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Nearly 37 years ago, a 25-year-old Sausalito guitarist named Ronnie Montrose was in the midst of a musical coming-out party, wielding his guitar on tour with the Edgar Winter Group and tearing through soon-to-be hits like "Frankenstein" and "Free Ride."
As Montrose saw it, he had an ace in the hole: a 1959 Gibson Les Paul guitar he'd just bought from J. Geils for $800, an instrument he felt emitted an exquisite tone.
On Oct. 10, 1972, one month before the group would release its bestselling album, the Edgar Winter Group performed at Nichols College, a small school in Dudley, Mass. In the middle of the set, Montrose went to retrieve his prized guitar from its stand onstage, only to find it missing. The show was halted, house lights were turned on, but the guitar had vanished. Montrose was fuming.
A Dudley Police Department call log of that night recorded the incident, noting, "There might be trouble." There wasn't, but Montrose has spent the nearly four decades since then wondering what happened to his cherished instrument, which has been valued at as much as $500,000, according to Tiburon vintage guitar collector Michael Indelicato, a longtime friend of Montrose.
After recognizing his long gone Les Paul in a British guitar magazine, Montrose's wondering has ceased. He filed a lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court in San Francisco against Gary Moore, himself a famed guitarist from Belfast in Northern Ireland. In the complaint, Montrose claims that Moore has his stolen guitar and refuses to give it back.
Although he acknowledges that Moore himself did not steal the guitar, he alleges his attempts to speak with Moore about the matter have been rebuffed. He's seeking the return of the guitar and unspecified damages.
Montrose declined to offer futher comment on his lawsuit. Reached at his home in Brighton, England, Moore refused to discuss the matter, too, saying only that the "whole thing is a sham" and "I've had that guitar for more than 20 years." Montrose doesn't dispute that notion, but he insists that doesn't change the fact that Moore is in possession of his stolen guitar and must return it.
The legal ramifications of the case are complex, and Montrose hopes to get a judge to weigh in on several issues, including the statute of limitations on a 37-year-old case and an instance in which the current owner of a piece of stolen property is not alleged to have stolen it. Another major issue is jurisdictional, as the theft is alleged to have occurred in Massachusetts, its current owner lives in England and Montrose lives in San Francisco.
Ed Roman, owner of Ed Roman Guitars in Las Vegas, has served as an expert witness in stolen guitar cases for the estate of late guitar great Jimi Hendrix. He said Montrose faces an uphill battle, primarily because the alleged theft occurred so long ago.
Roman said the Hendrix estate and Paul McCartney have been unable to retrieve stolen guitars in cases where they knew who had them but were unable to overcome the years gone by.
"If it is more than 10 years ago, the person who has it usually keeps it," he said. "I doubt Ronnie is going to be able to get it back."
Guitar thefts have long been common in the music business. R.E.M.'s Peter Buck had his prized Rickenbacker guitar stolen in September in Helsinki, Finland, only to have it returned anonymously two weeks later at a show in Luxembourg. Slash of Guns N' Roses fame had his Gibson Les Paul Goldtop guitar stolen from his studio in 1998, and Gibson eventually made a new one for its longtime star client.
Montrose's hunt for his guitar has been rife with false leads, missed opportunities and dead ends.
In January 1977, someone contacted one of Montrose's bandmates about the guitar's whereabouts, only to disappear when Montrose hired a private investigator to look into it.
The hunt regained steam in the early 2000s when Indelicato was given a photo of a 1959 Gibson Les Paul by another guitar dealer at a Texas guitar show and told that Montrose's instrument was in the hands of an English guitar player. The photo showed the guitar's serial number, and Indelicato claims that an Internet search for the serial number sent him to a forum thread on the Gibson Web site that connected Moore and the serial number for Montrose's missing guitar.
But it was the November 2007 issue of the British magazine Guitar Buyer that ignited the standoff between Montrose and Moore, who once played for Thin Lizzy of "The Boys Are Back In Town" fame.
The publication featured a multi-page spread on Moore and his guitar collection, including several photos of a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard. The guitar is known as a Sunburst for its distinctive maple wood face with unique wood grain patterns. Montrose claims a photo showing a pin-sized hole in the back of the guitar is the proof, as he drills such holes in all of his guitars.
The Guitar Buyer photos showed that the guitar had sustained significant wear and tear over the past 37 years, a sign that Montrose's complaint claims "substantiates a risk of future damage so as long as the '59 Gibson remains in Mr. Moore's possession."
An angry Moore refused to comment further on his tussle with Montrose over the decades-old instrument. But his quote in the Guitar Buyer story shed light on its value to both men.
When asked if he still played the '59 Gibson on the road, he replied, "Sometimes, but don't tell anyone that. I don't really like taking it out too much because it's getting a bit scary now. I don't think I'll find another Gibson Les Paul to replace it. I'd have to get one of the same vintage, because no matter what new ones I get, they're never going to be like that."
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