Mention Sotheby`s, and chances are that the image that springs to mind is one of genteel elegance–a place for monied collectors to pick up an artwork or two by an Old Master, a Ming vase or an ancient Oriental rug.
Most people probably would not associate the prestigious, two-centuries-old international auction house with the battered aluminum pie tin and big wooden kitchen spoon that recently crossed the desk of Dana Hawkes, who heads the Collectibles Department for Sotheby`s in New York City.
Hardly elegant and hardly antique, the pie tin and spoon nevertheless should set collectors salivating on June 27, when Sotheby`s stages its fifth annual rock and roll memorabilia auction at its New York location. (A similar auction is also scheduled later this summer at Sotheby`s in London.) The items are from a John Lennon-Yoko Ono concert held in a small club in 1969;
the audience was given pie plates and spoons and invited to make ”music”
with them. Hawkes estimates that the items, autographed by both performers, will bring between $600 and $800.
Sounds like a lot of money for a rock and roll souvenir, you say?
Actually, the tin and spoon are budget-priced compared to some of the other rock items scheduled to go on the auction block at Sotheby`s next month.
The priciest offering, a 1956 black hearse acquired by John Lennon in 1971 and used in his video ”Imagine,” is expected to bring between $40,000 and $60,000. Hawkes estimates that a floral shirt and black velvet jacket belonging to innovative `60s guitarist Jimi Hendrix will fetch between $1,200 and $1,600, while a framed gold record awarded to Elvis Presley for his
”Elvis Today” album is expected to bring as much as $6,000.
Rock and roll long ago made the transition from a youthful fad to big business. Now, less than three decades since the Beatles conquered America, rock memorabilia has come of age and into the auction house. There, it`s bringing big prices from a rapidly expanding new breed of collectors with fond memories of the music of the 1950s, `60s and `70s–and the money it takes to capture a bit of nostalgia in tangible form.
More than 700 persons, many of them attending their first auction ever, showed up at Sotheby`s for last year`s sale of rock memorabilia; this year`s auction is expected to attract even larger crowds.
”It probably was a shock to a lot of people when we first started doing these auctions,” acknowledges the 30-year-old Hawkes, whose childhood favorites included Rolling Stone Mick Jagger and the Monkees. ”But one thing that`s nice about these sales is that they show we`re a lot more open-minded than a lot of people think we are. And of course, if we see that there is a market out there for something of this nature, we`re going to go for it.”
Sotheby`s, the first auction house to move into rock memorabilia
(Christie`s has since followed suit), decided the market might be ripe in 1981 and tested the waters with a sale at its London headquarters. ”John Lennon had been killed the previous year,” says Hawkes, ”and I`m not saying that his death was what spurred things on, but it may have had something to do with the fact that my counterpart in London decided that it might be the right time to experiment with a rock memorabilia auction.”
The New York Sotheby`s followed suit the next year with a small, 40-lot sale, but it was the 200-lot 1984 sale, which featured large numbers of Lennon-Ono items, that put them on the rock memorabilia map with a net sale take of $539,600.
”The 1984 auction was really weird,” recalls Hawkes. ”We had a lot of Lennon items, and people were lined up around the block waiting to get in. We were selling things that had an estimated value of, say, $300, for $3,000.”
This year`s sale will feature between 200 and 250 lots, and while there are the inevitable exceptions to the rule, Hawkes notes that most of the bidders will share certain characteristics:
— The majority of them will be private collectors. ”We do get some dealers,” says Hawkes, ”but they usually get outbid.”
— Most will be between the ages of 30 and 45, with strong ties to the music of the 1960s.
— Most of them–about 75 percent–will be men, including a number of restaurateurs and other entrepreneurs who will use the items to decorate their businesses. (”We`re such enthusiastic bidders, we`ve probably helped to drive prices up,” says Hard Rock Cafe creative director Warwick Stone, who regularly attends rock memorabilia auctions at Sotheby`s and Christie`s in the U.S. and London in search of treasures for Hard Rock eateries, including the Chicago restaurant. Stone`s auction purchases last year included one of Bill Haley`s guitars, for which he paid $25,000 at Christie`s in London.)
— Many will have absolutely no idea of how an auction works. ”You have to explain how to bid, how to establish an account with us, that kind of thing,” says Hawkes, who also has to explain such concepts as an auction lot (which may include one or more items) and the reserve (the minimum bid that will be accepted on a particular lot). ”Of course, now that we are getting a lot of repeat bidders, there`s less and less of that.”
Hawkes, whose other duties at Sotheby`s include appraising antique dolls, toys and music boxes, has a particular fondness for the rock memorabilia sales.
”They`re fun auctions,” she says. ”It`s not like selling jewels or Impressionist paintings. There`s a whole different kind of glory behind it, in a weird way. At a lot of our other auctions, people are buying things for serious business or investment reasons, but the people who come to the rock auctions are there to have fun–and maybe take a little piece of John Lennon or Jimi Hendrix home with them.”
As with Sotheby`s previous rock memorabilia auctions, between 50 and 75 percent of the items to go up for bid will be of Beatles origin. (Other artists and groups whose material will go on the auction block this year include the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Fleetwood Mac, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd, the Monkees, Electric Light Orchestra and Kenny Rogers.)
”Beatles are what`s hot,” says Hawkes, who notes that a cheap, Japanese-made acoustic guitar belonging to John Lennon sold for $18,000–about 10 times the estimate–at a previous auction. (The singer-composer`s psychedelic-motif Rolls-Royce went for more than $2 million). ”After that, the other `hot` acts would be Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, but particularly Hendrix. The Beatles were very commercial, but Hendrix wasn`t alive long enough to really promote himself, so it`s a lot harder to find good material relating to him.”
Still, items from relatively ”new” bands of the 1980s, such as Duran Duran, have brought as much as $400. And a batch of mid-1970s new wave and punk music memorabilia, including press kits, posters, buttons and magazines featuring the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Talking Heads and others–around 100 items in all–went for a surprisingly steep $1,045, three times Hawkes` estimate, in 1985.
Occasionally, of course, an item expected to go for big bucks proves of little or no interest to bidders. Such was the case a few years ago with a coat and hat worn by Elvis Presley. ”They were pretty dull,” admits Hawkes, ”not at all like one of his sparkly suits, but we thought that they would sell because they belonged to Elvis. We figured the lot would bring around $2,000 or $3,000, but nobody even bid the reserve and the consignor ended up taking it back. That doesn`t happen very often.”
Unlike paintings, jewelry, Oriental rugs and other staples of Sotheby`s other sales, much of the rock memorabilia has changed hands little if at all over the years. Hawkes estimates that more than half of the time, it`s the original owner who decides to put it up for auction.
”People see that there`s a market now for these things, especially Beatles items,” she says. ”A lot of times they aren`t emotionally attached to the items. Maybe they worked for the Beatles and wound up with some gold records or received correspondence from them. If they can get $500 for a postcard written by John Lennon, they might as well sell it. So they bring it to us.”
Some of the memorabilia in the upcoming sale was indeed consigned by former employees of the Beatles or Capitol, the quartet`s record label. A Miami policeman who served as the band`s bodyguard during their first visit to the U.S. in 1964, for example, brought Hawkes a variety of items, including a drawing signed by all of the Beatles and letters sent to him by band members after their return to England. Others, such as the pie plate and spoon, come from music fans who acquired the items years ago and saved them as souvenirs. Sotheby`s charges a 20 percent consignment fee, based on the selling price, for lots that bring below $1,000. The auction house takes a 15 percent fee for items that sell between $1,000 and $5,000 and 10 percent for items above $5,000.
”When we first did these sales, we were selling anything and everything, like Beatles bubble gum cards and hats and sneakers,” says Hawkes. ”There were a lot of $200 lots, which really didn`t make sense. These days, I`m looking for more sophisticated material that will fetch higher prices, and that kind of thing is getting harder to come by.”
It`s Hawkes` job not only to determine the estimated value of each item, but also to assure herself, as thoroughly as possible, of its authenticity.
”There are a lot of reproductions and forgeries out there,” she acknowledges. ”I keep a whole file of signatures done by John Lennon and all the rest of the Beatles, Yoko Ono and Jimi Hendrix that I use for comparison
–the signatures on that plate and spoon, for example, are authentic. I`m also able to verify some items` authenticity through articles or books, and it`s usually easy enough to verify if people actually worked for Capitol or the Beatles. The policeman who served as the Beatles` bodyguard had a whole bunch of newspaper articles written about him. But if there is any doubt, I will say, `According to the consigner, she got this in such-and-such a place under such-and-such circumstances.`
”About 75 percent of the time, though, the people who hand material over to you for consignment have maybe just one object; they aren`t dealers. You can just tell that they aren`t trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Most of them don`t even know how an auction works.”
Hawkes predicts the demand for rock collectibles will continue to escalate, but notes that it can also be extremely volatile and inconsistent. She cites John Lennon`s `Bag One` lithographs, a limited-edition set of 14 pictures depicting his marriage to Yoko Ono, as a prime example. A few years ago, the complete series went for $14,000 at auction. Last year, an identical set brought only $7,000.
”Those sets turn up at almost every sale,” says Hawkes. ”I guess that there`s only so much that the market will absorb. Of course, who knows what will happen at the next auction?”
Catalogs will be available Tuesday and can be ordered by calling Dana Hawkes at Sotheby`s, 212-606-7424. The price is $19 by mail, and you can charge it to a credit card.
