The Epiphone Les Paul that Noel Gallagher used to track Oasis’ 1994 debut album, Definitely Maybe, has been sold at auction for £132,000 (approximately $173,500), making it one of the most expensive cheap electric guitars of all time.
Well, maybe not cheap, but the Epiphone equivalent of the classic Gibson single-cut electric guitar was certainly affordable at the time, and a similar model would set you back some 500 bucks today on the used market.
It’s some way short of the $4.5 million that über collector Jim Irsay paid for Kurt Cobain’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” Fender Mustang – a similarly affordable ‘student guitar’ upon its release – but it is nonetheless a six-figure Epiphone Les Paul, and that is quite something.
Maybe it’s down to Oasis reunion fever – heck, at that price, only Tickemaster could afford it. Definitely it’s down to cultural significance, and the cachet that comes with owning a guitar that was on Gallagher’s regular rotation as the Manchester band blew up and scored a home run for Alan McGee’s Creation Records.
The auction, hosted by Sotheby’s, also witnessed the sale of another Gallagher Epiphone. His hollowbodied EA-250, as pictured on the cover of the band’s debut single, Supersonic, went for £48,000 (approximately $63,077).
This is more in line with what you might expect from an artist-owned vintage instrument dated to the early to mid ‘70s. You don’t see so many of these around.
Neither are there many electric guitars previously owned by Gallagher and Johnny Marr floating around on the market, so it was little surprise that the Oasis man’s Gibson Flying V fetched £36,000 (approximately $47,291).
What is more surprising is that Gallagher and Marr owned it in the first place; they’re not the first guitarists we would associate with the Flying V. This 1980 example is more Michael Schenker than Shakermaker.
All three Gallagher-owned guitars smashed their estimated value. In other Oasis news, frontman Liam Gallagher has said that the band has already recorded a new album. Was he being serious? Time will tell.
In the meantime, anyone who wants a Gallagher guitar but does not have Sotheby’s money can always get themselves his Epiphone Riviera, which is a superlative signature guitar reproduction of his original.
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