Bob Dylan’s Fender Stratocaster electric guitar sells for record $965,000 at New York auction

Bob Dylan’s Fender Stratocaster electric guitar has been sold at New York auction for a record $965,000.

The electric guitar played by Bob Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival had been in the possession of a New Jersey family for 48 years after he left it on a plane.

The pilot’s daughter Dawn Peterson had the electric guitar authenticated on a television programme on US broadcaster PBS.

The festival in Newport, Rhode Island, is often cited as the performance where Bob Dylan “went electric”.

Bob Dylan’s move “changed the structure of folk music”, Newport Folk Festival founder George Wein, 88, told the Associated Press news agency.

“The minute Dylan went electric, all these young people said, <<Bobby’s going electric. We’re going electric, too>>.”

At the time, the three-song set drew boos from the crowd, who had come expecting Bob Dylan’s traditional acoustic folk performance.

Dawn Peterson said on the PBS programme History Detectives that her father, the private plane’s pilot, asked Bob Dylan’s management firm what to do with the guitar but nobody ever got back to him.

Experts matched the wood grain on the instrument with a close-up color photo taken during Dylan’s set at the festival.

Recently, Bob Dylan and Dawn Peterson quietly settled a legal dispute over the instrument. Details of the settlement are not known.

Auction house Christie’s had estimated the guitar would sell for $300,000-$500,000. The buyer has not been identified.

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