Kurt Cobain's Fecal Matter bass sells for $43k

The Sears model bass guitar owned by a teenage Kurt Cobain has sold at auction for $43,750. The bass was used to record early demos of Fecal Matter and Organized Confusion in 1982 and 1985 respectively at Cobain's Aunt Mari Earl's home in Aberdeen, Washington.

The lot also included a letter from Aunt Earl regarding the guitar's authenticity and, if more proof were needed, the above photo of Kurt Cobain, said axe in hand.

The same Christie's auction in New York also saw a Stevie Ray Vaughan-owned Tokai Stratocaster copy sell for $22,500, which SRV can be seen holding in Tokai's 1985-1986 catalogue and an advertisement in the July 1985 edition of Guitar Player (thanks, Custom Sounds).

Texas Flood

A Strat copy also features on the cover of Stevie's 1983 album Texas Flood, although the artwork was doctored and the logo on the headstock removed. However, many music shops sell a poster of Texas Flood with the 'Tokai Springy Sound' logo clearly visible.

'Scrawled lyrics'

Check out Rolling Stone for a round-up of the rest of the auction highlights including a fully-signed official Beatles fan club poster ($52k), AC/DC's Bon Scott's lyric notebooks ($35k) and "a dirty piece of paper from 1964 that Bob Dylan partially scrawled the lyrics to With God On Our Side' on" ($25k).