Aside from hit singles and electrifying performances, we can tell a lot about the history of rock music through the objects associated with its pivotal moments.
Objects that might seem relatively mundane – such as a village fete programme, spray paint can or a pair of glasses – are imbued with meaning thanks to their connection with musicians who changed the world.
Meanwhile, fashions worn by rock stars say a lot about what might’ve been considered shocking or subversive at the time, such as Pete Townshend’s Union Jack jacket or Madonna’s conical bra. Some objects have travelled the world – such as the piano John Lennon wrote ‘Imagine’ on – while others, such as Taylor Swift’s red scarf have become mythical.
Here are 31 objects that tell the story of rock music.
Rock history in 31 objects
1. Bo Diddley's rectangular guitar
One of the key architects of rock’n’roll, Bo Diddley’s guitars were just as distinctive as his signature beat and one-off technique. As a teenager, Diddley was too poor to afford a guitar, so made his own from a cigar box.
Once he’d hit the big time, Gretsch developed a series of customs guitar for Diddley based on his own design. One of these red, rectangular beauties is on permanent display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC.
2. The Woolton Parish Church garden fete programme
The programme for the 6 July 1957 Woolton Parish Church garden fete doesn’t look like anything special – a black and white photograph of the church in question, the date, time and entry cost of the event and the line, ‘Proceeds in aid of church funds’.
But performing that day in a field behind the church were a bunch of local lads, The Quarry Men, formed just weeks earlier. Already the de facto leader, the 15-year-old John Lennon led the group through standards such as ‘Cumberland Blues’, ‘Maggie Mae’ and ‘Be Bop A Lula’, stumbling over the lyrics but styling it out, making up new words.
In the crowd was an impressed Paul McCartney, who’d been invited by the pair’s mutual friend Ivan Vaughan. Later that evening, Lennon and McCartney met for the first time; the world changed forever.
3. Buddy Holly's glasses
It’s impossible to think of rock’n’roll pioneer Buddy Holly without those thick, heavy glasses frames springing to mind. Holly single-handedly invented geek-chic and brought hope to myopic wannabe rockers the world over, including a young John Lennon.
When Holly died in the 3 February 1959 plane crash that also killed fellow rockers Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, the glasses were considered lost in the wreckage, but in 1980, it was discovered that they had been found – along with the Big Bopper’s watch – and handed in to the Cerro Gordo County Sherriff’s office, where they remained in a sealed envelope marked ‘Rec’d April 7, 1959’.
When the envelope was opened 21 years later, the glasses were returned to Holly’s widow, Maria.
4. Bob Dylan's 'Like A Rolling Stone' lyrics
If you were to believe Bob Dylan, his 1965 single ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ stopped him from quitting music. "Last spring, I guess I was going to quit singing," he told Playboy in 1966.
"I was very drained, and the way things were going, it was a very draggy situation… But ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ changed it all. I mean it was something that I myself could dig. It’s very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don’t dig you."
Of course, it’s never wise to totally trust what the impish songwriter says – particularly if he’s interviewing himself, as was the case here – but in singling ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ out, Dylan is admitting the song is special. On release, the six-minute-plus explosion of language became one of Dylan’s most enduring songs.
It’s unsurprising then, that in 2014, when Sotheby’s auctioned Dylan’s original, handwritten lyrics for the song – composed on four pages of hotel stationery – they sold for $2.045 million, setting a record for the most expensive rock lyrics ever sold.
5. Pete Townshend's Union Jack jacket
The cover of The Observer magazine of 20 March 1966 became one of the defining images of British pop. Where pop stars of the past were smiling and immaculately dressed, the members of The Who stare out of the photograph looking tousled and resolutely unimpressed, confrontational even.
And dead centre of this bunch of punks is 21-year-old, long-haired guitarist Pete Townshend, wearing a jacket made from a Union Jack flag – a subversive and provocative anti-authority statement that would’ve been unthinkable a few years earlier.
From this point on, the flag became a symbol of modernity, inextricably linked with the vibrant music and fashion of the Swinging ’60s.
6. Brian Wilson's sandbox
Sometime in late 1966, Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson had a brainwave. "He wanted a sandbox, so he got a sandbox," his then-wife Marilyn later recalled.
"He said, 'I want to play in the sand. I want to feel like a little kid. When I’m writing these songs, I want to feel what I’m writing.' We had this really good carpenter come up to the house and in the dining room, this guy built a gorgeous wooden sandbox, about two and a half feet tall. Then they came with a dump truck and dumped eight tons of sand into it."
Though the sandbox caused some problems – a piano tuner who despaired when he realised that the instrument was full of sand; the Wilsons’ pet dogs using the sandbox as a toilet – there was method to Wilson’s madness. "We wrote 'Heroes & Villains', 'Cabinessence', 'Surf’s Up' and 'Wonderful' in the sandbox," Wilson later said. "Yeah, it was a great sandbox!"
7. The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's suits
On 19 November 1966, Paul McCartney was on a flight back to London after a safari in Kenya, puzzling over The Beatles’ next move, when inspiration hit.
“I thought, Let’s not be ourselves,” he told Barry Miles in 1997’s Many Years From Now. “Let’s develop alter egos so we’re not having to project an image which we know. It would be much more free.” Naturally, this giant leap forward in rock required some snazzy outfits.
Costume designer May Routh took McCartney’s sketches and came up with a psychedelic twist on the full-dress uniforms worn by Edwardian officers, complete with an array of assorted insignia, patches and medals.
The outfits were made by theatrical costumiers M Berman Ltd and were featured in all their glory on the cover of the band’s landmark album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
8. A fragment of Jimi Hendrix's Fender Stratocaster
Jimi Hendrix’s impact on music was such that a broken shard of one of his guitars is deemed worthy of being exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The fragment is the only remaining part of the Fender Strat that he smashed and burned at the climax of his incendiary set at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.
Hendrix’s set – as captured in the 1968 DA Pennebaker film Monterey Pop – saw the guitar genius seize his moment with a performance of star-making intensity that ended in a then-shocking ritualistic sacrifice of his instrument. Decades later, many have imitated him, but none have done it better.
9. The Velvet Underground & Nico cover artwork
Andy Warhol’s cover artwork for The Velvet Underground’s classic 1967 debut album might’ve been very different indeed. The pop art icon’s original idea for the cover was to feature a series of plastic surgery images, and he even sent a couple of his Factory underlings to medical supply houses to source images.
But after they returned with “hundreds” of images, Warhol ditched the idea in favour of a painting of a banana – early copies of the LP featured a sticker over the banana featuring the provocative phrase, ‘Peel slowly and see’. While Warhol wasn’t much of a producer – the suggestion is he bankrolled the sessions while sitting back and letting engineers do the work – using an artwork of his for the cover is a masterstroke.
10. The Supremes' gowns
In the ’60s, The Supremes lived up to their name, becoming the first artists to have five consecutive No 1s on the US Billboard Hot 100. They were also the best-dressed, attracting designers such as Bob Mackie, who crafted the iconic bronze sequinned gowns the three-piece wore on their 1969 TV special On Broadway.
"They were better dressed than any other girl group in the country," said Mackie. And in recent years, they’ve toured the world again, thanks to Reflections: The Mary Wilson Supreme Legacy Collection – a touring exhibition of the former Supreme’s sensational outfits.
11. Elvis Presley's 'TCB' necklace
Following Elvis Presley’s hugely successful 1968 NBC TV comeback special, the king of rock’n’roll began planning his return to live performance. On putting together a new group, Presley began informally referring them as 'The TCB Band’ in a reference to "taking care of business", the saying that had become his mantra in recent times.
Not long after, Presley was flying home to Memphis from the West Coast with wife Priscilla when they spotted lightning – the spectacle inspired Presley to design a logo incorporating the letters ‘TCB’ and a lightning bolt. He was so taken with his handiwork that he had the design made into gold pendants for himself and members of his entourage, the so-called ‘Memphis Mafia’.
12. The Rolling Stones' 'Tongue And Lips' logo
In 1970, John Pasche was a skint graphic design student at London's Royal College Of Art when, out of the blue, he was asked to meet with Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stones frontman had been impressed with the work Pasche had exhibited at the university’s degree show and asked him to work on a logo for the band.
"Jagger wanted something that would stand alone as an image, not using any images of the band at all," Pasche told Rolling Stone in 2023. "Mick quoted the example of the symbol for Shell… that was a strong part of the brief… Then he showed me a picture of Kali, the Hindu goddess which he had torn out from a magazine page from the corner shop and said, 'I really like this.’"
Also taking inspiration from Jagger’s onstage persona, Pasche presented the singer with the now-ubiquitous logo and was paid £50 for his work (though the band paid him an extra £250 a couple of years later).
The original artwork, hand-painted by Pasche in 1970, along with the original letter from the Stones commissioning the logo, sold at a Cooper Owen auction in December 2005 for a record-breaking £300,000.
13. John Lennon's 'Imagine' piano
In 2000, the piano that John Lennon composed his humanist anthem ‘Imagine’ on became the most expensive item of music memorabilia ever sold when it was bought by George Michael for $2.1 million.
"It’s not the type of thing that should be in storage somewhere or being protected, it should be seen by people," Michael told London’s Capital Radio and, true to his word, he returned the walnut upright Steinway Model Z to The Beatles Story Museum in Liverpool soon afterwards.
The piano has since travelled the United States as part of a ‘peace tour’ before returning to Liverpool, where it is on display at the Strawberry Field visitor attraction.
14. Led Zeppelin's Starship
A symbol of rock excess, The Starship was a Boeing 720 plane that, in 1972, was bought by film producer and music manager Ward Sylvester and refitted to become a luxury flying tour bus with a fully functioning, brass-trimmed bar, faux fireplace, piano, two TVs and even a bedroom.
Over four years, The Starship hosted Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Bob Dylan, Alice Cooper and Deep Purple, among many more. Led Zep were the first band to use it, renting the plane for $30,000 for three weeks for their 1973 US tour and setting a high standard for the rock-star excess that was to come.
15. Grateful Dead's 'Wall Of Sound'
Live music had a major problem in the ’60s and early ’70s – technology wasn’t keeping up, with venues ill-equipped to deal with the demands of bigger audiences and heavy rock. The Grateful Dead changed all that with their ‘Wall Of Sound’.
Essentially a bunch of sound systems mashed together by the Dead’s resident sound genius Bear Owsey, the wall comprised of 586 speakers, 54 electro voice tweeters and 28 amps. It was so large it took a team of 21 roadies four hours to set up the speakers and another four hours to wire them together.
Eventually, two Walls of Sound were built so that one system could be set up and used at a show while the other was travelling and getting set up at the next venue. The Wall Of Sound was a colossal undertaking, but the quality of sound and volume it was capable of changed music forever.
16. Keith Emerson's flying, spinning piano
Prog titans Emerson, Lake & Palmer became huge stars in the ’70s thanks to their epic, virtuosic playing and the onstage exploits of Keith Emerson. When the keyboardist wasn’t wedging knives into the keyboard of his Hammond L-100 organ, he was heaving, riding and even whipping his instrument, much to the delight of his fans.
But in April 1974, during the band’s headline set at the huge California Jam festival, Emerson took it to the next level when he played a solo on a spinning piano hoisted in the air by a forklift.
"I remember Keith once saying to me, 'Look, the music is one thing but we’re here to put on a show,'" ELP’s manager Stewart Young later said. "And that’s what he did." The estimated 250,000 crowd agreed, going wild while Emerson span high above them in the air.
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17. Pink Floyd's inflatable pig
Another tale of proggy excess came in 1977, when Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters had the idea of floating a 30-foot inflatable pig in front of the Battersea Power Station for the front cover of the band’s new album, Animals.
The three-day cover shoot took place in early December 1976, and – mindful of potential weather problems, sleeve designers Hipgnosis hired a marksman to shoot the pig down should it escape its moorings. The first day went badly, with the pig taking too long to inflate and poor weather – at this point, the decision was made to stand the shooter down.
The next day, that backfired, as high winds caused the pig to escape, flying down the Thames and eventually landing on a farm in Kent. The pig was returned and more photos were taken on the third day. The story gave the band invaluable advance publicity for their new album and ensured a generation of rock fans never looked at the London landmark the same way again.
18. Mick Fleetwood's wooden balls
The enigmatic front cover of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 classic Rumours perfectly sums up the heartbreaks and affairs that went into the making of the album. Photographer Herbert Worthington III captured Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood in stage wear, Fleetwood holding a crystal ball for Nicks to inspect as she swoops around with her robe flowing behind her.
But look closer and Fleetwood appears to have two wooden balls dangling from this belt. The balls were actually lavatory chains taken from a club Fleetwood Mac played during their early years.
As Fleetwood explained to Maui Time in 2009: "In truth, I started off as a blues player. The whole ethic of a lot of blues music is slightly suggestive, might I say. And suitably, I walked out on stage with these two lavatory chains with these wooden balls hanging down, and after that it just stuck."
19. Angus Young's school uniform
AC/DC’s guitarist Angus Young can thank his sister Margaret for his unmistakable stage wear. In the early days of the band, Young tried a series of stage costumes, including a gorilla suit and a spider-man outfit, but nothing stuck.
Luckily, Margaret – who also suggested the band name after pointing out the symbol ‘AC/DC’ on her sewing machine’s power point – had an idea. Remembering her brother’s school days, when he’d be so desperate to play guitar on coming home, he wouldn’t get around to taking his uniform off before jamming, she suggested he wear his old school blazer, shorts and cap on stage.
The look stood out immediately and became an integral part of Young’s onstage persona, though he’s since joked, "When I picked it, I didn’t know I’d have to wear it when I’m 60."
20. Parliament-Funkadelic's Mothership
By October 1976, George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic gigs had become a riot of wild costumes, special effects and elaborate staging, with Rolling Stone describing their stage show as a "space-age Mardi Gras."
But nothing prepared audiences for the debut of the Mothership. Clinton had introduced the spaceship as a concept on Parliament’s 1975 album, Mothership Connection, but he had since spent half a million dollars on a massive stage prop.
The reaction from the crowd when the Mothership first descended was spectacular, "It felt like I was floating in space when I got out of there," Clinton later recalled. "You just blacked out, you know?"
At first, the ship landed at the beginning of the show, but it soon became clear that the audience’s reaction to it was so intense that it had to be moved to the end of the show, to build momentum. The Mothership is now on display in the National Museum of African American History & Culture.
21. Kate Bush's 'Wuthering Heights' dress
‘Wuthering Heights’ was the song that started it all for Kate Bush. From the off, Bush showed she was no pushover by insisting that ‘Wuthering Heights’ should be her debut single, going against the thinking of her record label.
She was right, of course – it hit the top of the UK charts within a month of release and was the first No 1 written and performed by a female solo artist. ‘Wuthering Heights’ captured the public’s imagination as few debut singles ever have, and a huge part of that was its video, in which Bush swoops, leaps and pleads to the camera, inhabiting the character of Cathy from the Emily Brontë novel which inspired the song.
The object you most associate with her depends on where you’re from though – in the UK video she wore a white Victorian nightdress, while the US version finds her cavorting around Salisbury Plain in a red dress.
22. Paul Simonon's broken bass
Paul Simonon was seething. From the stage of The Clash’s show at the Palladium, New York, on 20 September 1979 the bassist could see the venue’s security being too aggressive for his liking with audience members. Eventually, Simonon lost control, taking his frustration out on his bass guitar.
"Unfortunately, you always sort of destroy the things that you love in a temper," he later told Fender. Luckily, photographer Penny Smith was on hand to capture the moment, taking a slightly blurry photo of Simonon just as his bass head was about to hit the floor.
When it came to choosing a cover for their next album, London Calling, the band took Smith’s photograph and paid homage to the font, colours and design of Elvis Presley’s debut album for one of the great album covers of all time. The remnants of Simonon’s bass are on permanent display at the Museum Of London.
23. David Byrne's big suit
In his 2020 memoir, Remain In Love, Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz recalled how Stop Making Sense – the Jonathan Demme concert film of their Speaking In Tongues tour – made it to the silver screen.
"As the tour progressed, the band and production got tighter and tighter. Nobody had a rock show this hot. One day we were approached by a young filmmaker named Jonathan Demme and his fellow filmmaker girlfriend, Sandy McLoed. They wanted to make a film of the show."
Stop Making Sense was shot over three nights at the Pantages Theatre, in Los Angeles, in December 1983. And Demme and singer David Byrne’s approach to capturing the performances on film was more thoughtful and artful than any concert movie ever had been.
Byrne insisted the band wear muted colours on stage and ensured that all the mic stands and drum kit were anodised black, so they wouldn’t reflect the stage lights. And he had some tricks up his own sleeve in terms of choreography and outfit choices, most strikingly the huge, oversized suit he’d change into towards the concert’s close.
He’d acknowledge the suit’s notoriety in a 2001 interview with The Guardian, saying, “Yeah, that’s one for my tombstone. ‘Here lies David Byrne. Why the big suit?’"
24. Van Halen's brown M&Ms
According to rock lore, pomp rockers Van Halen always stipulated on their rider that they wanted M&Ms backstage – not too extravagant a request, until you read the small print insisting that all of the sweets with brown shells were to be removed.
According to lead singer David Lee Roth’s autobiography Crazy From The Heart though, the request wasn’t proof of diva-like behaviour, but a "canary in the coal mine", designed to catch out promoters who hadn’t thoroughly read the rider request – the thinking being that if a promoter hasn’t read every word of the contract, they’re less likely to have paid attention to the complex technical details relating to the show and safety.
Roth never did clarify which colour M&Ms were his favourite.
25. Slash's top hat
Another rock object that has become inseparable from the act is Guns ’N Roses guitarist Slash’s trademark top hat. But the London-born rocker later revealed that he acquired it before a 1985 show at the Whisky a Go Go. He cut up a leather belt and put it around the hat, then wore it for the first time at that gig.
"From that night on, my hat became something that I feel comfortable in,” he told South Africa’s Sunday Times in 2018. “It has also become something I can hide behind, as even though I love performing, I have never been good at looking into the eyes of the audience who are watching me." Let’s hope he made it up to the shop once the GNR cash started rolling in.
26. Freddie Mercury's crown and gown
By 1986, Queen singer Freddie Mercury’s status as rock royalty was beyond doubt, but every king needs a coronation. Prior to the Magic Tour – which ran for 26 dates across Europe that summer – Mercury knew he needed a special outfit for the show’s grand finale.
His costume designer Diana Mosely later recalled Mercury telling her, "'I need something just to punch out. I’d like a crown and a cloak… don’t laugh! I just think it would work. Can you do it, Diana?' I said: 'Are we doing this for real, or a send-up?' He replied, 'A real crown. Let’s give it a grandiose, Napoleonic coronation.'"
The design of the crown was based on St Edward’s Crown, used for the coronation of British monarchs, and the sumptuous, deep red cloak was inspired by the Emperor Napoleon’s coronation robes. It went down a storm on what would turn out to be Mercury’s final shows, becoming one of the legendary singer’s signature looks.
27. Madonna's corset
In 1990, Madonna was at the peak of her fame… and ability to cause controversy. The previous year she’d caused such a kerfuffle by flirting with religious iconography in the ‘Like A Prayer’ video that the Vatican called for a boycott of Pepsi, the sponsors of her upcoming Blond Ambition tour.
When the soft drinks giant dropped her, Madonna set about making the shows her most provocative and boundary-pushing to date.
The star handwrote a letter to the French designer Jean Paul Gaultier – known for his irreverent and unconventional designs – asking him to collaborate on outfits for the tour. "I was a big fan," Gaultier told the New York Times in 2001. "She knew what she wanted – a pinstripe suit, the feminine corsetry. Madonna likes my clothes because they combine the masculine and the feminine."
Within minutes of the show, Madonna whipped off her suit jacket to reveal a pink corset with a sharp, conical bra – the opposite of the soft curves that corsets are traditionally meant to shape. The defiant, playful look grabbed headlines worldwide – she’d done it again.
28. Kurt Cobain – spray can
Unfortunately, one of the key rock objects of the ’90s – the spray can with which Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hannah wrote the phrase ‘Kurt smells like teen spirit’ on the Nirvana singer’s bedroom wall, thus inspiring his most well-known song – was surely consigned to landfill long ago. But other items of Cobain memorabilia are still out there if you have deep enough pockets.
The left-handed Fender Mustang guitar used by Kurt Cobain in the ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ video sold for $4.5 million in 2022 and the singer’s 1959 Martin D-18E, played during 1993’s MTV Unplugged, sold in 2020 for $6 million, setting the record for the most expensive guitar ever sold.
29. U2's giant lemon
After a decade of earnest, sweeping stadium rock, the mid-90s saw U2 loosen up. Their 1997 album Pop aimed for the dancefloor, embracing electronic and house influences, while the PopMart tour that followed saw the band embrace post-modernism and irony while taking aim at materialism and excess.
But the tour is most remembered for a moment straight out of rock satire This Is Spinal Tap. Every night the band returned to the stage for their encore inside a giant lemon, which would then open so the band members could emerge to deafening applause. The problem was, the doors of the lemon had a tendency to get stuck, leaving the band members sweating profusely while tens of thousands of baffled fans waited.
This first happened at a show in Oslo, Norway, but the issue wasn’t fixed and the band got stuck again at shows in Los Angeles and Japan. "I still miss our lemon," frontman Bono later said, "That was a beautiful, psychedelic kind of funky. It was a beautiful thing, travelling in that lemon." At least he’s not bitter.
30. Slipknot's masks
When Slipknot percussionist Sean Crahan turned up to rehearsals in a clown mask, he inadvertently hit upon a gimmick that would set the band apart from their metal peers and make them worldwide stars.
From that point on, each member of the band wore a different mask – all terrifying in their own way – and a boiler suit. "I give a lot of credit to Clown," frontman Corey Taylor told Kerrang radio in 2020. "His imagination, his vision in a lot of ways has helped shaped this for so many years… one of the things we knew we had to do was find ways to look like a unit.”
31. Taylor Swift's red scarf
Here’s an object which has taken on a life of its own thanks to a lyric and an obsessive fanbase. In fan-favourite ‘All Too Well’ (from 2012’s Red) Swift sings, “And I left my scarf there at your sister's house/ And you've still got it in your drawer even now,” and “But you keep my old scarf from that very first week/ 'Cause it reminds you of innocence / And it smells like me.”
Intrepid fans tracked down paparazzi photos from 2010 of Swift, wearing a navy scarf with red stripes, walking with then-squeeze, actor Jake Gyllenhaal and his sister, actor and director Maggie Gyllenhaal.
There followed years of speculation over the whereabouts of the scarf, which came to a head with Swift’s 2021 re-recording of Red, which included a 10-minute-long version of ‘All Too Well’.
Eventually, Swift tried to shut the rumours down by telling E! news, "The scarf is a metaphor, and we turned it red because red is a very important colour in this album, which is called Red. And, I think when I say it's a metaphor, I’m just going to stop, and I’m going to say, thanks for the incredible question, whoever asked it. You've really taken us for a ride."
All photos Getty Images
Top image Led Zeppelin pose in front of The Starship, 1973
