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Eric Clapton's ‘Tears in Heaven’ guitar has recently fetched $101,600 at auction. The 1977 Juan Alvarez in natural finish was originally owned and played by musician and music producer John Porter before Eric Clapton used it to write his 1992 single . Alongside the guitar, there's a signed letter of authenticity from John Porter, who toured Europe with Clapton in 1977, and a .

“The last gig of the tour was in Barcelona. We were there for a couple of days and Eric said that he wanted to get a Spanish guitar and would I go with him to see what we could find,” wrote Porter. “We pretty much checked out every guitar in town, and after much deliberation ended up with two virtually identical guitars by Madrid luthier Juan Alvares.



” Clapton asked Porter which guitar he thought was better, and after taking his pick, Clapton took the other one. Fast forward a couple of months, and Clapton begged Porter to sell him the guitar he chose back in Barcelona. “He wanted to try using one on stage and have the other one at home for songwriting.

I said no, but after much pestering from both Eric and his guitar tech Lee Dickson, I said I'd give it to El on a permanent loan,” Porter explained. “I have great memories of the time when we first had the guitars. We played together a lot and many of the songs written at that time, including , were worked out on those two instruments.

” Construction-wise, the guitar features a 26.25” scale length mahogany neck, 19 fret ebony fretboa.

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