Slow Hand’s guitar makes a fast €791,000

BRITISH rock star Eric Clapton’s treasured Blackie became the most expensive guitar to sell at auction yesterday, fetching a staggering £527,000 (€791,000).

The classic Fender Stratocaster, which Clapton once said had “become part of me” was one of 88 instruments sold by the music legend and his friends at Christie’s auction house in New York.

Blackie, which accompanied Clapton on stage throughout the 1970s and 1980s, sold for well above the maximum estimate of £83,000 (€125,000).

In all, more than €6m was raised for the Crossroads Centre addiction treatment clinic, which Clapton helped set up in Antigua in 1997.

After the sale, Clapton, currently touring the US, said: “I am thrilled at the result which is going to be of enormous help to us in achieving our long term aims at the centre.”

Blackie was bought by America’s Guitar Centre, Christie’s said.

Parting with Blackie will be a wrench for Clapton, whose hits include Layla and Tears in Heaven. The instrument became synonymous with Clapton’s sound during the 1970s and 1980s.

In an interview with Guitar Player magazine in 1985, he said: “I feel that that guitar has become part of me.”

Clapton first played Blackie on stage at the Rainbow Theatre, in Finsbury Park, London, on January 13, 1973 at a concert organised by Pete Townshend to encourage the musician’s recovery from heroin addiction. From that moment the guitar toured with him in the US, Europe and the far east.

The last known occasion on which Blackie was played on stage was for one number during the 1991 Royal Albert Hall shows.

Clapton made Blackie from a number of different Stratocasters he bought in Nashville, Tennessee.

He decided to “retire” the treasured instrument when it began wearing out.

“It is still playable but I suppose I was concerned I was probably doing it more harm than good taking it out. I had so much affection for the guitar that I didn’t want to work it anymore really. I think it was time to retire it.”