Eric Clapton 'Blackie' Fender Stratocaster

Six guitars in a Nashville shop

In 1970 Eric Clapton walked into a guitar shop in Nashville and found a supply of secondhand 1950s Fender Stratocasters going cheap. By one account he bought six, at two or three hundred dollars each. He gave one apiece to George Harrison, Pete Townshend and Steve Winwood.

From the remaining three, built around 1956 and 1957, he took the best parts, neck, pickups and scratchplate drawn from different instruments, and had them put together into a single black guitar. One account credits Nashville luthier Ted Newman Jones with the assembly; another says the parts came from six or seven guitars bought for about $100 each. On the core story, a parts guitar built from the best of a pile of old Strats, the sources agree.

'It is such a personal thing,' Clapton said in 2004. 'I almost made this guitar myself, from different components.' He called it Blackie.

Clapton's comeback guitar

Clapton, born March 30, 1945, in Ripley, Surrey, had already been through the Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and Cream, and had made Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs with Derek and the Dominos in 1970, largely on another Strat, a 1956 sunburst called Brownie. In the early 1970s he fell into heroin addiction and largely disappeared from the stage.

Pete Townshend organized a comeback show for him at London's Rainbow Theatre in January 1973. On January 13 Clapton played Blackie live for the first time there, and from then on Brownie became its backup.

Blackie carried the solo career that followed. 461 Ocean Boulevard in 1974 gave Clapton his first No. 1 hit, 'I Shot the Sheriff,' and Slowhand in 1977 brought 'Wonderful Tonight,' 'Cocaine' and 'Lay Down Sally,' all recorded with Blackie. It was on stage with him at the ARMS benefit concerts in 1983, at Live Aid in 1985 and in the video for 'Forever Man.'

Retirement and recovery

After the Behind the Sun tour in 1985, the neck had worn to the point where the guitar was retired. It came out a few more times: in a 1990 Honda commercial and at Clapton's Royal Albert Hall concerts in 1991.

Clapton had entered treatment at Hazelden in January 1982 and has stayed sober since. In 1998 he founded the Crossroads Centre in Antigua with Richard Conte, a 36-bed residential treatment center following a 12-step program, set on Willoughby Bay and described as the only drug rehabilitation program on an island of 80,000 people.

To fund it he began selling his guitars. In June 1999 a first auction in New York sold Brownie for $497,500, then the highest price ever paid for a guitar at auction.

The 2004 sale

On June 24, 2004, Clapton put Blackie up in a second benefit auction in New York, as lot 88. The catalog called it the guitar most famously associated with him and noted that he had described it as part of him. It was estimated at $100,000 to $150,000.

It sold for $959,500 with buyer's premium, a new world auction record for a guitar, nearly double Brownie's record. The buyer was a large U.S. musical instrument retailer. The Cream-era cherry red Gibson ES-335 brought $847,500 and a 1939 Martin 000-42 $791,500 in the same sale, which totaled $7,438,624 and sent about $6.4 million to the Crossroads Centre.

The record stood only two years by one count: in 2006 a Stratocaster sold for tsunami relief brought $2.8 million. Among guitars sold on the strength of their own history, Blackie remained a high-water mark for years.

The buyer later worked with Fender's Custom Shop on an exact copy. The Tribute Series Blackie, released on November 24, 2006, ran to 275 guitars, 185 of them for the U.S. market, and sold out within a day. Since October 2014 the original has been on permanent display at the buyer's flagship store on West 44th Street in New York.

The 'big mistake'

Clapton has said he regrets letting Blackie go, calling the sale a big, big mistake. He also said that while the auction was under way he kept reminding himself, 'This is your purpose,' and that such things, however sacred, sometimes have to be given away.

Blackie is the clearest example of something unusual in rock memorabilia: an instrument with no factory identity of its own, made valuable entirely by the hands that assembled it and the music played on it.

The numbers

Years as main guitar

Early 1970s to 1985 (first live use January 13, 1973)

Signature recordings

'I Shot the Sheriff,' 'Cocaine,' 'Wonderful Tonight,' 'Lay Down Sally'

Big stages

Rainbow Concert 1973, ARMS benefit tour 1983, Live Aid 1985

2004 sale

Lot 88; sale total $7,438,624; about $6.4 million to Crossroads

Tribute replicas

275 made in 2006 (185 for the U.S.)

Timeline

1. Mar 30, 1945

   Eric Clapton is born in Ripley, Surrey, England.

2. 1956

   Fender builds Stratocasters that will later supply Blackie's parts (c. 1956-1957).

3. 1970

   Clapton buys a group of 1950s Strats at a Nashville guitar shop and assembles Blackie from the best parts.

4. Jan 13, 1973

   Clapton first plays Blackie live at the Rainbow Concert in London.

5. 1974

   461 Ocean Boulevard yields 'I Shot the Sheriff,' Clapton's first No. 1.

6. 1977

   Slowhand, with 'Wonderful Tonight,' 'Cocaine' and 'Lay Down Sally.'

7. 1985

   Blackie is retired after the Behind the Sun tour.

8. 1990

   Blackie appears in a Honda commercial.

9. 1991

   Clapton plays Blackie at the Royal Albert Hall.

10. 1998

    Clapton founds the Crossroads Centre in Antigua.

11. Jun 24, 1999

    Brownie sells for $497,500 at the first Crossroads guitar auction.

12. Jun 24, 2004

    Blackie sells at auction in New York for $959,500, a world record for a guitar.

13. Nov 24, 2006

    The 275-piece Tribute Series Blackie replica is released and sells out within a day.

14. Oct 2014

    Blackie goes on permanent display at a store on West 44th Street in New York.

The world in 1970

• Apr 13, 1970

  An oxygen tank explosion forces Apollo 13 to abort its Moon landing.

• Apr 22, 1970

  The first Earth Day is celebrated.

• May 4, 1970

  Four students are killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University.

• Sep 18, 1970

  Jimi Hendrix dies in London at 27.

• Sep 21, 1970

  Monday Night Football debuts.

• Oct 4, 1970

  Janis Joplin dies at 27.

• Dec 2, 1970

  The Environmental Protection Agency begins operations.

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, Eric Clapton 'Blackie' Fender Stratocaster is number 70 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 (66 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Clapton gave away three of the Nashville Strats, to George Harrison, Pete Townshend and Steve Winwood.
• Blackie has no single serial identity: it was built from the best parts of several mid-1950s Strats.
• Its first live outing was Clapton's comeback concert at the Rainbow Theatre, organized by Pete Townshend.
• It sold for more than six times its high estimate.
• Its sale nearly doubled the guitar record set five years earlier, to the day, by Clapton's own Brownie.
• Clapton later called selling it a 'big, big mistake.'