Saiichi's knowledge of vintage guitars landed him the role of adviser/research assistant to Richard Chapman, Christie's guitar consultant and personal friend, in the auction sale of Clapton's guitars in 1999.

Saiichi in action with Pete Brown at the Grey Horse, Kingston, Surrey.
Photo: John Peck

Having been a bit of a Clapton watcher over the years, Saiichi was able to recognise many of over 100 of Eric's guitars that were brought in to Chrisitie's of South Kensington for auction. Given that the auction was a charity event to raise money for Mr. Clapton's Crossroads Centre in Antigua, Saiichi clocked up long hours raiding Clapton archives in the UK, Japan, and the USA for photographs of EC with this Strat and that Gibson (obviously the guitar would raise considerably more money if there was a picture of Eric playing it in the catalogue).

Saiichi's many month's labour of love culminated in the informative and entertaining sale catalogue which, EC personally told Saiichi, would be a collector's item. The rest of that auction is, as they say, history.

One of the highlights of his invovlement in the project was that Saiichi, through the assistance of his friend Tony Edser, the editor of Where's Eric! magazine, managed to track down the original receipt for Brownie, the Stratocaster that was used in the Layla sessions and more. The guitar's history was re-written when the receipt reminded Eric that it was bought from Sound City in London in May 1968, at the time when Disraelli Gears was being recorded, rather than at the time he bought Blackie in Nashville during the Blind Faith tour in early August of 1969.

Saiichi's detective work also confirmed that the pewter Clapton Signature Stratocaster in the sale was in fact one of the first prototypes built for Eric with a later replacement neck.

The catalogue featured many previously unreleased photographs that Saiichi hunted down, such as the picture of the "Smoker's model" Strat that Eric showed to the interviewer on a Japanese TV special covering the 1991 George Harrison Japan Tour rehearsal. Saiichi tracked down a personal photograph taken by one of the crew showing Eric with the guitar in question, and used it for the catalogue. Even a frame from a bootleg video, which captured the only known instance of Eric playing a red Firebird, was tracked down and featured in the catalogue, all for the good cause.

Saiichi was excited when he spotted the white Telecaster at Christie's that Clapton used at Budokan, Tokyo in 1975; the first Clapton concert that Saiichi went to, which influenced him to form his first blues band. Based on his recollections from when he was fifteen, Saiichi tracked down a 1975 EC interview with a Japanese music magazine in which Clapton discussed the Telecaster so that a translation of the passage could be quoted in the catalogue.

For those visitors to this website who are guitar-minded like Saiichi, the reproduced below is an article that Saiichi wrote for his friend, Tony Edser's "Where's Eric!" magazine regarding the Clapton related guitars sold in auctions in 1999/2000 AFTER the Crossroads Centre Auction regarding EC's Les Paul (from the late Cream period) that was given to Paul Kossoff and was eventually sold by Paul Rodgers for David Kossoff's charity at Christie's.

Where's Eric!

Auctioned EC Guitars 2000

(reproduced from Where's Eric! magazine 2000)

by Saiichi Sugiyama

Introduction

Christie's Crossroads Centre Auction in June 1999 seemed to have done much to take the stigma out of trading in Clapton-owned guitars. Pre-Crossroads auction, trading in the open market of such guitars by those who were lucky enough to come to possession of them somehow seemed to have been something of a no-no, particularly not only where the guitar was a generous gift from the famed previous owner, but also where the guitar had been acquired indirectly from a third party.

This was at least partially due to Eric's sensitivity about his name being exploited. Even when Eric's odd surplus guitars from his sizeable collection were being disposed of, Eric was said to have taken steps to mask his previous association with the guitar so as to avoid it attracting a premium with a tag "previously owned by none other than" (the notable exception being the 1980 "London Rock Auction" sale of assortment of Eric's guitars including the Cream Firebird I and the Blind Faith psychedelic painted Dan Electro).

However, now that Eric himself has taken the irreversible step of capitalising on his previous ownership of guitars (albeit for the worthy cause of charity), the legitimacy of trading Eric Clapton owned guitars (and the vast premium attached to them) is no longer questionable, so it seems, for those who wanted to trade on the Clapton connection, many of whom celebrities in their own right.

Thus we have seen a string of Clapton related guitars under hammer at international auction houses in 2000.

A 1950's Stratocaster

Pete Townshend was there first with his 50's blonde-neck Stratocaster that was, for want of a better expression, a "cousin of Blackie". This Strat was one of the famed six or so Stratocasters that Eric bought from George Gruhn in Nashville in 1969 while on tour with Blind Faith and brought back to England.

Eric recalled in an interview that he gave one to George Harrison, one to Stevie Winwood, one to George Harrison and used the parts from the remaining three to make one composite Stratocaster, which has come to be known as "Blackie". It was that Stratocaster that Eric gave to the Who guitarist that came under hammer early in 1999.

1960's Gibson SG Standard with psychedelic paint

Then came what has become one of the most importent symbols of the late '60s psychedelic generation: the painted Gibson SG Standard used by Eric with Cream, which had been owned (and played) by Todd Rundgren for a quarter of century.

This SG may well have been the one with its original Gibson Vibrola tremolo unit used by George Harrison on the promo footage for the Beatles' Paperback Writer in 1966. It is not clear when Eric first acquired this guitar.

The guitar was painted by members of The Fool, the Dutch pop art group that made psychedelic clothes for the Beatles and also painted their instruments, and Eric in permed hair was seen with it minus the strings and parts in a Cream publicity shot in 1967.

Don Paulsen's photographs of the Disraeli Gears session at Atlantic Studios in May 1967 show Eric playing this SG. According to Tom Dowd, who engineered the session, this SG served as the main guitar for that epoch making recording session.

It remained Eric's favourite stage guitar for one year or so until it was given (returned?) to George Harrison (during that brief period, the Wheels of Fire Live side was recorded including Crossroads).

George in turn gave the guitar to his fellow Liverpuddlian Apple artist Jackie Lomax, the June 1968 session for whose LP was produced by George and on which Eric played. There is a photo in existence of Lomax playing the SG which shows the guitar already sporting two non-original gold volume knobs.

The story goes that Todd Rundgren eventually found the guitar in a pawn shop in a really bad state of repair in 1974. Apparently the neck had been broken and the head and a half of the neck had to be replaced.

According to a guitar technician who had an opportunity to examine this guitar in the early 90s, the guitar dated from 1963 to 1965 period (as opposed to 1961 as it was commonly believed) and that there was a visible mark of repair where its set neck had come off the body and was re-glued back in. A close examination of paint work also reveals that the psychedelic paint work had been repainted in a number of places.

The guitar was auctioned by Sotheby's New York via internet in a surprisingly low-key manner in June 2000 and fetched some $150,000 which was in fact somewhat a lower figure than expectation of many considering its historic importance (so much so that an apocryphal story apparently circulated among certain guitar collectors that Todd Rundgren owned a number of identical replicas of this SG and this SG was one of the replicas, which was, one would have thought, pretty unlikely when the sale was conducted by a high calibre auction house such as Sotheby's).

...simply one of the great rock icons of the 60's

Gibson Les Paul Standard 1958

copyright © 2000 Christie's

Another Gibson (it often gets over-looked nowadays that it was Eric who championed Gibson electric guitars in the '60s by his exclusive use of them when other bands were playing Gretches and Rickenbackers) from the Cream period also came under hammer at Christie's South Kensington on 26 September, 1999.

Richard Chapman, the guitar consultant at Christie's South Kensington who handled the Crossroads sale was approached with a plan to auction for charity a 1958 Les Paul Standard that was originally bought and used by Eric during the Cream period and then was given to Paul Kossoff of Free.

This is the three-tone sunburst Les Paul that Eric acquired in 1968 and used during the Cream Farewell Tour in America.

The well known b/w photographs by Chuck Boyd of the sound-check at Alameda County Coliseum near Oakland on the first night of the Farewell Tour (4 October 1968) show Eric wearing dark glasses and playing this Les Paul. One of the photos from this session was recently used for the cover on a Castle compilation CD "Blues Years". (The home 8mm movie footage of this sound-check shot by Ginger Baker's wife was included in the Polygram video Strange Brew showing the Les Paul in its distinctive three colour sunburst).

The comprehensive unofficial Cream website, "Those Were The Days" feature a review of that evening's show complete with photographs and Eric can be seen there sporting a bow tie/frill shirt playing the Les Paul. A bootleg recording of the evening also exists and admittedly the guitar on the first few numbers do sound like a Les Paul rather than a 335/Firebird.

In the summer of the following year, Eric gave this guitar to Paul Kossoff, the guitarist with Free and the son of the comedian David Kossoff, during the Blind Faith US Tour for which the up and coming young band, Free was one of the support bands. Paul Kossoff, who is remembered for his mastery of sunburst Les Pauls and the trade mark vibrato was in fact first inspired to play the blues by seeing Eric play a Les Paul on stage with Blues Breakers at the Refectory Club in Golders Green in September 1965 when he was 15. Eric was his hero.

In a letter from David Kossoff to Eric in 1999, he related that one of his son's treasured memories was that after a Blind Faith show how Eric asked Paul how he made the vibrato - Paul had first learnt the effect from Eric's playing on While My Guitar Gently Weeps. It is not difficult to imagine how he must have felt swapping guitars with Eric and being given his Les Paul!

He used this guitar extensively as one of his main guitars until his untimely drug related death onboard a London-New York flight in 1976. The guitar was apparently used to write and record the Free anthem All Right Now and Kossoff was filmed using this guitar on BBC Old Grey Whistle Test (which footage can be seen on Island Video "Free").

After Kossoff's death, the guitar was bought by the London guitar dealer Phil Harris who had it restored by the well-known British guitar maker, Roger Giffin (who later built the blue Strat that Eric used during the 1985 tour).

It was eventually sold to Paul Rodgers, Kossoff's band mate from Free, in July 1980. Rodgers also used this guitar extensively and was pictured playing it along side Jimmy Page in the band Firm during its world tours in 1985/86.

It was Rodgers who placed the guitar with Christie's for auction in order to raise funds for David Kossoff's charity in support of a drug users' hospice.. Eric, obviously supportive of the cause, provided a letter of authenticity to David Kossoff for the sale and apparently commented that it was a good guitar.

I was fortunate enough to spend a few minutes with the guitar and heartily agree with Eric - it almost sang by itself with a comparatively bright voice for a Les Paul.

The guitar was sold for £47,000 to a private US collector whilst David Kossoff looked on.

Converted 1952 Gibson Les Paul Model

The Christie's September auction featured another '50s Les Paul. It is a converted 1952 Goldtop that Eric was photographed with at Hammersmith Odeon on 27 April 1977 and is seen in one of Mark Roberty's book as well as on the inside cover of the Polydor album "Timepieces Vol. II".

The Les Paul which originally had a trapeze tailpiece belonged to the producer John Porter who was at the time apparently associated with the Clapton Band as a guitarist and Porter lent it to Eric for one night only. (John Porter, among other albums, produced Buddy Guy's first Silvertone album Damn Right I've Got The Blues which project Eric was apparently responsible in starting up).

The conversion with a tune-o-matic bridge and Dimarzio humbackers meant that due to its shallow neck angle, the bridge had to be dug into the top and it is not very collectable as a vintage guitar due to the crude modification, but rightly or wrongly the loan to Eric for just one night added much value to the guitar. Eric in fact used the guitar for one number, Stormy Monday.

Eric often spoke of the thicker Gibson tone being more suitable for blues and it makes sense that he changed over to this Les Paul for the blues number of the night (although John Porter commented to Christie's that the reason for the loan was because Eric had been recording the concert for a possible live album and Balckie was giving out too much of a buzz, the Gibson's humbuckers were better suited for recording purposes).

The guitar had been sold by Porter to Phil Harris in the '90s and was placed in the auction by Harris alongside the Kossoff Les Paul. The hammer price was ?12,925 and it was sold to an European collector.

(Saiichi Sugiyama provided research assistance to Christie's South Kensington in relation to the two Les Pauls).

© 2000 Saiichi Sugiyama

photo: Andy Ford, Blues Images