How Bob Dylan’s Newport Festival Stratocaster ended up in the back of a woman’s attic

By editorial board on October 31, 2022

On July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan needed just three songs to produce one of the most infamous sets in guitar music history, treating the Newport Folk Festival crowd to something most folk fans saw as straight-up heresy: an electric guitar-heavy performance, supported by a backing band.

The Strat was played by the folk legend at one of his most divisive shows and sold at auction for nearly $1,000,000 – but its rediscovery was met with contention, not least from Dylan himself (Guitarworld)

At the center of it all stood an innocent Fender Stratocaster. A 1964 Three-Tone Sunburst Strat, to be precise, which would later go on to become one of the most expensive guitars ever sold at auction when it went for almost $1,000,000 in 2013, usurping Eric Clapton’s “Blackie” Strat at the top of the list.

Around the time of the festival, the singer-songwriter boarded an aircraft helmed by Victor Quinto – a pilot whose job it was to ferry folk acts to the festival on Rhode Island, and who worked with Dylan on a number of occasions.

As legend has it, Dylan shared the cabin with his Fender Stratocaster and some sheet music, though left them both on the plane when he reached his destination. Not wanting it to fall into the wrong hands, Quinto took the items home with him, with the intention of returning them to Dylan the next chance he got.

Numerous calls to Dylan’s management later, and Quinto remained in possession of the infamous Fender. According to Court House News(opens in new tab), “No one ever came to obtain the [Strat] and music despite the request.” As such, the guitar – one of the most significant six-strings of the 20th century – was placed in Quinto’s attic, and began collecting dust.

12 years later, Quinto passed away as a result of a brain aneurysm, with his daughter, Dawn Peterson, inheriting many of his possessions – including Dylan’s long-lost Stratocaster. However, it wasn’t until Peterson watched a documentary about Dylan’s fateful Folk Festival appearance that she began to realize the significance of her new possession.

“After [Quinto] died, I watched a documentary about Bob Dylan and it showed footage of the first time that he played an electric guitar live,” Peterson told PBS’ History Detectives in 2012, after she sought the aid of the show’s researchers to have the guitar authenticated.

She continued, “It looked exactly like the guitar my dad had left in our family’s attic.”

However, the story of Dylan’s guitar between the time Peterson unearthed it and when it sold at auction is fraught with controversy. ( To read the full story click Guitar World HERE)

Recently A 1963 Martin D-28 acoustic guitar played by Bob Dylan at the Concert for Bangladesh and during his Rolling Thunder Revue sold at auction Saturday for nearly $400,000, watch here

Pop culture icon Bob Dylan and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame legendary songwriter and guitarist, Robbie Robertson. The legendary instrument first came onto the music scene making history as the guitar played by acoustic folk icon Bob Dylan on his first tour "going electric" with the Hawks in 1966; his backing band would become famously renamed and revered as The Band. Played by Robbie Robertson on classic compositions such as "Up on Cripple Creek", "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and by Dylan on the revolutionary 1966 Blonde on Blonde, Robertson said "This guitar has been on the front lines of so many phenomenal events, I gaze at it with amazement." The guitar was also played extensively by other music legends including Eric Clapton, George Harrison and Levon Helm, defining the sound of some of the greatest rock and roll albums of all time. folk

Dylan used the Telecaster throughout the Sixties and Seventies, sharing it with its longtime owner, Band singer-guitarist Robbie Robertson. The instrument has undergone several modifications over the years, with Robertson most notably stripping its original black finish to bare wood in 1970. (The guitar is different from the Stratocaster Dylan played at his 1965 set at Newpork Folk Festival, which sold at auction for $965,000.)

 

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