Hendrix’s flaming guitar goes on sale

Jimi Hendrix's 1965 Fender Stratocaster, which he famously set ablaze with lighter fuel during a performance (pictured) at London's Finsbury Astoria in the Sixties, is to be auctioned. The guitar, which is expected to fetch as much as £500,000, was thought to be lost. But it has been revealed that Tony Garland, Hendrix's press officer at the time, had it stored in his parents' garage in Hove for the past 40 years.

Hendrix, who died of a drug overdose in 1970, used the guitar during his 1967 tour, on which he supported the Walker Brothers. At the Astoria, he set fire to it as the astonished audience looked on and petrified venue staff ushered the performer off stage. While Hendrix was being treated for minor hand injuries, the damaged Fender was retrieved by roadies. It was then kept at the home of Noel Redding, the bass player for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, before Garland took possession of it.

Also included in the auction of rock and roll memorabilia at the Idea Generation Gallery in London on September 4 is a song-sheet for Band Aid's We are the World, Jim Morrison's final notebook of poetry and musings from 1971, and the last surviving drum-kit of Led Zeppelin's John Bonham.