John Lennon's Organ, Cobain's Bass Guitar Highlight Punk/Rock Auction

Memorablia from the Beatles, Nirvana, Pink Floyd and many more are among the most noteworthy items up for auction at Christie's right now. The headliner: John Lennon's portable organ from 1965, which he used when the Beatles played The Ed Sullivan Show and Shea Stadium, is estimated to fetch as much as $200,000. The second biggest item is a bass guitar Kurt Cobain used to record demos back in the mid-1980s. $70,000 is the estimate on that bass guitar, which is probably $69,990 more than Cobain paid for it. Among the other highlights are a handwritten letter by John Lennon denying rumors that the Beatles were reuniting, the original painting by Don Brautigam that became the front cover of Metallica's Master of Puppets and Jimi Hendrix reel-to-reel tapes. Those items are expected to draw in the $25,000-30,000 range. There's tons of pretty awesome items on the block like one of the gold records Pink Floyd were given for Dark Side of the Moon, the Sex Pistols first press release, a Nevermind promotional poster autographed by Nirvana and Madonna's black bustier from the Girlie Tour. Bidding is going on now, so if you want a hand drawn picture by Daniel Johnston and have some money to burn, head here.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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