July 16, 2008


Burnt Hendrix Auction

A guitar Jimi Hendrix set afire on stage and thought lost is being auctioned on ebay.

“When Hendrix set this guitar alight it marked a watershed in live performance,” said Ted Owen, director of acquisitions at the auction house.

Hendrix, who died in 1970, burnt two guitars on stage — he repeated the stunt at a festival later in 1967 — but the one to be auctioned is the only example that survives intact.

Also on auction, Jim Morrison’s last notebook of poems. Too bad it wasn’t burnt on stage.

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7 Responses to “Burnt Hendrix Auction”

  1. Garrison Reid on July 16th, 2008 at 3:44 pm

    Hey-o.

    If you’ve got somewhere between £80,000 and £100,000, it’s not too late to see the writing of “a drunken buffoon posing as a poet” go up in flames.

    Dear Clusterflock,
    Is it lame to quote movies in serious contexts?

  2. Sheila Ryan on July 16th, 2008 at 3:58 pm

    Dear Clusterflock,

    Is it lame to quote movies in serious contexts?

    It all depends . . .

    This from one who lives in a household in which quotations fly daily. And frequently. High-brow. Low-brow. Familiar. Obscure. The only criteria: “Is it apt? Did you strike the right tone?”

  3. Rick Neece on July 16th, 2008 at 6:06 pm

    Nearly everything I say is a quotation (albeit paraphrased) from something. In a serious conversation I once had with a psychologist, after I’d come out of the closet. After I’d lain on the couch at my parents for nearly two weeks crying and contemplating ways to “do myself in.” After Mom convinced me to “see the doctor” and he’d sent me to the Northeast Arkansas Services Center “to see someone.” After I’d confessed that I’d had thoughts of doing myself in to this young woman who came my way. I “performed,” Bette Midler’s “Fried Egg” story, a bit of show between songs from her self-titled, live album, circa, oh, I-don’t-know, 1979 or somewhere thereabouts, it was on 8-track.

    I won’t try to re-create it here and I don’t see a link anywhere for it. Still, it starts with Bette walking down the street and seeing a woman walking toward her, “in a house-dress all peckered all over with daisies,” wearing a fried egg on her forehead. Bette saying, “I said to myself, real fast, I said, Oh, God! Don’t let me wake up in the morning and want to put a fried egg on my head. And then I said real fast I said, Oh, God, if I do wake up in the morning and want to put a fried egg on my head, don’t let anybody notice.” And then something like, “Oh God, if I do wake up in the morning and want to put a fried egg on my head and they notice, please don’t let them say anything where I can hear. Because here’s the thing about fried eggs, some people wear them on the outside. And some people, some people wear them on the inside.”

    In my memory, I rendered it nearly perfectly.

    The shrink said, “Pack your stuff, get back to Kansas City and get to work.”

  4. Sheila Ryan on July 16th, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    Rick, that was apt. And it struck the right tone.

  5. Deron Bauman on July 16th, 2008 at 7:43 pm

    Rick, that’s fucking gorgeous.

  6. Kathy Hilen-Smith on July 17th, 2008 at 6:01 am

    Rick, YOU are fucking wonderful!

  7. Hello in There : clusterflock on July 17th, 2008 at 6:38 pm

    [...] found a link to the Midler piece I <a href=” http://www.clusterflock.org/2008/07/burnt-hendrix-auction.html#comments “> referenced </a> in my comment on c’flock. It wasn’t until I [...]

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