Queen Lyrics and Freddie Mercury’s Grand Piano Soar at Auction

It began at 40,000 kilos, or about $50,000. Then the competitors exploded, with a half-dozen bidding paddles raised within the London salesroom, adopted by a flurry of bids on-line and by telephone.

“The very piano on which ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was composed. The instrument,” the auctioneer Oliver Barker intoned because the bidding paused after spiraling into seven figures. When Barker’s hammer lastly fell at $2.2 million to a web based bid, the piano had taken six minutes to promote, appropriately the size of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

That sale on Wednesday of Freddie Mercury’s 1973 Yamaha G2 child grand was all the time going to be the excessive level of Sotheby’s public sale of about 1,400 objects from the non-public assortment of the charismatic lead singer of the British rock band Queen.

Mercury composed a lot of Queen’s hits on the Yamaha. It was initially estimated to promote for a minimum of $2.5 million in Sotheby’s 59-lot night public sale of essentially the most fascinating items from the gathering provided by the singer’s lifelong pal Mary Austin.

Less high-profile objects shall be offered at two additional night gross sales this week, and in three on-line auctions that run via Sept. 13.

Mercury’s cluttered assortment of artworks and furnishings, in addition to handwritten lyrics, garments, stage costumes and different private results, had remained at Garden Lodge, his neo-Georgian West London dwelling, since his demise in 1991. The singer bequeathed half of his royalties, along with Garden Lodge and its contents, to Austin, who has lived in the home ever since.

“It was important to me to do this in a way that I felt Freddie would have loved,” Austin, 72, mentioned in a news launch about her resolution to promote the gathering. “There was nothing he loved more than an auction.”

After a tour of highlights in New York, Los Angeles and Hong Kong, all the assortment was displayed in London for a month. More than 140,000 guests attended the exhibition, with the road at occasions stretching nearly a quarter-mile.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Freddie’s passions. It’s almost like meeting him. And it’s free,” Neil Leonard, 48, a Queen fan since his early teenagers, mentioned final week whereas gazing admiringly at handwritten early draft lyrics of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The draft, thought thus far from 1974, exhibits that Mercury toyed with titling Queen’s most well-known track “Mongolian Rhapsody.”

In Wednesday’s sale, that draft was essentially the most helpful of six lyric manuscripts for Queen classics. Estimated to fetch a minimum of $1 million, it offered for $1.7 million to a web based bidder to rapturous applause.

Instead of the stone-faced artwork professionals who often sit via Sotheby’s gross sales, the viewers of greater than 400 was enthusiastic and largely unfamiliar with public sale protocols. Every lot was applauded — even when a Nineteenth-century portray by Eugen von Blaas failed to draw any preliminary bidding.

The public sale’s tons mirrored Mercury’s life as a musician, performer and collector. He as soon as mentioned he wished to “lead the Victorian life, surrounded by exquisite clutter.”

Garden Lodge was duly full of an ornamental mishmash of Nineteenth- and early-Twentieth-century photos of lovely ladies; Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Orientalist furnishings; luxurious knickknacks from designers like Cartier; and quite a few feline-related ornaments. (Mercury owned a minimum of 10 cats in his lifetime.)

His style in Western artwork would possibly, at occasions, have verged on the kitsch. But after touring Japan six occasions with Queen, Mercury grew to become a discriminating collector of Japanese woodblock prints, lacquer and kimonos. About 20 % of the tons within the Sotheby’s gross sales are associated to Japan, with one of many three on-line auctions totally dedicated to the topic.

One of the few museum-worthy works in Mercury’s assortment was a nice Nineteenth-century coloured woodblock print, “Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake,” by Utagawa Hiroshige. The picture influenced many Western artists, together with Van Gogh, who painted a model now within the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It offered for $368,718 in opposition to a low estimate of $35,000.

More typically than not, the magic of the Mercury provenance pushed costs far past the degrees for related objects, on which Sotheby’s estimates had been based mostly.

The first lot set the tone: The graffiti-covered door from the outer wall of Garden Lodge soared to $521,014 from a phone bidder in opposition to a low estimate of simply $19,000. A Fabergé gold-mounted agate vesta case, made in Moscow round 1890, later offered to a web based bidder for $120,234, greater than 10 occasions the estimate. Mercury’s opulent Art Nouveau-style Wurlitzer jukebox from Garden Lodge’s kitchen was purchased for $512,999 by a bidder within the room.

When the distinctive silver snake bangle that Mercury wore in the music video for “Bohemian Rhapsody” soared to $881,717, there have been gasps and whoops. The lot, purchased by a web based bidder, had an official minimal valuation of $9,000.

Among the dozen or so live performance costumes provided, the jeweled crown and ermine-lined scarlet cloak that Mercury wore on Queen’s 1986 “Magic” tour was a predictable favourite. It offered for $801,560 to Rafael Reisman, a Brazilian exhibition promoter, who raised his arms in triumph when he secured the lot. ​​

“We were looking to put together a collection of iconic lots to use for a special immersive exhibition,” mentioned Reisman, 53, who purchased 4 different Mercury tons on the sale. The low estimate was $9,000.

Overall, the sale netted $15.4 million in opposition to a presale low estimate of $6 million. The marathon occasion took greater than four-and-a-half hours.

Becca Robbins, a Queen fan from Bedfordshire, had by no means been to an public sale earlier than however bid $57,000 on a rainbow-colored satin appliqué jacket that Mercury wore on Queen’s “Hot Space” tour in 1982. It went on to promote for $256,499.

“I owned it for a nanosecond,” mentioned Robbins, 61, who was carrying a reproduction of the identical multicolored jacket. “But I took something from the exhibition that you can’t put a price on.”