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Bob Dylan’s ‘Judas’ Guitar To Go Up for Auction

Now you can own the Fender that Bobby went electric with at Newport

by
Adam Chandler
October 31, 2013
(Wikimedia)
(Wikimedia)

Last year, near the anniversary of when Bob Dylan infamously “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, we not only marked the anniversary of the event where Dylan upset many folk snobs by plugging in, but we also found out about a new twist in the story. Apparently, the Fender Stratocaster that Dylan used that day in Newport ended up in a random attic in New Jersey for almost 50 years after Dylan left the guitar on a plane.

Recently, Dylan claimed that he still had the guitar, but following an extensive investigation by the PBS show History Detectives, it was determined that Dylan (as history has often proven) was kind of full of it. Come Dec. 6, the sunburst guitar will be auctioned off and is expected to pull about half a million along with some early drafts of some classic Dylan song lyrics.

The terms of the settlement were not disclosed but allowed Paterson to sell the guitar and lyrics, according to Rolling Stone, which wrote in July about Paterson’s quest to authenticate the guitar.



“Representatives for Bob Dylan do not contest the sale of the guitar, and are aware of Christie’s plan to bring it to auction,” a statement issued through Christie’s said.

Who wants to get me a Hanukkah present?

Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.