After being discovered in an attic, John Lennon’s famous Help! guitar is headed to auction as part of the upcoming “Music Icons” sale at Julien’s Auctions on May 29 and 30.
Both Lennon and George Harrison played the Framus 12-string Hootenanny acoustic guitar while making Help! — both the album and accompanying film — as well as Rubber Soul. Lennon can be seen strumming it in the performance of “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” in the Help! movie, while it’s distinct 12-string shimmer also graced songs like “Help!”, “It’s Only Love,” “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” “Girl,” and “Norwegian Wood.”
The Framus later ended up with Gordon Waller, the Scottish singer-songwriter who was one-half of the duo Peter and Gordon (with Peter Asher), and then Waller passed it along to one of Peter and Gordon’s road managers. Fifty years later, it was discovered in an attic in the British countryside, while the original guitar case (made by the Australian company Maton) was found in the trash and rescued.
The Framus guitar currently has an estimated price of $600,000 to $800,000, but it’s expected to fetch far more than that and potentially surpass the $2.4 million price tag of Lennon’s Gibson J160E when it sold in 2015. The lot includes the guitar, the Maton case, and a copy of the book The Beatles: Photographs From the Set of Help, featuring images by Emilio Lari.
Darren Julien, co-founder and executive director of Julien’s Auctions called the discovery the Help! guitar “the greatest find of a Beatles guitar since Paul McCartney’s lost 1961 Höfner bass guitar.” He continued: “Finding this remarkable instrument is like finding a lost Rembrandt or Picasso, and it still looks and plays like a dream after having been preserved in an attic for more than 50 years. To awaken this sleeping beauty is a sacred honor.”
The Help! guitar is one of over 1,000 lots that’ll be featured in the “Music Icons” sale. Other highlights include a Fender P Bass played by U2’s Adam Clayton (plus Clayton’s stage-worn Rick Owens t-shirt, pants, and sneakers); Mick Mars’ signed Girls Girls Girls Kramer KM-1 guitar (used in Mötley Crüe’s “You’re All I Need” music video); Tina Turner’s custom Versace dress worn during the “Wildest Dreams” tour in the mid-Nineties; and a pair of Onitsuka Tiger high-top sneakers Freddie Mercury wore on stage in 1979, along with the singer’s red vinyl pants.
