Clapton's Guitar Breaks Record at Auction

Eric Clampton's "Blackie" -- a black and white Fender Stratocaster he used on stage exclusively from 1970 until 1985 -- sold for a record $959,500 at an auction that raised more than $7.4 million for the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, a drug and alcohol treatment center he founded in 1998.

"I am thrilled at the result which is going to be of enormous help to us in achieving our long term aims at the Centre," Clapton told the press. Clapton established the treatment center in Antigua after overcoming his own herion addiction.

The previous record for an auctioned guitar was $957,500 bid for Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia's custom-made guitar "Tiger" in 2002, the auction house Christie's said.

Blackie was purchased by America's Guitar Center.

Clapton's 1964 cherry-red Gibson ES-335, sold for $847,500, a world auction record for a Gibson, according to Christie's. But in came with the case!

"Lenny," Stevie Ray Vaughan's guitar he played from the 1970s until his death in 1990, sold for $623,500, the second highest price ever for a Fender Stratocaster. It was donated by Vaughan's estate, Christie's said.

More: History of 'Blackie'