Zach Bryan never made it to Christie’s auction house, but he nevertheless made a killing.
Rather for Jack Kerouac’s famous “On the Road” scroll purchase, the night could not have been more dramatic. Here’s how it went:
Deadheads filled Christie’s auction house on Thursday March 12, eager to bid on “Tiger,” Jerry Garcia’s guitar from the late Jim Irsay’s expansive collection of rock guitars left behind in his estate. That went for $9.5 million, not even the highest priced instrument.
The most dramatic sale went to Pink Floyd founder David Gilmour’s “Strat,” ($14.5 million) after a brisk bidding war between an in-house buyer and someone shopping by phone. The purchase garnered enthusiastic applause, and on my part, a wistful recognition that some people had money to burn on the bright side of the moon.
For me, the most exalted item, even beyond a crimson cape worn by James Brown, or a white robe from Muhammad Ali, was the 120-foot scroll text of Beat poet and novelist Jack Kerouac’s 1957 literary masterpiece, “On the Road.”
I had been here before, in this room, in 2001, to see Irsay, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, swoop in accompanied by Doug Brinkley, who at the time was writing a biography of the so-called “King of the Beats.” Irsay paid a clean $2.47 million, and that was without the right to quote a single phrase from Kerouac’s poetic epic. That was the highest price ever paid for a literary manuscript, even more than James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”
John Sampas, at the time the head of Kerouac’s estate, was pleased. He took me and Joyce Johnson out for celebratory drinks at a nearby Rockefeller Center bar. Joyce was Kerouac’s girlfriend at the time On the Road was published in 1957 and the author of the award winning memoir “Minor Characters,” and “The Voice is All,” perhaps the best of the dozens of Kerouac biographies written to date. I am the author of several books on Kerouac including “Spontaneous Poetics”. At the time, I was commissioned by the estate to assemble and introduce Kerouac’s Book of Haikus.
Now so many years later, the scroll was again up for grabs, and after a pissing war between a mild-mannered man in house and someone on the phone, the man took it for a clean $10 million plus trading fees. I was with Kerouac’s latest biographer, Holly George Warren, and Jim Canary, the man Irsay hired to take care of the scroll text as it traveled like a rock star making appearances in exhibitions all across America and abroad. Kerouac famously taped paper together in one long roll so he wouldn’t have to keep reloading pages into his typewriter as he wrote “On the Road” in a fever dream.
We rushed over to the buyer to find out who he was and what was he going to do with it? “I don’t know,” he replied. “I did not get it for me,” he said. So now we are left to find out, who bought Kerouac’s masterpiece? Immediately calling Joyce to let her know, I heard her say she was astonished at what was paid for the artifact, and then she reminded me, “Jack was the poorest person I ever met.”
Eventually, it was revealed that Zach Bryan was the buyer. Bryan, a country superstar who writes evocative lyrics, has long been known as a Kerouac aficionado. Last year, he bought the Saint Jean Baptiste Church in Kerouac’s hometown of Lowell, Mass. which he plans to turn into a museum dedicated to the famed writer.
Kerouac died in 1969 without a cent at age 47. Since then a lot of people have made a lot of money off his work. Still, I’d like to think he’s had the last laugh knowing as a writer he was the real deal. Nearby, at the Grolier Club, an exhibition attests to Kerouac’s writing chops, as if anyone now wants to diminish that legacy. Happy Birthday, Jack!
