On the front cover of Oasis’s debut single, “Supersonic,” Noel Gallagher squares up to the camera, his face washed white under the glare of studio lights. A guitar rests in its stand behind him. It’s an Epiphone Les Paul Standard, one he played as the English rock band shot to stardom.
Gallagher chose the Epiphone because the Beatles had played the same instrument. “I didn’t know much about guitars back then,” the band’s frontman said at the company’s 150th anniversary celebration last year. “They looked good, they felt good, and I could make them sound good.”
It turns out the guitar, which also featured in the band’s first music video, sells pretty good too. It netted $174,000, well above its high estimate of $105,000, at Sotheby’s on Thursday as part of the auction house’s sale of artifacts of pop culture.
A collection of more than 300 Polaroids signed by celebrities. Photo: courtesy Sotheby’s.
The sale coincided with the 30th anniversary of Oasis’s first full album, Definitely Maybe, and the news that the Manchester band is reuniting for a 2025 tour, its first since 2009.
Two other Gallagher guitars featured in the auction, both of which bested their presale high estimates of $39,000. A 1980 Gibson Flying V that he played on the track “Cigarettes and Alcohol” sold for $47,000. It was previously owned by another member of indie rock royalty, the Smiths’ Johnny Marr. A stage-played Epiphone EA-250 sold for $63,000.
“It has been brilliant to offer these important Oasis guitars from the beginning of the Brit Pop era in our inaugural Pop Culture sale at Sotheby’s,” Katherine Schofield, the auction house’s head of popular culture, said in press materials. “It’s a fitting tribute to celebrate the long-awaited Oasis reunion.”
The Steinway piano has been in Abbey Road’s Studio Three for 40 years. Photo: Sotheby’s.
While the Oasis lots drew the most attention, none of Gallagher’s guitars proved the biggest-ticket item. That distinction went to a Steinway grand piano that was bought by Abbey Road Studios in 1973. For four decades it sat in Studio Three, considered Abbey Road’s best-equipped, and was played by the likes of Kate Bush, Paul McCartney, and Amy Winehouse. It sold for $252,000.
Other rock star lots included the Jean-Paul Gaultier leather jacket that Freddie Mercury wore during his final singing concert at London’s Dominion Theatre in 1988. It sold for $95,000, more than double its presale high estimate. A collection of 325 signed Polaroids taken by UK-based photojournalist Ilpo Musto and featuring a range of musicians and actors sold for $142,000.