Music Rising Higher

24 Apr 2007
Want to know what raised the huge $2.5m for Music Rising in Saturdays auction? It's all here.

The New York auction turned out to be quite an evening with supermodel Christy Turlington co-hosting the event which opened with "The Saints Are Coming" video, followed by a performance from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band straight from New Orleans. The bidding ran for several hours as collectors from around the world vied for a piece of musical history by phone, online or on site and the evening ended with a standing-room only performance from Allen Toussaint.

As for the lots, we already mentioned that Edge's 1975 Gibson Les Paul sold for a record $240,000. His Gibson ES-295 Archtop guitar brought in another $105,000 while Bono's signed Irish Falcon Gretsch raised $187,500. Among the 200 other items under the hammer were former President Bill Clinton's saxophone ($54,000), a pair of John Lennon's blue-tinted sunglasses ($30,000), a bass from Adam ($23,000), a tom-tom drum of Larry's ($19,000), Paul McCartney's hand-painted and signed Epiphone Texan ($63,000), Kurt Cobain's MTV Award ($40,800) and Slash's Signature model signed Gibson guitar ($20,000).

See what else got people bidding here. All the funds raised will benefit Music Rising, which has so far helped more than 2,400 professional musicians and more than 20,000 students and parishioners of the Gulf Coast region.

And as an intriguing aside Edge is hinting that his friendship with musicians from New Orleans and his visits to the city might just feed through in the music the band are beginning to write. ' I have no doubt that there will be an influence there.'

Check out two interviews he gave ahead of the auction, which you can find
here and here

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