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Tuesday, June 20, 2000
Mining rock's treasures in basements and bidding wars
by Patrick MacDonald
Seattle Times staff critic
Peter Blecha was harboring a secret he couldn't tell even
his wife and kids.
He ached to talk about it, so to occupy his mind he turned on the
TV. And there it was, his secret revealed for all the world to see.
"Com'ere," he cried to his household. "Look at this!" There, on
VH1, was a replay of the auction at which Blecha, senior curator of EMP, successfully bid $497,500 of Paul Allen's money for "Brownie," Eric Clapton's beloved Fender Stratocaster. The TV narrator said it was probably going to EMP.
"That's me on the other end of the phone," Blecha told his
family. "I'm the anonymous bidder!" They were unimpressed. He wasn't on TV. He wasn't even identified.
But Blecha knew he was part of pop history. He had bid the most
ever for a guitar at auction. Allen didn't want any publicity about the buy, so as not to encourage others to jack up their prices for items EMP was eyeing. Blecha had been sworn to secrecy after the June 1999 auction. But now, just days later, the secret was out.
The instrument, one of 100 Clapton guitars auctioned for charity
that day at Christie's in New York, raising $5 million for his Crossroads Centre drug-treatment facility, was the one on which Clapton recorded his classic "Layla." It's pictured on the cover of the "Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs" album by the Clapton-led group, Derek & the Dominoes.
Blecha, a Seattle native whose lifelong devotion to Northwest
music - and huge collection of recordings and memorabilia to go with it - got him his job at EMP in 1992, says that acquiring items for the collection isn't always that glamorous or exciting.
"It's not all Indiana Jones type of archeological adventures," he
explained. "A lot of the time it's just answering the phone."
His initial EMP mandate was "to scour the planet for world-class
Hendrix artifacts, the crown jewels, the iconic pieces." That was back when the museum was to have been devoted to Jimi Hendrix. But when the Hendrix family backed out of participating, EMP took on a larger view, encompassing Northwest music specifically, and all of rock history in general.
The collection began with the guitar Hendrix had played at
Woodstock and his famous black-felt bolero hat, both of which Paul Allen had purchased in the early '90s. The guitar was found in Italy, owned by a disc jockey named Red Penny who had acquired it at an auction at Sotheby's. Allen made Penny an offer he accepted, and Jody Patton, Allen's sister and EMP executive director, flew to Italy to fetch it. She bought first-class seats for herself and the guitar for the return flight. The hat? Phone call; dickering; sold!
The Hendrix item of which Blecha is most proud is the
"Electric Ladyland" song book of Hendrix's hand-written lyrics for the 1968 double album, obtained by Allen at auction; two pieces of a guitar Hendrix smashed at a show at the Saville Theatre in London in 1967, significant because the guitar had been hand-painted by Hendrix, bought from the person who caught the fragments; and several articles of clothing, including a wildly colorful jacket and a torn kimono, both acquired from fans who had been given them by Hendrix's father.
"Al Hendrix used to give away stuff to people who knocked on his
door," Blecha marveled. "Dozens of Jimi's scarves, shirts, shoes, all kinds of stuff. He had them in boxes in his basement. We went and showed him how to store things, how to fold clothing in acid-free paper or hang it in Mylar bags. He just sort of chuckled." Blecha shook his head in disbelief.
Blecha and fellow senior curator Jim Fricke are most proud of EMP's guitar collection, which includes one of Bo Diddley's early box guitars (purchased from Diddley), a Kurt Cobain guitar signed by the other members of Nirvana (purchased from a collector), an acoustic guitar Bob Dylan gave to his New York landlady around 1961 for past-due rent (purchased from a dealer), what is believed to be the first electric bass, made in 1936 (also purchased from a dealer), and the guitar on which the Kingsmen recorded "Louie Louie" (purchased from a band member).
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