This 1977 Martin HD-28 acoustic guitar was given to Freddie Mercury by his manager and lover Paul Prenter. Mercury played the guitar at home, and today it still shows some light signs of wear from this time.
Martin guitars have been in handmade production since 1833 and they’ve been played by an extraordinary list of icons including Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Neil Young, John Mayer, and Seth Avett. Kurt Cobain played a Martin D-18 E in Nirvana’s 1993 MTV Unplugged appearance, and it recently became the most valuable guitar in history, selling for over $6 million USD.
This is Freddie Mercury performing in New Haven, Connecticut in November of 1977. He was an accomplished musician and vocalist, playing both piano and guitar, often preferring to write songs on a guitar. Image courtesy of Carl Lender.
The Incredible Story Of Martin Guitars
Martin guitars are built by the C. F. Martin & Company which was established in 1833, initially in New York before moving to Nazareth, Pennsylvania where they remain to the current day. Martin was founded by Christian Frederick Martin, a luthier from Markneukirchen, Germany.
C.F. Martin came from a family of cabinet makers however he chose to travel to Vienna, Austria and become an apprentice of celebrated guitar maker Johann Georg Stauffer. The guitar was a far less well-known instrument at this time, but as the 19th century became the 20th, it would become one of the most important stringed instruments in the world.
After a dispute with the Cabinet Makers Guild (of which Martin was a member), and the Violin Makers Guild over who was allowed to make guitars, Martin decided to move to the United States with his family to leave the oppressive guild system behind.
He would establish C. F. Martin & Company and begin hand-making guitars in the United States that soon earned a reputation for their high quality.
Over the years Martin would be an early pioneer of many new technologies and methodologies, like X-bracing, scalloped bracing, and the company invented the popular Dreadnought guitar body style.
Mercury owned this guitar for a number of years and was known to play it at home, you can still see some signs of wear on the body if you look closely.
Today the company remains family-owned and operated, its current executive chairman (“Chris” C.F. Martin IV) is the great-great-great-grandson of the founder.
The Ex-Freddie Mercury Martin HD-28 Shown Here
As mentioned higher up, this is a 1977 Martin HD-28 acoustic guitar that was presented to Freddie Mercury as a personal gift by his manager and lover Paul Prenter. Mercury, the frontman and lead singer of the iconic glam rock band Queen, kept the guitar at home and played it for a number of years before giving it back to Prenter as a gift in 1984.
Prenter is a wildly controversial figure in Mercury’s life, and in the history of the band, and he was featured prominently in a negative light in the 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody about Queen.
Many point to Prenter as having betrayed Mercury’s trust by doing media interviews after the two had gone their separate ways, exposing much that Mercury had wished to remain private.
This is the letter of provenance from Mercury’s former manager and lover Paul Prenter, a highly-controversial figure in his life, even featuring as the villain in the 2018 film “Bohemian Rhapsody” about Queen.
The guitar now comes with a letter of provenance from Prenter, which identifies its model type and serial number (which both match to this guitar), and it briefly gives the instrument’s history.
It’s now due to roll across the auction block with Julien’s on the 30th of May with a price guide of $6,000 – $8,000 USD. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Julien’s
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
