.

Beatles Amp Expected to Sell for $110K

George Harrison used the amp on 'Revolver' and 'Sgt. Pepper'

December 1, 2011 8:50 AM ET
The Beatles
The Beatles celebrate the completion of their album 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' at a press conference held at the west London home of their manager, Brian Epstein.
John Pratt/Keystone/Getty Images

An amplifier used by George Harrison during the Beatles' recording sessions for Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band will go on the auction block later this month in London. The Vox UL730 amp and cabinet is expected to sell for somewhere between $80,000 and $110,000 at the Bonhams auction house.

The amp was only recently discovered to have belonged to the Beatle. An engineer who had been asked to fix it noticed that the name George Harrison was scratched into the chassis, and a bit of research uncovered that it was indeed used by the guitarist on the band's most acclaimed albums.

"Very few amps used by the Beatles have come to auction before, and to find one that was used on two such significant albums is truly rare and exciting," Stephen Maycock, a consultant to Bonhams, told Reuters.

Related
Photos: the Private Life of George Harrison
George Harrison Gets Back: Rolling Stone's 1987 Cover Story
Photos: Rare Beatles Pictures

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

prev
Music Main Next

blog comments powered by Disqus
Daily Newsletter

Get the latest RS news in your inbox.

Sign up to receive the Rolling Stone newsletter and special offers from RS and its
marketing partners.

X

We may use your e-mail address to send you the newsletter and offers that may interest you, on behalf of Rolling Stone and its partners. For more information please read our Privacy Policy.

Song Stories

“The Pretender”

Foo Fighters | 2007

This song wasn't part of the planned track listing for 2007's Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, and was put together in a day. "It happened after we recorded a lot of stuff," said Dave Grohl. Yet it ended up as the album opener and the lead single. Grohl called it "a stomping Foo Fighters uptempo song with a little bit of Chuck Berry in it." The singer hinted at the lyrics' political overtones: "Everyone's been f---ed over before and I think a lot of people feel f---ed over right now and they're not getting what they were promised."

More Song Stories entries »