A newly recorded, one-of-a-kind record of Bob Dylan singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” sold at an auction at Christie’s in London Thursday for over its estimate — 1.2 million pounds, or just under $1.5 million in U.S. dollars.
The actual amount of the winning bid in American dollars works out to $1,441,045 under current exchange rates. The 1.2 million pounds sales price was well over the estimate the auction house had posted for the record, which was in the range of 600,000 to 1 million pounds (or, in U.S. dollars, $716,000-$1,194,000).
The “Blowin’ in the Wind” record was the only remotely freshly minted item in Christie’s “Classic Week” sale. The other items being auctioned prior to Dylan’s new record being the climax of the sale were more along the lines of an Egyptian limestone statue from circa 2400 B.C., which went for 5 million pounds, and a Stradivari violin that had a starting bid of 6 million pounds.
The new version of Dylan’s 1962 folk classic was produced by T Bone Burnett with a small band of musicians, with Dylan recorded in Los Angeles and the rest of the group in Nashville. It was recorded directly to a newly invented kind of acetate recording, which Burnett, who had worked to develop the analog technology for years, calls an Ionic Original. Although it is a new format, with reportedly higher fidelity and a coating that is said to make it almost impervious to normal wear-and-tear, the 10-inch disc can be played on a normal record player.
Christie’s auction of new version of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind”
Christie’s
The people who have heard the recording thus far have been limited mostly to potential bidders at listening sessions at Christie’s in London, New York and Los Angeles, and at a few select playbacks Burnett held for members of the media and others.
Burnett spoke recently at length with Variety — in a story titled “Why Did T Bone Burnett Record a Song With Bob Dylan That Only One Person Can Own? To Disrupt the Art Market” — about the making of the new recording and the intent behind putting it up for auction — and addressed the question of whether the average Dylan fan will ever get to hear it, or whether it really could have just one listener-owner.
