A special one-of-a-kind version of the Bob Dylan classic ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ has sold for over $2.6 million at auction. As Pitchfork reports, the song was sold at London’s Christie’s auction house, going for £1,482,000 (or around $2.6 million AUD).
In May, it was reported that Dylan was set to record a new version of his 1962 song for Ionic Original, a new analogue audio format developed by longtime collaborator T Bone Burnett. The sale was estimated to bring in between £600,000-1,000,000.
Bob Dylan – ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’
“Sixty years after Bob first wrote and recorded ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, he is giving us a new recording of his song,” Burnett said at the time. “One that is both deeply relevant for our times and resonant with decades of the artist’s life and experience.
“We’re grateful to Christie’s for their belief in the Ionic Original and for presenting Bob’s masterful recording to the world in a unique and meaningful way.”
The new Ionic Original technology is presented in the form of one-off aluminium discs, featuring a lacquer painting that takes the shape of a “spiral etched into it by music”.
“Marshall McLuhan said that a medium surrounds a previous medium and turns the previous medium into an art form,” Burnett said in a statement following the sale. “As film did with novels, as television did with film, as the internet has done with television, and as digital has done with analogue.”
“With Bob Dylan’s new version of ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, our first Ionic Original archival analogue disc, we have entered and aim to help develop a music space in the fine arts market,” Burnett added. “I trust and hope it will mean as much to whomever acquired it today at Christie’s Exceptional Sale as it does to all of us who made it, and that they will consider it and care for it as a painting or any other singular work of art.”
Further Reading
Bob Dylan, Jay-Z Among Forbes’ Ten Highest Paid Entertainers Of 2021
Bob Dylan Denies Allegations That He Sexually Abused A 12-Year-Old Girl In 1965
Bob Dylan Sells Entire Songwriting Catalogue To Universal Music
