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“There is no doubt that this guitar was Lennon’s most important guitar in the
early days of The Beatles … I can tell you, there has never been
another guitar like this offered up for auction.”
- Andy Babiuk
We may never know exactly how John Lennon was separated from his Gibson
acoustic guitar. We do know that it was purchased by Tommy Pressley in the
summer of 1967 from a music store in San Diego. Pressley, who purchased the
guitar with no idea that it once belonged to John Lennon, later sold the guitar to
his friend John McCaw.
McCaw owned this guitar for many years before becoming curious about its age.
In 2008, he began a simple search for the year his guitar was made that lead to a
long and winding road of coincidences , hunches and lucky breaks.
McCaw’s investigation ultimately led him to Andy Babiuk author of Beatles Gear:
All the Fab Four’s Instruments from Stage to Studio. As the authority on Beatles
instruments, Babiuk receives calls almost daily from people who believe they
have found a Beatles musical instrument.
This time it was different, someone actually did find John Lennon’s lost J-160E.
John Lennon's Gibson J-160E acoustic guitar.
Maker: Gibson
Model: J-160E
Serial number: 73157
Body type: Flattop acoustic/electric
Finish: sunburst
Mahogany back and sides
Three-ply laminated spruce top
Bound rosewood fingerboard
Crown pearl inlays
Three-on-a-side keystone-tip Kluson
tuners
Tortoiseshell pickguard
Single Gibson P-90 single-coil pickup
Single volume control
Output jack at side
**BIDDING ON THIS LOT WILL REQUIRE SPECIAL REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS.
Please contact [email protected] or call 310-836-1818 for additional information to bid on this lot.
In 1962 and 1963 when John Lennon and Paul McCartney left the studio and went home to song write it was this J-160E that Lennon used to compose. The songs “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Please, Please Me,” “From Me to You,” “All My Loving,” “This Boy” and others, were written by Lennon and McCartney using this instrument. It’s importance in Beatles history cannot be overstated; this guitar is intimately bound to the early career of The Beatles. This is the earliest and most significant John Lennon guitar to be auctioned.
Lennon used the Gibson J-160E in the studio for most of the recordings that required an acoustic guitar between 1962 and 1963. This is a partial list of the singles and albums this guitar can be heard on:
The UK singles:
“Love Me Do” / “P.S. I Love You”
“Please Please Me” / “Ask Me Why”
“From Me To You” / “Thank You Girl”
The albums:
Please, Please Me
With the Beatles
Introducing… The Beatles
The Early Beatles
Meet the Beatles!
The Beatles' Second Album
The Beatles One
Live At the BBC
Anthology 1
The EPs:
The Beatles (No. 1)
The Beatles' Hits
Twist and Shout
Lennon Gibson J-160E
Excerpt from the new Beatles Gear – The Ultimate Edition book that will be out October 2015
Andy Babiuk
Returning to Liverpool from the September 4 studio session, the group continued with daily live shows. Earlier in the year, just after Abbey Road staff had complained about the poor state of much of the group’s gear, Lennon and Harrison had ordered a pair of new Gibson electric-acoustic J-160E guitars, and word now came through that these had arrived.
Gibson launched the J-160E, an unusual hybrid, in 1954. It looked like a regular flattop acoustic, but it was fitted with an electric-guitar type pickup and controls. This meant that it could be used unplugged as a regular acoustic guitar, for example for songwriting on the road, or plugged-in to give an amplified approximation of an acoustic guitar, either on stage or in the studio. Lennon and Harrison’s Gibson J-160Es were identical sunburst-finish guitars, each with a 16-inch round-shouldered body built with mahogany back and sides, a three-ply laminated spruce top with internal ladder bracing, a mahogany neck with a bound rosewood fingerboard inlaid with crown-shape pearl markers, three-on-a-side keystone-tip Kluson tuners, a tortoiseshell pickguard, and an adjustable ceramic saddle mounted in a rosewood bridge base. Each of the guitars was fitted with a single Gibson P-90 single-coil pickup between the end of the neck and the soundhole, with a single volume and tone control mounted on the body’s lower face and an output jack on the side. The guitars arrived in brown Lifton cases with pink-lined interiors.
The group ordered the J-160Es from Rushworth’s – one of the few shops in Liverpool where musicians could buy American-made instruments. The J-160E was not one of the Gibson models generally on sale in the UK through distributor Selmer, so Lennon and Harrison had to order the guitars from a catalogue and wait for them to be sent specially to the store from the United States.
The two guitarists may have been influenced in their choice of this unusual model by Tony Sheridan. “At the time everybody was using a cricket bat,” Sheridan says, “a piece of wood with strings on it. Not too many people were into big jazz guitars, but I was. So I guess it rubbed off on the Liverpool crowd. I think that had something to do with The Beatles using those big hollow-body acoustic guitars.” Sheridan believes that Lennon and Harrison intended to order the archtop Gibson ES-175 – the model he had used in Hamburg and that the two Beatle guitarists had tried – but that they somehow ended up with the flattop J-160E. He says that they had enjoyed using his Gibson ES-175 and would refer to it as “the jumbo.”
Perhaps Lennon and Harrison liked Sheridan’s 175 so much that, when it came to shopping for new guitars, they really did mean to get that model for themselves. The two guitarists certainly did refer to their Gibson J-160Es later as “the jumbos”. Maybe when Lennon and Harrison ordered the Gibson guitars at Rushworth’s they asked for “the Gibson electric jumbo”, with the intention of ordering a model like Sheridan’s “jumbo”. Early-60s Gibson catalogues list the J-160E as the “Electric Jumbo Model” – hence the J and the E. The ES-175 is listed as an “Electric Spanish Model”. Maybe this accounts for Lennon and Harrison ending up with their J-160Es. Sheridan also points to a more attractive second theory: that it may have been the influence of another guitar he used in Hamburg, his pickup-equipped Martin D-28E, an instrument much closer in style to the J-160E.
Whatever inspired their purchase, Lennon and Harrison’s J-160Es were certainly specially ordered through Rushworth’s. The total credit price noted for Lennon’s Gibson J-160E (and presumably Harrison’s too) was a cool £161/1/- (£161.05, about $450 then and around £3,100 or $4,600 in today’s money). Tracing the serial number 73161 listed on Lennon’s original hire-purchase receipt to the log still in Gibson’s archives shows that this J-160E was shipped by Gibson on June 27. The receipt also reveals that Epstein paid for the guitar in full almost exactly a year later.
We’ll learn later how Lennon and Harrison would swap their J-160Es and that Lennon’s Gibson would go missing at the end of 1963. In 2014, that long-lost J-160E of Lennon’s was found. This author was contacted by John McCaw, who had seen an earlier edition of Beatles Gear and noticed that the serial number published in the book for Harrison’s 160 was very close to the one he owned. McCaw bought his used J-160E from a friend in southern California in the late 60s after serving in the military in Vietnam, and he has owned it ever since. As he looked at the photo of Harrison’s guitar, he thought about how similar it looked to his own. When he read further and found out that Lennon’s guitar had gone missing in the early 60s, McCaw wondered if his guitar could possibly be Lennon’s. This author compared the wood grain patterns in McCaw’s guitar with those in photos of Lennon and his 160, and they provided an absolute match. The guitar was indeed Lennon’s original Gibson J-160E. The serial number on the guitar is 73157, and this is listed on the same page of Gibson’s shipping records as Harrison’s 73161, just a few lines apart. Both guitars were shipped from Gibson on the same day, June 27 1962.
When did the group start to use their new J-160E guitars? They may have been sent by sea from the USA, which would account for them taking more than two months to arrive. Rushworth’s boast in Mersey Beat that the guitars were “specially flown to England by jet from America” was probably just part of the promotional hype.25 That receipt for Lennon’s Gibson is dated September 10, and certainly he and Harrison were never pictured with the J-160Es prior to that date. This seems to rule out the Gibsons from the first two recording sessions for ‘Love Me Do’, with Best on June 6 and with Starr on September 4.
To complicate matters further, the presentation of the guitars to the group at Rushworth’s may not have happened on September 10. In the photographs taken of the event, the guitars already have smudges on the finish, as if they had been well played. Both guitars have string tied around the headstock for a shoulder strap, which would not have been how they were shipped from Gibson. Perhaps the photo session was staged later, an afterthought by Epstein and Rushworth’s with an eye to a promotional opportunity? Bill Harry, publisher of Mersey Beat, remembers that the event was set up specifically for his paper, to help promote the group and the music store. The pictures did not appear in Mersey Beat until October.
On September 11, the day after Rushworth’s sold them their new guitars, The Beatles once again visited EMI’s Abbey Road Studio 2 in London to try again to record their first single… The group once again recorded ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘PS I Love You’. All three versions – June 6, September 4, September 11 – have since been released, and all bear a similar guitar sound. So maybe the same guitar was used for all three sessions – meaning either Lennon’s Rickenbacker or Harrison’s Duo Jet. It is of course possible that the J-160Es were used for the recording on the 11th. When Lennon and Harrison first used their Gibson J-160Es in the studio, they recorded them by plugging the guitars into their amplifiers – the guitars were not recorded acoustically, and the tone came from a miked-up amplifier. If one plays a J-160E, a Rickenbacker 325, or a Gretsch Duo Jet today through an A.C.30, it’s relatively easy to get the same sound quality from all three guitars – essentially a very clean and full tone.
The Helen Shapiro package tour started on Saturday February 2. During the tour, Epstein managed to fill The Beatles’ days off with sporadic shows at the Cavern and a full schedule of live radio and television appearances to help promote the new single. Amid all this work, producer George Martin and Epstein managed to book another recording session at EMI. On Monday February 11, The Beatles entered Abbey Road Studio 2 and recorded their first full-length LP, the 14-track Please Please Me. The whole album was recorded in one grueling day. Judged by today’s standards, when one day is unlikely to produce a decent drum sound, this seems a remarkable achievement. The session was recorded on to a two-track tape machine, almost entirely live and with few or no overdubs. The instruments and amplification that the group used for making Please Please Me were the same as for their live performances during the Shapiro tour: the ’58 Rickenbacker 325, Gretsch Duo Jet, both Gibson J-160Es, both Vox A.C.30 Twin amps (without Top Boost), and the Hofner bass played through the studio’s Leak power amp and a Tannoy 15-inch speaker cabinet. Ringo played his Premier drum set.
By February 22, the band’s second single ‘Please Please Me’ neared the top of the British charts. Epstein’s program of never-ending promotion had paid off perfectly. On February 17, The Beatles had recorded a performance for the influential British television show Thank Your Lucky Stars, miming a performance of the hit 45. McCartney played his Hofner bass, Harrison and Lennon both used their Gibson J-160E acoustic-electric guitars, and Starr played his Premier drum set with the new bug Beatles logo displayed on the front drum-head.
By mid-1963, it must have seemed that the group’s success was providing its own momentum. On Monday July 1, they were again summoned to Studio 2 at EMI’s recording base in Abbey Road for another recording session, where they recorded their fourth single, ‘She Loves You’ backed with ‘I’ll Get You’. Photographs from the session show Starr playing his Ludwig drum set and Lennon with his Gibson J-160E plugged into his Vox A.C.30 amp. McCartney played his Hofner.
By the beginning of November, the group had started their fourth package tour – but this time they were the headliners. Billed as The Beatles Autumn Tour, the month-and-a-half round of English theatres (plus a gig each in Dublin and Belfast) featured an almost daily ritual of live shows. A mix of radio and television interviews and performances were fitted into the schedule wherever possible. The equipment they used on the Autumn Tour saw little change. Starr played his Ludwig drum set, Lennon his Rickenbacker 325 as his main guitar and the Gibson J-160E when required, through his ’63 Vox A.C.30 amp. McCartney used his new ’63 Hofner bass, with his original ’61 as a spare, played through the A.C.30 head and T.60 bass cabinet, while Harrison used his ’63 A.C.30, playing his Gretsch Country Gentleman.
During the group’s Autumn Tour, they made an appearance on the Granada television programme Scene, taping a performance of ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ and ‘This Boy’ on November 25. The television studio’s stage was set up with large headlines from a fictitious Daily Echo newspaper and a drum riser made to look like a camera lens. When they mimed ‘This Boy’, Harrison and Lennon both used their Gibson J-160E guitars – one of the last occasions that Lennon would be filmed with his, because the instrument was stolen soon afterward. On November 22, the group’s second LP, With The Beatles, was released in the UK on Parlophone (PMC 1206 mono, PCS 3045 stereo) with advance orders of 300,000 copies. The album featured (side one:) ‘It Won’t Be Long’, ‘All I’ve Got To Do’, ‘All My Loving’, ‘Don’t Bother Me’, ‘Little Child’, ‘Till There Was You’, and ‘Please Mister Postman’, (side two:) ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, Hold Me Tight’, ‘You Really Got A Hold On Me’, ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, ‘Devil In Her Heart’, ‘Not A Second Time’, and ‘Money’. A week later, on November 29, the single ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ backed with ‘This Boy’ came out on Parlophone (R 5084), with over one million advance orders. The Beatles had conquered Britain.
It was at the Christmas shows in London that Lennon noticed his Gibson J-160E had gone missing. An account of the Gibson’s abduction published a couple of years later in The Beatles Monthly Book described how Lennon and Harrison took pride in their Gibson “Jumbos” and how they’d saved up their money for the hire-purchase deposits with much determination. “By the time of the Finsbury Park show,” ran the report, “the total collection of Beatle guitars had grown, but John and Paul were using their Gibson jumbos in the dressing room and they were there as stand-by replacements if strings snapped during a performance. Recalls John: ‘George and I often took a jumbo home with us, so nobody noticed until the end of the season that one was missing. A week or two afterwards I asked Mal where he’d put my jumbo. It was only then that we realised the guitar had been pinched, at Finsbury Park. No, I never got it back.” Mal Evans, the group’s roadie, also recalled the grim moment: “The worst of all was at the Finsbury Empire in London, when I lost John’s guitar. It was one he’d had for years, as well. It just disappeared. ‘Where’s my jumbo?’ he said. I didn’t know – it’s still a mystery.”
At some point between September 1962, when they acquired their Gibsons, and December 1963, Lennon and Harrison had in fact swapped their guitars. Perhaps it was because of playability or sound preference. Or maybe, because the instruments were identical, the guitars were unknowingly switched, and neither Lennon nor Harrison noticed … or cared. So Lennon’s Gibson guitar, serial number 73157, that went missing in 1963 was actually the one that had been registered to Harrison under the hire-purchase deal made at Rushworth’s music shop. And the J-160E guitar that Harrison still owned decades later, serial number 73161, was the guitar that was logged to Lennon on the original hire-purchase document.
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