One of Jimi Hendrix’s favourite guitars – set alight on a London stage more than 40 years ago and thought to have been lost forever – is to be auctioned in London later this year.
The guitar, a 1965 Fender Stratocaster Sunburst, was famously doused with lighter fuel and set alight by Hendrix during a one-off performance at London’s Finsbury Astoria in March 1967. After the stunt, Hendrix had to be rushed to hospital with minor burns to his hands.
The iconic guitar – which is understood to be scorched along the neck and the scratch-plate area – was rescued from the flames by Hendrix’s roadies.
Experience bass player Noel Redding reportedly kept the guitar for a short time, before it eventually ended up in the hands of Hendrix’s press officer, Tony Garland, who stored it in his parents’ garage in Hove, Sussex. It remained there until it was unearthed by Garland’s nephew in 2007.
The burnt guitar is among a range of rock memorabilia to be auctioned by the Fame Bureau in London on September 4, 2008. It is expected to fetch around £500,000.
Hendrix, who died in 1970, set fire to his guitars on stage three times: in London (March 1967), Miami (May 1968) and at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967 where the torching was famously captured on film. However, the 1965 Stratocaster is the only guitar that survived the flames almost intact.
A previous auction of a Hendrix guitar, known as the Woodstock Stratocaster, fetched £899,000.
“The times I burnt my guitar, it was like a sacrifice,” Hendrix once said. “You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar.”
Tags: burnt guitar, Finsbury Astoria, Jimi Hendrix
