ATHENS — The guitar draws people in.
Cherry red and black, made of mahogany and rosewood, it rests between a bar with craft beer and vodka cocktails and a pizza stand at the recently opened Akins Ford Arena.
Everyone who takes a look — including a security guard, a group of teenage friends, a bartender — during a recent hockey game agrees it looks good. But nobody polled knows it is one of the most valuable guitars in the world.
“People veer over to check it out all the time, but I’m embarrassed to say I know nothing about it,” said David Miller, who serves drinks at the bar.
It’s Duane Allman’s Gibson SG, the slide guitar he used to create transformative sounds for the Allman Brothers Band just before he died.
It was purchased at auction by George Fontaine Sr. for $591,000 in 2019, at the time among the steepest prices ever paid for a guitar.
Fontaine saw Allman twice in concert in 1971.
“I was mesmerized,” he said. “Just devastated when he passed away,” from a motorcycle accident later that year in Macon. Allman was 24.
Credit: Fletcher Page
Credit: Fletcher Page
Fontaine lent the guitar to join an exhibit at the arena showcasing items from the University of Georgia’s Special Collections Libraries.
There’s a music stand used by R.E.M.‘s Michael Stipe. James Brown’s red velvet cape. Wigs and clothes worn by Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson of the B-52s. Some of the collection came from the Georgia Music of Fame, shipped to UGA after the Macon museum closed in 2011.
Ryan Lewis, UGA’s Georgia music exhibit coordinator, spent months selecting items to tell distinct stories about the state’s diverse musical heritage. There are drums played by Widespread Panic. Shirts sold at a Dolly Parton concert held in Athens in the late 1970s. Country music artists Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan are highlighted next to legendary hip-hop duo Big Boi and André 3000 of Outkast.
“Every year, we’ll rotate different items,” from thousands stored at UGA, Lewis said.
Akins Ford Arena, a $151 million, 8,500-capacity venue at the downtown Classic Center complex, opened in December.
The B-52s, formed in Athens, played the first concert in December. Comedian Tom Segura has a show scheduled for later this month. County artist Megan Moroney, who attended UGA, has a pair of concerts booked for April that are already sold out.
The new arena is also home to a recently launched professional hockey team, the Rock Lobsters, named for a B-52s hit song. The team won 16 of its first 19 games, playing in the independent Federal Prospects Hockey League.
Amy Pridgen and Charles Greenleaf admitted they didn’t know much about hockey when they arrived for a game earlier this month. They spent time before the puck dropped looking at the music items, located in a concourse just a few steps from seats with views of the action.
“There’s one of Ricky Wilson’s guitars and one from Chet Atkins,” Greenleaf said, adding that space given to artists with niche audiences was a nice touch.
Most of the music collection is displayed in seven large cases near the main entrance. Allman’s guitar sits by itself on the opposite side of the arena, in a case facing away from windows for protection from the sun.
“That guitar is really the crowning achievement of the whole thing,” Lewis said.
Allman used the Gibson SG for songs on “At Fillmore East,” which Rolling Stone has called one of the greatest live albums of all time.
After his death, he allegedly was to be buried with the guitar. Instead, his brother Gregg gave it to Duane’s protégé, Gerry Groom. It was eventually purchased by Graham Nash, of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and then fetched nearly five times the opening bid of $125,000 at auction in 2019.
Later that year, a 1957 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop that Allman used to play on Derek and the Dominoes' song “Layla” sold for $1 million.
“Anything associated with Duane Allman is going to be revered,” said Richard Brent, executive director of The Big House museum in Macon where the Allman Brothers Band members and friends lived. “There’s not a lot of stuff out there.”
Credit: Michael Ochs
Credit: Michael Ochs
Allman’s Gibson SG was previously displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Chattanooga’s Songbirds Museum. Fontaine, who has run numerous record labels, offers the guitar to artists to play while recording music.
“Some people could say that’s risky, but what better way to celebrate Duane Allman,” Brent said. “There’s nothing worse than something that still has so much life left sitting behind glass doing nothing.”
Lewis spends much of his time scouring the internet for music memorabilia to add to the collection. He said the market surged during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s likely, he said, Allman’s Gibson SG would now fetch a price of at least a million.
After hearing that and a brief history on Allman, Miller, the bartender, nodded toward the influential instrument.
“I’m going to pay my respects there,” he said, “after the game ends.”
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