Get ready, guitar fanatics: you can now own Eirc Clapton’s famed “Blackie” guitar. Or, at least a $24,000 knock-off.
Retailer Guitar Center has made 185 official replicas of the Fender Stratocaster that Clapton used for 15 years, beginning in 1970 when the singer put the instrument together out of three Stratocasters he had picked up for $100 each. The guitar was retired in 1985.
Rest assured, the replicas are true to life. Guitar Center owns the original Blackie, having purchased it for $959,500 at an auction in 2004. Look carefully and you can even see the faux worn wood and cigarette burns on the copycats.
The guitars went on sale in the United States on Friday, with a portion of the proceeds going to Crossroads, the Caribbean rehab centre Clapton founded in 1998.
Eric Clapton has announced a North American tour for this fall, with two Canadian stops set so far.
Both shows are in Ontario, with Clapton hitting Toronto and Ottawa in late September.
The month-long tour kicks off mid-September in Minnesota, taking the guitarist and singer across the continent before ending with an October date in Miami, FL.
Slowhand’s Canadian tour stops, according to Pollstar:
September 24 ? Toronto, ON @ Air Canada Centre
September 26 ? Ottawa, ON @ Scotiabank Place
Music legend Eric Clapton?s dramatic life has always shadowed his incomparable talent. Clapton?s heroin addiction, his affair with Patti Harrison, wife of Beatle George Harrison, and the tragic death of his son Conor in 1991 have all been covered extensively in the media. Now, Clapton is ready to tell his story personally in a book about his life, set for release in 2007.
The much sought after memoirs of Clapton were snatched up by Doubleday for an advance believed to be between $4 million and $6 million.
?Clapton is 60 and happily married and he feels very good about his life, and feels ready to look back in an honest way, warts and all,? said Doubleday spokesman David Drake. ?He?s ready to write really candidly about his peaks and valleys and about how he has gone to hell and back.?
Clapton will write the book, currently untitled, with close friend Christopher Simon Sykes.
Doubleday also announced that Warner Brothers will release a boxed set of Clapton?s music to coincide with the book, and the rocker also plans to tour ahead of its release.
