The acoustic guitar that Noel Gallagher used during the writing sessions of (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? is mooted to sell for £60,000 (approx. $81,000) as its online auction goes live.
Released in June 1995, Oasis’ second album continued the Manchester band’s huge rise, after 1994’s Definitely Maybe, and Noel’s Epiphone EJ-200 was central to its creation.
The guitar is one of three Oasis auction items being sold by Sotheby’s, with the guitarist’s 12-string Rickenbacker, his loyal servant for a decade, and a handwritten lyric sheet for Don’t Look Back In Anger rounding out the power trio.
As its name suggests, the Epiphone EJ-200 is a wallet-friendly take on Gibson's esteemed SJ-200 acoustic, which has been adopted by seminal artists like Brian May (he dropped a signature model with a touching tribute to Freddie Mercury last year), Mark Knopfler, and the Beatles duo George Harrison and John Lennon.
Speaking to the Guardian ahead of its auction, Sotheby’s New York-based pop culture specialist Craig Inciardi sees the acoustic guitar as a symbol of the band's inspired mid-‘90s period.
“It was quite extraordinary how they managed to record it in such a short period of time,” he says. “He [Noel Gallagher] was just so prolific at the time, with the amount of songs that were coming out of him, it’s almost unprecedented. And if you look at that album and you look at the track listing, it looks like a greatest hits album.”
The guitar’s lucky new owner will also receive an all-important letter of authenticity that confirms the guitar’s prominence in the making of Oasis’ UK chart-topping sophomore.
It's quite the looker too, boasting a decorative vines and flowers inlay on its pickguard, and crown inlays across its fingerboard. It's said to be in excellent condition.
While the guitar was one of the select few featured in the Wonderwall music video, the guitar used to record the track was gifted to one of their engineers after his acoustic was smashed to smithereens during a Gallagher brothers row.
See Sotheby's for more.
