“Why an SG? Perhaps he was fed up that his two Les Paul ’Bursts had been stolen”: The history and preservation of Eric Clapton’s The Fool SG

Eric Clapton's The Fool Gibson SG: Close-up shots of the iconic guitar, with its psychedelic paint job courtesy of the eponymous Dutch Art Collective.

No electric guitar on earth is so uniquely recognisable as this totem of Clapton’s epochal time in Cream with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker – but its origins remain frustratingly obscure to this day.

“There’s a lot of mystery around exactly where and when this guitar was acquired by Eric Clapton,” says Amelia Walker of Christie’s. “I’ve seen it [stated] in some places that George Harrison gave it to him, but he likely bought it in early ’67 because he was sick of getting Les Pauls stolen.”