The Bids Are Alright: Townsend guitar sells for £32,450 at auction

News
By published

A 1967 Gibson SG owned by Pete Townsend has sold at auction for £32,450.

The Cherry Red Special - used by The Who legend from the early seventies to the early eighties - was one of a number of iconic music-related items that were up for auction at Christie's in London in aid of the Alliance For Sustainability.

A private collector paid over four times the expected amount for the drumskins used on the cover of the Beatles' 1967 Sgt Pepper album - it went for a whopping £541,250!

Another Townsend guitar - this time a classical acoustic he used to record The Who's Behind Blue Eyes - went for £13,750, while an amp once owned by Jimi Hendrix fetched £25,000. A pair of Jimi's old striped flairs also made £20,000.

Robert Laing
More about guitars
TC Electronic Ditto 2 Looper: the new super-compact looper from the Danish pedal specialist has the same grey colour-scheme, is reassuringly simple, but do the new features elevate its performance?

“It's transparent when not in operation, crisp when looping, and handles high-gain and complex audio sources with ease”: TC Electronic Ditto 2 Looper review
Mythos Pedals x That Pedal Show Argo Boost Deluxe

“Instead of pairing a new booster inside this new pedal, think of it as changing lanes inside the pedal”: Mythos and That Pedal Show team up for the Argo Boost Deluxe – an octave fuzz with a switchable boost
reason

"It’s a piece of music software history": ReCycle gets recycled as Reason Studios makes the classic sample editor available as a free download
See more latest
Most Popular
reason
"It’s a piece of music software history": ReCycle gets recycled as Reason Studios makes the classic sample editor available as a free download
Charli XCX
“The verse tricks you into thinking that it’s in a certain key and has this ‘simplistic’ musical language, but then it flips”: Charli XCX’s Brat collaborator Jon Shave on how they created Sympathy Is A Knife
Richie Sambora and Jon Bon Jovi
“I’ve seen a million faces and I’ve rocked them all!”: Was Bon Jovi’s 1989 acoustic performance really the inspiration for MTV Unplugged?
2-xm
Behringer's 2-XM Oberheim Two Voice clone is now available for pre-order
Wolfgang Flur
“We love you guys. Without Kraftwerk we would not find our own robot style, being on stage with the helmets, you know”: How a fake Daft Punk fooled Kraftwerk’s Wolfgang Flür into a collaboration
Chaka Khan
“I’m in search of a badass rock guitar player. If you’re young-ish, cute-ish and can play that axe, you’re for me”: Chaka Khan wants a new “powerhouse guitarist”
Will Smith salutes the crowd prior to the game between the Washington Wizards and Philadelphia 76ers at the Wells Fargo Center on March 26
Will Smith reveals the advice Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar gave to him before his music comeback
Mythos Pedals x That Pedal Show Argo Boost Deluxe
“Instead of pairing a new booster inside this new pedal, think of it as changing lanes inside the pedal”: Mythos and That Pedal Show team up for the Argo Boost Deluxe – an octave fuzz with a switchable boost
The Beatles
“I didn’t even realise it had synthesizer on it for decades”: This deep dive into The Beatles' Here Comes The Sun reveals 4 Moog Modular parts that we’d never even noticed before
Chris Hayes [left] wears a purple checked shirt and plays his 1957 Stratocaster in the studio; Michael J. Fox tears it up onstage as Marty McFly in the 1985 blockbuster Back To The Future.
“We’re looking at the movie going, ‘Urgh! It’s kinda cheesy. I don’t know if this is going to work”: How Chris Hayes wrote Huey Lewis and the News’ Back To The Future hit Power Of Love in his pyjamas