Bob Dylan Newport 1965 Fender Stratocaster

Fifteen minutes at Newport

On the evening of July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan walked onto the stage at the Newport Folk Festival with an electric guitar and a band. He was the festival's acoustic hero, and five days earlier his label had released 'Like a Rolling Stone,' a six-minute single built on electric guitar and organ. Behind him were Mike Bloomfield on lead guitar, Al Kooper on organ, Barry Goldberg on piano, Jerome Arnold on bass and Sam Lay on drums.

They played three songs: 'Maggie's Farm,' 'Like a Rolling Stone' and 'Phantom Engineer,' an early version of 'It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.' Some of the crowd booed. Filmmaker Murray Lerner, filming from the front row, remembered being mesmerized and called it the beginning of a profound cultural change. Many folk purists took it as betrayal.

What the boos meant is still argued. Kooper said the audience did not care that the band was electric; they felt ripped off because the set ran about 15 minutes instead of the usual 45 to 60. The story that Pete Seeger wanted to cut the power cables with an axe is mostly legend; Seeger said he wanted to get rid of the distortion. Festival founder George Wein summed it up later: Dylan's going electric changed the structure of folk music.

Left on a plane

Victor Quinto was a private pilot who flew for Albert Grossman, Dylan's manager, in the mid-1960s. After one flight, his daughter Dawn Peterson later said, he found three guitars left aboard the plane. He tried to return them, but nobody ever got back to him.

One of the three was a 1964 sunburst Stratocaster in a hard shell case stenciled 'Property of Ashes & Sand,' the name of Dylan's touring company. Inside were 13 pages of lyrics and drafts. The guitar stayed with the Quinto family in New Jersey for decades. According to a 2012 report, Dylan's management asked for it back in 2005, and Peterson declined.

The wood grain match

Peterson took the guitar to the public television program 'History Detectives.' The show brought in Andy Babiuk, a vintage guitar specialist from Rochester, New York, to examine the instrument, and Jeff Gold, a Dylan memorabilia expert, to examine the papers.

The breakthrough came when producer Tom McNamara found previously unknown color photographs of the Newport set posted online by John Rudoff, who had been a teenager pressed against the stage that night. His pictures were sharp enough to show the grain of the guitar's body. Babiuk compared that grain, which like a fingerprint is never the same twice, with the guitar in front of him. 'The more I looked, the more they matched,' he said, and he declared himself 99.9 percent sure.

Gold, studying the manuscripts, identified three complete unreleased songs from the 'Blonde on Blonde' era: 'Jet Pilot,' 'I Wanna Be Your Lover' and 'Medicine Sunday.' The episode aired on July 17, 2012.

Dylan's attorney, Orin Snyder, disputed the finding, saying Dylan still had the electric guitar he played at Newport and that several other Stratocasters had been stolen from him around that time. In the summer of 2013 Dylan and Peterson settled the dispute on undisclosed terms, and the guitar was cleared for sale. A statement before the sale said Dylan's representatives did not contest it.

A record in New York

The guitar was offered at auction in New York on December 6, 2013, with its original black leather strap and Fender hard shell case, against an estimate of $300,000 to $500,000. It sold for $965,000, the highest price ever paid for a guitar at auction at the time, edging past the $959,500 paid in 2004 for Eric Clapton's Stratocaster 'Blackie.'

The lyric drafts from the case were offered separately in five lots, estimated at $3,000 to $30,000; one fragment sold for $20,000.

The buyer was Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts and a serious guitar collector. In 2015, the 50th anniversary of the electric set, he contacted the Newport Folk Festival and offered to have the guitar played there again. Festival producers built a set called '65 Revisited,' curated by David Rawlings and Gillian Welch, in which musicians including Hozier, Dawes, First Aid Kit and Al Kooper, who had been on stage with Dylan in 1965, performed the original set list on it.

The guitar that changed the argument

'Like a Rolling Stone' had been recorded on June 15 and 16, 1965, in New York, with a 21-year-old Kooper improvising on Hammond organ after the session's producer stepped out. It reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, held off the top by the Beatles' 'Help!' Newport was the first time Dylan performed it live.

The guitar survived precisely because it was forgotten, and it was recognized because a teenager in the front row took good pictures.

The numbers

Date and place

July 25, 1965, Newport Folk Festival, Newport, Rhode Island

Set list

'Maggie's Farm,' 'Like a Rolling Stone,' 'Phantom Engineer'

Set length

About 15 minutes

Band

Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Barry Goldberg, Jerome Arnold, Sam Lay

'Like a Rolling Stone'

Released July 20, 1965; 6:13; peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100

Timeline

1. 1964

   The three-tone sunburst Stratocaster is built by Fender.

2. Jun 15, 1965

   Dylan begins recording 'Like a Rolling Stone' in New York; sessions run through June 16.

3. Jul 20, 1965

   'Like a Rolling Stone' is released.

4. Jul 25, 1965

   Dylan plays an electric set on this guitar at the Newport Folk Festival.

5. 1965

   The guitar is left on a private plane flown by Victor Quinto, a pilot for Dylan's manager.

6. 2005

   Dylan's management asks for the guitar back; the family declines, according to a 2012 report.

7. Jul 17, 2012

   'History Detectives' airs its investigation matching the guitar's wood grain to Newport photographs.

8. 2013

   Summer: Dylan and Dawn Peterson settle their dispute, clearing the way for a sale.

9. Dec 6, 2013

   The guitar sells at auction in New York for $965,000 to Jim Irsay, a record for a guitar.

10. Jul 2015

    The guitar returns to the Newport Folk Festival for the 50th anniversary '65 Revisited' set.

The world in 1965

• Feb 21, 1965

  Malcolm X is assassinated in Manhattan.

• Mar 8, 1965

  About 3,500 U.S. Marines land in South Vietnam, the first American combat troops there.

• Mar 25, 1965

  Martin Luther King Jr. completes the Selma to Montgomery march with 25,000 marchers.

• Jun 3, 1965

  Ed White makes the first U.S. spacewalk during Gemini 4.

• Jul 30, 1965

  President Johnson signs the legislation creating Medicare and Medicaid.

• Aug 6, 1965

  The Voting Rights Act is signed into law.

• Aug 11, 1965

  The Watts riots begin in Los Angeles.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Bob Dylan Newport 1965 Fender Stratocaster is number 69 of 100 in the memorabilia entries of the FLOAT 100. 100 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (68 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The pilot found three guitars left on his plane and tried to return them, but nobody got back to him.
• The case was stenciled 'Property of Ashes & Sand,' the name of Dylan's 1960s touring company.
• The match was made with photos a teenage fan took from the lip of the stage and later posted online.
• Lyrics found in the case included three complete unreleased songs, among them 'Jet Pilot' and 'Medicine Sunday.'
• It beat the previous guitar record, Eric Clapton's 'Blackie,' by $5,500.
• Al Kooper played at Newport with Dylan in 1965 and again in the 2015 tribute on the same guitar.