George Peckham and Rickenbacker. Image credits: Wikimedia Commons
The guitar was later sold at the Julien’s Auctions Music Icons event at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York in May 2014, according to The Associated Press. About 43 years after the gift, it sold for $657,000, above the top of its estimate. Harrison bought the guitar, with serial number BH 439, in 1963, in Mount Vernon, Illinois, where he spent two weeks visiting his sister, Louise, according to the pre-auction statement of Julien‘s Auctions. Harrison can be seen in a photo taken backstage during a concert in Scotland in October 1963 with the guitar. These notes also revealed that in 1971, he was closely associated with Harrison and even travelled to New York to master All Things Must Pass. Christie’s notes claim that Peckham and Harrison were working closely together in 1971 While Julien’s Auctions dates this gift to the late 1960s or early 1970s.
When Peckham returned it, Harrison inquired if he wanted to keep a guitar and introduced him to the Rickenbacker guitar, stating that it was a great rhythm player.
When he went to return it, Harrison asked whether he would like a guitar of his own and held out a 1962 Rickenbacker he rated highly for rhythm playing, calling it “a great rhythm player”. He used the guitar while recording the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand’ at Abbey Road Studios, according to Julien’s Auctions. Peckham borrowed a guitar from Harrison for performance on Top of the Pops as a rhythm guitarist in The Fourmost band, according to Julien’s Auctions. The guitar is said to have been gifted to Peckham only under the condition that it would never be altered.
George Peckham, a cutting engineer at Apple , had borrowed a guitar from George Harrison for a Top of the Pops appearance with his band, The Fourmost. Peckham accepted on one condition that he would never alter it. It came in Fireglo red initially, but Harrison had it repainted black, like John Lennon‘s identical Rickenbacker. George Peckham was an Apple cutting engineer who used to play guitar in Liverpool Christie’s lot notes describe Peckham as a person with a long-standing relationship with Harrison and Apple. They stated that he was a chief cutting engineer of Apple in the late 1960s and 1970s and began his career as a guitarist in Liverpool. Julien’s Auctions notes mention this same story along with the fact that the guitar had good action. These same notes mention two letters from Harrison’s office from Olivia Harrison and Caroline Foxwell, his assistant.
The 2014 sale was not the guitar’s first trip to auction.
Noddy Holder of Slade found Peckham’s guitar left in the corner and unable to bear the thought of a Beatles’ guitar being carried around without a case, gave Peckham one of his guitars, according to it. A letter dating to the 1980s from Christie’s notes adds an interesting point about the guitar.