Celebrity guitar auctions: teenage dreams or billionaire boys’ club? How A-list gear sales became the hottest ticket in town

Johnny Marr’s cleaning out his closet and the world’s wealthiest music fans are warming up their credit cards for yet another hot-ticket celebrity guitar auction. Why does this keep happening? Answering that very question through the medium of – as one fan describes it – “a snarky faux interview”… it’s Fret Buzz!

Lend us a dollar – Johnny Marr is auctioning his guitar collection in September.

My pleasure. So you’re good for the other $199,000?

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Excuse me?

As befits an indie-guitar god, Johnny’s instruments are quite expensive. For instance, there’s a $200,000 estimate for his fabled 1960 ES-355.

Hmmm. Anything in my budget?

How about $106,000 for the ’82 Rickenbacker 330 Jetglo played on This Charming Man?

Heaven knows I’m miserable now.

Well, we told you they’re expensive. Basically, if you put your hand in the air anywhere near Christie’s auction house in London, you’ll accidentally default on your mortgage for a road-soiled wah pedal.

Has Johnny fallen on hard times?

Don’t worry about Johnny. He’s doing very nicely. He’s just offloading a few dozen guitars because he “didn’t like the idea of my studio space becoming a museum”.

First-world problems…

Anyway, Johnny is famously a charming man, and the proceeds will go to various charities, including the Guide Dogs For The Blind Association.

Wow. Those guide dogs are going to be loaded. Will they all get gold collars?

That’s not how animal charities work.

How did this auction craze start, anyway?

Back in 1999, Eric Clapton sold his first batch, including the ’57 Brownie Strat. Since then, it’s gone gangbusters. In March, David Gilmour’s Black Strat regained the title of World’s Most Expensive Guitar, fetching $14.6m.

But aren’t these just ordinary production guitars that happened to be played by talented people?

Johnny reckons there’s more to it: “I once asked this acupuncturist if guitars had chi – a life force. He said, ‘Yeah, your guitars have got chi in.’ I was like, ‘I knew it!’”

Why don’t manufacturers just put in the chi at the factory?

Chi doesn’t work like that. It’s more of a spiritual thing. It’s under your fingernails.

Who has $14.6m, anyway?

Oh, all sorts of people. Tech bros. Russian princes. Centuries-old dynasties of European vampires. Regular folks, y’know?

Are you being sarcastic?

Yeah. People get annoyed by celebrity guitar auctions. But also excited. And jealous too. It’s hard to read the room sometimes.

Why the resentment?

It’s the notion of rock’s most cherished guitars being held captive in the iceberg basements of Silicon Valley, their voices forever silenced – except that one time Jeff Bezos took out Kurt’s Jag-Stang for a halting attempt at Come As You Are.

Isn’t that a simplistic view of auction buyers?

Yeah, maybe. Last year, Christie’s specialist Amelia Walker told GW that “at the Mark Knopfler sale, I remember seeing people in tears. It’s absolutely driven by the emotional connection.” She also points out that many guitars head to public museums – while the benefits for charity are undeniable.

Anyway, isn’t the guitar press partially responsible for stoking up this circus with its feverish coverage of celebrity guitar auctions?

Hey, don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Back to Johnny’s auction. Please, please, please, let me get what I want?

The best we can do is a ‘Comet Sparkle’ edition of Johnny’s signature Jaguar for $11,000. And that’s assuming you don’t get into a bidding war with a Big Oil CEO who was very sensitive at school.