NEW YORK The voice, languid now in a way that it was not when it talked through a microphone, was talking about that very subject - talking through a microphone.
And about deciding to sell a particular microphone, the one that piped that voice into the tube-powered amplifiers that sustained television in the 1950s, and from there into the rock 'n' roll-crazed brains of teenagers. "It's tough to part with that one," Dick Clark said by telephone from California."I held it every day for about three hours."
It comes with a little plaque that says it was the microphone he used from July 9, 1956, his first day on the program the world came to know as "American Bandstand." "I could tuck it under my arm and continue to use my hands," he said, "and it saw every famous rock 'n' roller that was ever born."
Now Clark is selling the memorabilia he collected during all those years of presiding over "American Bandstand," "New Year's Rockin' Eve" and game shows like "The $10,000 Pyramid," as well as producing scores of made-for-television movies and specials. He has sent part of his collection nearly 2,500 miles, or about 4,000 kilometers, from California to New York. Guernsey's, an Upper East Side auction house that has found buyers for everything from Rembrandts and Renoirs to a $3 million baseball, is to sell the memorabilia in an auction on Dec.5 and 6 at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Guernsey's says it will be a no-reserve auction, so everything will be sold for the highest bid.
Other items on the block include a bass guitar that Paul McCartney played when he was a Beatle.Arlan Ettinger, the president of Guernsey's, said he could not estimate how much the McCartney guitar would fetch.
The catalogue will also include a guitar that Bruce Springsteen played in the 1980s (he estimated that sale at $40,000 to $60,000) and one that Bo Diddley made for Clark by hand ($30,000 to $40,000). Ettinger's estimate on the microphone is "somewhere between" $10,000 and $100,000. There are also platinum records from the Beatles ("Abbey Road") and the Beach Boys ("Best of the Beach Boys, Volume 2"), as well as the gold LP of Springsteen's "Born to Run." The auction catalogue also lists the beaded glove that Michael Jackson wore in his moonwalking phase ($30,000 to $50,000), a bustier that Madonna wore (also $30,000 to $50,000) and the harmonica that Bob Dylan played in "The Last Waltz" ($20,000 to $40,000). Ettinger said Clark wanted much of the money to go to the T.J. Martell Foundation, which was founded by the music industry to raise money for research on cancer and AIDS.
Over the years, Ettinger has sold memorabilia that belonged to the baseball player Mickey Mantle, Elvis Presley and John F.Kennedy, but he admitted having "goose bumps" when he met Clark several months ago.
"I and half of America grew up with him," Ettinger said. "Who knows whether rock 'n' roll would still be here or whether it would just be a passing phase if not for him."
Ettinger said Clark, who is 76, still goes to work daily and takes therapy, a result of a stroke in 2004. Clark is not one to dwell on it, though, and on the telephone, he was talking about how he had managed to amass so much stuff. "I started as a child being a pack rat," Clark said."I've got every Life magazine that was ever printed, because my grandmother saved them for me. I've got most of the Playboy magazines. I've got Fortune - lovely photographs in there.
I saved everything."
He squirreled things away when he went into what he calls "the rock 'n' roll business" and later, when he went into the restaurant business. "I acquired tons of stuff because we had four walls we had to fill up," he said. After he sold his restaurant company, he said, the new owners began closing restaurants, and he recovered many of the items that had been on the walls. Together with scripts and memorabilia from his own career, he had enough to fill 28,000 square feet, or about 2,600 square meters, in a California warehouse. The talk turned to specific items in the auction and how he obtained them. "I love that Michael Jackson glove," Clark said. "I called him and I said, 'Michael, I got to have some stuff, give me the beaded glove, would you?' He said, 'Yeah, yeah.' Two days later, in walks this figure of a man who says, 'Is Dick Clark here? Give him this. He asked for it.
'
"It was Michael himself, delivering the white glove.
News RSS