Over May 29-30, at New York’s Hard Rock, Los-Angeles-based Julien’s Auctions staged yet another of its characteristically colorful, world-beating sales of the red-hot center of rock-n-roll memorabilia, namely, a sale of stage instruments themselves. On the first day, John Lennon’s magnificent Hootenanny 12-string acoustic, used in the composition and performances of “Help,” demonstrated with puissance that great guitars still could wring money out of the walls in this uncertain world, bringing $2.8 million, a world record for a guitar from the Beatles. In a gavel stroke, that sale alone contributed just under a third of the two-day total.
Pictured above, the star lot of the second day was Prince’s custom-built Cloud 3, made in the early 80s by for Prince by star Minneapolis luthier Dave Rusan — who to this day still crafts exact, Prince-specified versions of the Cloud series from his atelier. Prince’s Cloud 3, used in recording and performing from Purple Rain all the way through to Diamonds and Pearls, sold at the Hard Rock for a record $910,000.
And therein lies the tale: Rusan delivered four initial Clouds for Prince, including the current Cloud 3, but it had for years been considered lost. Found on ebay, of all places, by an enterprising buyer who snagged the thing, the guitar was initially thought to have been a follow-on version from Rusan, not one of the four originals. As Rusan, who once bravely tried out for one of Prince’s early bands, has noted with elegant understatement, as Prince concluded his performances, he habitually threw his guitars to stage hands but the instruments were, as Rusan lyrically puts it, “not always caught.”
Julien’s and John Woodland, an advisor to Paisley Park, in tandem undertook the herculean sleuth work on this instrument, including CAT scans of the paint layers and detailed exchanges with Rusan and others, in order to re-instate the instrument’s provenance as that original Cloud 3 of that period, the one in Prince’s hands on stage. It was nothing less than a triumph in provenance work for this late-20th-century instrument. Julien’s research also unearthed the most piquant by-product fact that Christie’s had auctioned the instrument twice as a replica, a routine pitfall in provenance research for those who don’t dig deeply enough.
Martin Nolan of Julien’s describes the roller-coaster ride of the Cloud 3’s extensive provenance restoration process in his own elegantly unvarnished way:
“We were contacted by John Woodland several months ago saying that he has a client who bought a Cloud guitar on Ebay. John is one of the top experts and adviser with Paisley Park on Prince’s guitars. John asked if Julien’s would take the guitar on in helping see if its more than just a replica. We had worked with John on Prince’s Cloud 2, which is why he asked us to help authenticate this guitar. Just as we did with the Cloud 2, we put the guitar through a CT scan to see all the modifications and paint layers. After very detailed review and many calculated measurements as per John’s instruction, we found that this indeed was Prince’s missing Cloud 3 from the 80’s. Further research let us know that Christie’s had sold the guitar twice as a replica, somehow missing that it was one of Prince’s most important guitars. And we did talk with Dave Rusan, sharing with him all our research. He confirmed that this was one of the four Cloud guitars, and precisely, it was the Cloud 3.”
The takeaway? That’s the sort of provenance work that will rope in a very, very cool rock-and-roll million.
