This is George Harrison’s Resonet Futurama, it was his most-played guitar in the early days of the Beatles seeing extensive stage and studio use from 1959 to 1961 including at the legendary Cavern Club in England.
It’s well-known that George Harrison, and countless other budding rock stars in Britain at the time, wanted to buy a Fender Stratocaster. The issue was that there was a UK government embargo on foreign musical instrument imports in place, and Stratocasters were almost impossible to find.
Above Video: This short documentary delves into the early history of The Beatles, including their formative months playing in Hamburg.
The reason the Stratocaster was so popular was partly due to the fact that it was one of the most advanced electric guitars in the world at the time, and also due to the fact that Buddy Holly used one. In the 1950s there were relatively few male teenage guitar players who didn’t want to be Buddy Holly.
Harrison bought the Resonet Futurama, a Czechoslovakian guitar, from Frank Hessy’s music store in Liverpool on November 20th, 1959. It looked a little like the Stratocaster and even though he found it more difficult to play, he did like the tone it produced. He bought it on a payment plan with his mother as the guarantor.
“Paul came with me when I bought the Futurama. It was on the wall with all the other guitars and Paul plugged it into the amp but couldn’t get any sound out of it, so he turned the amp right up.”
“The guitar had three rocker switches and I just hit one and there was an almighty ‘boom’ through the amplifier and all the other guitars fell off the wall. My mother signed the hire-purchase agreement for me. That is one pound down and the rest when they catch you.” – George Harrison
Harrison would play the Futurama extensively in the early days, back when The Beatles were still called The Silver Beetles. are would play it in Germany at Bruno Koschmider’s Indra club on the Grosse Freiheit in Hamburg, Germany, then later at Koschmider’s other venue, the Kaiserkeller.
On this first trip to Germany, The Silver Beetles played 106 nights over 3+ months, approximately 4 to 6 hours each night. Harrison used this guitar for all of it, he then used it at The Cavern Club before returning to Germany for a 92 night residency at the Top Ten Club in Hamburg with British star Tony Sheridan.
This guitar is one of the most important from the formative days of The Beatles, and it comes with its original carry case.
This guitar “… was played by Harrison on over 324 Beatle performances and was also the guitar that he used on The Beatles first official recordings for Polydor. Of all the guitars George Harrison used with The Beatles, this Futurama is one of the two guitars he used the most.” – Beatles historian Andy Babiuk
The George Harrison Resonet Futurama is now being auctioned by Julien’s in an online sale that starts on the 20th of November with a price guide of $600,000 – $800,000 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
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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.
