Inside Jim Irsay’s world-famous guitar and music collection

A high school pep rally in a gymnasium; a smoky atmosphere; and a band that was about to set the tone for an entire generation. Kurt Cobain, sporting bleach blonde shoulder-length hair and wielding his left-handed blue Fender Mustang changed the music industry forever. That same guitar now keeps company in The Jim Irsay Collection with other instruments of cultural impact once played by The Beatles, Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, Jerry Garcia, Kurt Cobain, Sir Elton John, Prince, Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

Assembled with passion over decades by the late Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, the collection’s comprehensive holdings of Americana and memorabilia extends beyond music to items associated with some of the most significant people, literature and events of recent history: original manuscripts by Jack Kerouac, Jim Morrison, Sylvester Stallone and Steve Jobs; and legendary sporting artefacts linked to Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, Wayne Gretzky and even Secretariat. Many are already recognized for their cultural import: pieces have been exhibited at museums including the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the British Library, the Museum of Popular Culture and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Instruments and other iconic items of memorabilia recalling generational touchstones of cultural history will be on view when an unparalleled selection from the collection debuts in The Jim Irsay Collection: Hall of Fame on 12 March 2026 at Christie’s in New York, kicking off a series of sales dedicated to talismans of the 20th century.

Irsay’s musical collection is part rock and roll chronicle, part archive, part hall of fame, and one of the largest private collections of 20th-century American popular culture and history in the world. It narrates the post-war era’s counterculture from country iconoclasts like Johnny Cash to the British Invasion, from jazz legends to grunge icons.

As a devoted fan of music, the spirit of his favorite bands influenced what Irsay did in sports and business. After he first took the helm of the Indianapolis Colts, Irsay made hires that worked together ‘like Lennon and McCartney,’ as he told The New York Times in 2005. When Irsay bought Cobain’s left-handed, blue Fender Mustang in 2022 — made legendary by the 1991 Smells Like Teen Spirit music video — a portion of the sale’s proceeds went to his charity, Kicking the Stigma, created in 2020 to raise awareness and funding for mental health causes. Fittingly, a large portion of the sale proceeds will be donated to philanthropic causes which were close to Jim Irsay’s heart. For all of his achievements, Irsay saw himself as a humble custodian of the objects he acquired. This series of sales passes the torch to the next generation of connoisseurs and caretakers.

The Jim Irsay Collection contains some of the most iconic guitars from the past century of music, including Eric Clapton’s painted ‘The Fool’ Gibson SG, the Rose-Morris Rickenbacker given by John Lennon to Ringo Starr at a pivotal moment in the band’s history, and a custom-made guitar created for Jerry Garcia. Read on to learn more about a selection of the most electrifying music lots:

This C. F. Martin & Co. D-21 acoustic guitar from 1956 was reputedly extensively used by American country music hero Johnny Cash in the late 1950s until it was given to his brother Tommy in 1960. It comes with extensive documentation and provenance, including a notarized letter of authenticity signed by the iconic singer-songwriter’s brother.

This semi-hollow-body model was given to John Lennon by Rose-Morris, the official UK importer of Rickenbacker, after Lennon’s 1964 Rickenbacker 325 was damaged during a Christmas performance. Nicknamed ‘The Beatle Backer,’ the singer-songwriter played this guitar instead for a remaining string of shows over Christmas 1964. Lennon used the Rickenbacker up until at least 1967 and in 1968 gave the instrument to Beatles drummer Ringo Starr to encourage him to write more songs and to calm tensions in the band during The White Album sessions.

This left-handed Fender Mustang, a model from 1969, was bought by Nirvana frontman and songwriter Kurt Cobain in Los Angeles in the early 1990s. While Cobain always loved this type of Fender guitar — and played Mustangs on recordings for the band’s 1989 album Bleach up through performances during the 1994 In Utero Tour — he specifically favoured this guitar. The colour is officially known as ‘Competition Burgundy’ despite its proximity to Fender’s ‘Lake Placid Blue’ finish. It was in the studio during the band’s recording sessions of Nevermind and was used to record In Utero. Wielded in the ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ video from 1991, it was this guitar that was in Cobain’s hands when the band smashed the status quo and lodged Nirvana into the memories of people all over the world as a genre-rattling, generational act.

Eric Clapton’s Cream stage-played ‘The Fool’ Gibson SG, made in 1964, is among the instantly recognisable instruments in rock. Used by Clapton from 1967 to 1968, including on the band’s studio album Disraeli Gears, the guitar features a unique, psychedelic design created by founding members of The Fool, a Dutch art collective started by Marijke Koger and Simon Posthuma. Used in numerous performances, the instrument is visually synonymous with Cream’s incendiary live performances and the artist’s evolving electric style, particularly the evolution of his ‘Woman Tone.’ The instrument was exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll in 2019, underscoring its cultural and historical significance.

One of the most celebrated custom instruments in rock history, Jerry Garcia’s 1979 Doug Irwin ‘Tiger’ guitar is constructed from laminated cocobolo, maple, and padauk with brass binding while the neck includes an ebony fretboard, pearl inlays, and extensive brass detailing. Distinctive decorative elements include an inlaid tiger at the base of the body top, which also functions as a preamp cover. 1979 was not only the heyday of The Grateful Dead’s legendary live shows, but a pivotal transitional year for Jerry Garcia and the band — this guitar accompanied them as Brent Mydland joined on keyboards and as a vocalist, introducing new harmonies and original material. The ‘Tiger’ would be used constantly by Garcia and was his main stage guitar between 1979–1989. It was notably used for his last live performance with The Grateful Dead at Chicago’s Soldier Field on 9 July 1995.

Through the annals of rock history, David Gilmour’s black Fender Stratocaster stands out as one of only a handful of guitars that have taken on a life of their own and gained a level of fame to near match their owner. Despite humble beginnings as an off-the-shelf standard model Fender Stratocaster, the extensively modified guitar has become a legend in its own right.

Used on Pink Floyd’s seminal albums Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977) and The Wall (1980), it was the guitar that served David Gilmour the longest as both a performance and recording tool, appearing on every Pink Floyd album from 1970 to 1983 and all four of Gilmour’s solo albums up to 2019. This legendary instrument was one of Jim Irsay’s most treasured possessions. When Irsay bought the guitar at Christie’s auction of ‘The David Gilmour Guitar Collection’ in New York, it smashed the world auction record for any guitar sold at auction, achieving $3,975,000. Underlining its cultural import, the instrument has been exhibited at the Cité de la Musique in Paris in Pink Floyd Interstellar (2004) and at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains (2017).

Janis Joplin’s Gibson J-45, previously on loan to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, is one of the very few guitars she is known to have played on stage. It survives in its original hardshell case, still bearing several stickers and airline travel tags. According to Bob Neuwirth — a folk singer, poet and artist who was a close friend of Joplin — she had owned the guitar for ‘a couple of years’ by 1969, when he first encountered it at her apartment in New York. During that visit, Neuwirth introduced Joplin to Kris Kristofferson’s song Me and Bobby McGee, which he had only just heard for the first time himself and then taught her.

Signed with a personalised message from Sir Elton John himself, this Steinway Model D Grand Piano dates to 1972 and was played by the legendary singer-songwriter at hundreds of concerts from around 1974 until 1988. This Steinway 9-foot Concert Grand was one of Sir Elton John’s touring pianos, and would have accompanied the legendary singer-songwriter and ‘EGOT’ (one of only 22 people to be awarded an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony), during some of the most memorable and significant concerts of his career. An artist whose virtuosity and theatricality reshaped the contours of popular music, his stardom has been defined not only by commercial success but by his remarkable creative output, touring range, and historic collaborations.

Made in 1966 as a prototype for an alto saxophone that the Yamaha Corporation would later put into production, this instrument was given to John Coltrane to try out. The jazz great played the sax during his two-week Japanese tour that same year, an event Coltrane biographer Eric Nisenson described as ‘probably the single greatest triumph of his life.’ The Yamaha alto sax can be heard on two live albums recorded in Japan, Coltrane in Japan (1973) and the four-CD collection Live in Japan (1991), the cover of which features Coltrane playing this instrument. After returning to the US, he continued to play this alto saxophone in concert and during at least one recording session, later released posthumously as Stellar Regions (1995).

This beautiful instrument, engraved with the moon and stars and ‘Miles,’ was made for Miles Davis by Martin and was one of three he played — this black and gold trumpet, as well as blue and gold and red and gold examples. Featuring a unique angled mouthpiece, as preferred by the great musician, Miles Davis played this trumpet during his 1984 Montreux Jazz Festival performance and on the albums You’re Under Arrest (1985), with it appearing on the album’s front cover, and Aura (1989). For the latter, Davis received two Grammy Awards: Best Jazz Performance, Soloist and Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band.

When The Beatles made their US performance debut on 9 February 1964 for The Ed Sullivan Show, this Ludwig-branded bass drum head from Ringo Starr’s drum kit greeted 73 million Americans who watched the four young men from Liverpool’s electrifying performance. The show was the first live glimpse Americans had of the band and their set was the most important performance of The Beatles’ careers, a watershed moment for both music and post-war pop culture and officially kicked off Beatlemania that side of the pond.