Guitar marking Dylan’s ‘folk to rock’ shift fetches a million

Christie’s auction house did not immediately identify the absentee buyer who agreed to pay $965,000 for the sunburst-finish guitar.

The Fender Stratocaster PHOTO: AP

The Fender Stratocaster that Bob Dylan plugged in when he famously went electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival has sold for nearly $1 million, the highest price ever paid for a guitar at auction.

Christie’s auction house did not immediately identify the absentee buyer who agreed to pay $965,000 for the sunburst-finish guitar.

Mr. Dylan’s legendary performance at the festival in Rhode Island 48 years ago marked his rupture with the folk movement’s old guard and solidified his shift away from acoustic music, like “Blowin’ in the Wind”, to electric rock ’n’ roll, such as “Like a Rolling Stone”.

Mr. Dylan’s “going electric changed the structure of folk music”, said Newport Folk Festival founder George Wein (88)