction estimate. (Clapton’s handwritten lyrics for “Layla” sold for $37,500, however, the low-end of its pre-auction estimate.)
The Edge’s 1976 Gibson Explorer Electric Guitar — used during U2’s The Joshua Tree tour — reached a high bid of $437,500, while Bono’s 2005 Gretsch Irish Falcon — played live when U2 performed “One” and “Walk On” — sold for $115,000.
(However, some of the auction’s more notable, previously announced items — like Kurt Cobain artwork and Robert Plant’s handwritten lyrics for Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” — never made it to the auction block for unspecified reasons.)
It wasn’t just instruments that hit surprisingly high bids that exceeded expectations: This terrifying painting of a clown by Frank Sinatra in 1991 somehow sold for $56,000, five times its pre-auction estimate. The mask featured on the cover of Quiet Riot’s Metal Health LP scored a $50,000 high bid, and the Go-Go’s Belinda Carlisle’s own Germs t-shirt — the punk band she was a member of prior to her own Rock Hall-inducted outfit — sold for a whopping $22,000, over 20 times its expected sale price.
NEWS
Supergrass are teasing an upcoming announcement with fans, according to a new post.
The British band, fronted by Gaz Coombes, shared a cryptic new post across their social media channels this morning (September 13), suggesting to fans that a new announcement is on the way.
Posted at 9am BST, the post simply shared artwork of the band’s logo in red, alongside next Monday’s date, September 16. In the caption, the band simply wrote: “Sign up now”, alongside a link to their website’s homepage.
Upon clicking the link, the page prompts fans to sign up for future updates, and asks them to input both their email address and the country they live in. Check out the post below.
While details on the announcement remain sparse, the post has already caught fans’ attention, with some speculating that the news could be around the upcoming 30th anniversary of their debut album, ‘I Should Coco’.
Released in May 1995, the release marked the record that first put the band on the map, and contained singles ‘Mansize Rooster’, ‘Caught By The Fuzz, ‘Lose It’ and ‘Lenny’. It also saw Coombes and Co. nominated at the 1995 Mercury Prize, and contained what would soon become their biggest track to date, the Ivor-Novello winning ‘Alright’.
At time of writing, the band haven’t shared any further indication as to whether the announcement is related to the huge upcoming milestone – whether it be an anniversary tour or reissue – nor whether it has anything to do with new music that could be on the way.
The band’s last studio album was ‘Diamond Hoo Ha’, which arrived in 2008. Since then, they have shared remastered versions of both their 1999 self-titled album and their 2003 record ‘Life On Other Planets’.
In other news around the band, last year it was reported that the band’s frontman joined Johnny Marr onstage last month to perform The Smiths‘ classic ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ at Lakefest 2023.
Before then, Coombes opened up about how “nervous” he was about reuniting Supergrass following the success of his solo albums.
Supergrass split up in 2010 but reunited for a series of live shows in 2019. They released a live album in 2020, Live On Other Planets, to celebrate their 25th anniversary and raise money for grassroots venues affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Having got into a flow and the last two albums having done so well, it seemed a bit odd, like a backward step,” he said. “But then I was confident that I could operate both things together and it seems that I did, because I was obviously writing this record mainly during the reunion so I feel like I made best use of both things.”
Coombes’ fourth solo album, ‘Turn The Car Around’, came out in January of last year.
