One of the most iconic items in George Michael’s career, the acoustic guitar he energetically strummed in the video for 1987’s Faith, is going up for auction. The guitar, a Gretsch Synchromatic 160 with a sunburst finish to the body, has an estimated sale price of £60,000-£120,000. It comes with a case featuring the words Rockabilly Rebel pasted on it – a reference to the twangy, 1950s-referencing sound of Faith, which topped the US charts for four weeks and became a foundation stone of Michael’s post-Wham! solo career.
The guitar is part of a broader auction from the archive of Michael’s former personal assistant, Siobhan Bailey, who died in 2014 aged 56. It is being arranged via her widower. Bailey worked for Michael for more than 20 years, and amassed a sizeable trove of memorabilia.
The star lot is the Gretsch guitar, but there are 31 others spanning everything from gold and platinum discs to tour programmes – and a metal lighthouse statue presented to Michael by Malaga city council in 1989 (estimated price £200-£400). There are glimpses into the machinations for George Michael and Wham! tours via private itinerary documents, including one of Bailey’s handwritten notebooks, and a running order document for 1985’s Live Aid. Another itinerary details Wham!’s 1985 tour of China, when they became the first western act to tour the country.
The trip was documented – in fractious circumstances – by director Lindsay Anderson in the film Wham! in China: Foreign Skies, recently reissued in an altered form as Wham! 10 Days in China. The auction also features the ultimate version of Michael’s album Older – a promotional box set not made available to the public, expected to sell for £300-600 – and invitations that Michael received to various events including a reception by TV soap EastEnders, and a lunch with David and Victoria Beckham in 2002 (“rickshaws at nightfall, dress: white tie and diamonds”). Another lot features 49 photos, some of them taken by Bailey and previously unseen.
Coincidentally, another Faith-era item is going up for sale at a separate auction announced this week: Ray-Ban sunglasses worn by Michael on the Faith tour are expected to sell for £15,000 to £30,000 at the upcoming Music Memorabilia Live auction held in London on 1 and 2 October. The auctions arrive as the 10th anniversary of Michael’s death approaches in December, along with a broader re-appreciation of the Faith era. A new film, George Michael: The Faith Tour, will be released on 6 November, drawn from rediscovered footage of a 1988 concert in Paris.
The film is co-directed by Andy Morahan, who directed the Faith music video, and is assembled from footage generated by 14 35mm cameras which captured Michael’s performance. It will be preceded by a short film by Mary McCartney, pairing unseen images of Michael by acclaimed photographer Herb Ritts with an unheard interview with Michael. An 18-track live album, also titled George Michael: The Faith Tour, is being released alongside it.
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