Some of the biggest names in rock & roll including Sir Paul McCartney, Robert Plant, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Steve Winwood, Mark Knopfler, Pete Townshend, Albert Lee, David Gilmour, Joe Brown, Richard Thomson and Dave Pegg have signed a guitar to be auctioned in honor of stroke victim Jerry Donahue.
In 2016, American guitarist Jerry Donahue suffered a catastrophic stroke, almost certainly ending his career as one of the world’s finest folk-rock guitarists. The former Fairport Convention, Fotheringay and Hellecasters guitarist, was regarded by the music media as an extremely talented musician with an extraordinary technical approach to string bending.
Always in demand as a session player and always with the love of his life, the Telecaster guitar, Jerry Donahue performed and recorded with dozens of major artists. The late great Danny Gatton once referred to Jerry Donahue as “The string-bending king of the planet”.
The guitar itself, donated by John Hornby Skewes Ltd., is Jerry Donahue’s own Vintage Signature V58, built to his own specifications as a collaboration with specialist guitar and hardware designer Trevor Wilkinson and JHS Managing Director Dennis Drumm.
Features include a maple fingerboard and neck and an American alder body finished in Ash Blonde.
Signings are still coming in—Tony Iommi, Jeff Lynn, Martin Barre, John Paul Jones—and they've just squeezed in Brian Wilson and Al Jardine from The Beach Boys. The guitar is more or less full now, so they are moving on to the guitar case.
There are some very rare signings as well, some who never sign anything and as far as they know, this is the first collective signing of all three guitarists who were in The Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. The three remaining members of Led Zeppelin are on there and of course, diehard fans will remember Eric Clapton played with Steve Winwood in Blind Faith, the first of the ‘supergroups in ‘69’ ”
The auction will be held at Gardiner Houlgate’s Bath Auction rooms, on Dec. 11, and is expected to attract attention from collectors and music fans from all over the world.
