It was used on the legendary Purple Rain tour before eventually going MIA, but yesterday (19 June) Prince's 1984 Blue Angel guitar, one of the first ever Cloud models he had made, found fame again and sold at auction in Beverly Hills for $563,500.
The electric guitar was also used by the late icon on his 1992 Diamonds And Pearls tour as well as Saturday Night Live's 15th Anniversary show shown above.
"The guitar is considered one of the most historically important guitars played by Prince that has ever come up for auction," Julien's Auctions said, that sold the guitar as part of its Music Icons event over the weekend.
The guitar was original readied for sale without knowledge its true significance. When the auction house first announced that the guitar was up for auction it was simply listed as “a custom-made 1984 blue Cloud guitar used by Prince”.
It was then that Cloud guitar expert John Woodland called Julien's after seeing the initial listing; he suspected the guitar they had was one of the first four Cloud guitars ever made for Prince.
It was later authenticated as the Blue Angel. Its creators are The creators are listed as O’Hagan Guitar Company, luthiers Tommy Stinson (not the Replacements bassist of the same name), Dave Rusan and Barry Haugen — plus painter Mark Sampson.
Though the winning bid seems high for the Blue Angel, it's not the most a Cloud has fetched at auction. In 2017, the year following Prince's passing, Prince's blue teal model fetched $700,000 in California. That model was a late '80s Cloud made by luthier Andy Beech.
And in the same Music Icons sale a day after the Blue Angel sold, the Martin acoustic guitar Kurt Cobain used for Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance set the world record for the most valuable guitar ever sold with a winning bid of just over $6 million.
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