A collection of 90 guitars belonging to the late great guitarist Jeff Beck are set to go up for auction in January.
The huge selection of axes owned by the former Yardbirds and Jeff Beck Group musician will be going under the hammer with the auction house Christie’s, it was announced on Friday (November 15).
Beck died suddenly at the age of 78 in January 2023, after contracting bacterial meningitis. He replaced Eric Clapton in The Yardbirds in 1965, before forming his own group with Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood and others, and going on to have a long and successful solo career.
There will be a total of more than 130 items in the Jeff Beck collection, the auction for which will run from January 15 to 22. Explore the collection here.
The whole selection is valued at $1.3million (£1million), and includes an oxblood Gibson Les Paul that Beck played throughout the 1970s and features on the cover of his 1975 album ‘Blow By Blow’. That item is expected to fetch between £350,000 and £500,000.
Amelia Walker, head of Private and Iconic Collections at Christie’s, described the guitar as “a really beautiful instrument, covered in grime and dust and signs of use”.
“I think it’s part of the appeal,” she said. “These are things that he used. They’ve got the indents of his fingernails on the fret boards. Some of them, the strings haven’t been changed for years. He played them hard. He didn’t see them as precious works of art – they were his tools to ply his trade with.”
Beck’s widow Sandra has said it was a “massive wrench” to let the guitars go, but added: “I know Jeff wanted for me to share this love. After some hard thinking I decided they need to be shared, played and loved again.”
Other items include a 1954 Sunburst Fender Stratocaster valued at £50,000 to £80,000 and a white Stratocaster that he played for 16 years, which is expected to go for £20,000 to £30,000.
Two tribute concerts were held for Beck in May last year at the Royal Albert Hall, featuring performances from Clapton, Stewart, Metallica‘s Kirk Hammett, Johnny Depp and Aerosmith‘s Joe Perry.
Earlier this year, Gibson announced a new ‘YardBurst’ 1959 Les Paul Custom, made in Beck’s honour on the occasion of what would’ve been his 80th birthday.
