The disappearance of rock star electric guitars is not a rarity. Stories of those instruments being returned to their rightful owners are even rarer.
Some celebrated examples of the latter include George Harrison’s Cherry Red “Lucy” Gibson Les Paul, heard on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and Nuno Bettencourt’s double-neck Washburn, which was stolen from the stage in one of the more brazen swipes.
While both guitars were reunited with their owners, many other notable axes are still missing, including Eric Clapton’s “Beano” Les Paul, Harrison’s 1965 Rickenbacker and Joe Satriani’s “Pearly” prototype.
So when Lita Ford’s stolen B.C. Rich Mockingbird was back in her sights, it seemed like a one-in-a-million occurrence.
And yet the guitarist let her beloved six-string get away for a second time.
As Ford explains, the guitar was a favorite of hers.
“It was a gorgeous guitar, a turquoise-green Mockingbird, ebony fretboard, no fret inlays,” she tells Guitarist.
The Mockingbird model made its debut in the ’70s and was quickly adopted by a number of players, including Ford, the Alice Cooper duo Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, Slash and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry. Not only did it prove to be the ultimate hard-rock weapon — it also looked pretty impressive.
Ford assumed her guitar was gone forever. So she was stunned when it suddenly appeared before her one day.
“There was a time when I was auditioning guitar players,” she explains. “They were coming over to my studio, and one guy comes in with that turquoise guitar. I looked at it and I thought, That’s my guitar.
“And he looks at me and says, ‘Oh yeah, isn’t this a great guitar?’”
Ford didn’t voice her thoughts, but she did find out how he got it.
According to Ford, he told her, “‘I bought it off some guy on the street for 350 bucks. Can you believe that? It’s my favorite guitar ever.’
“I just couldn’t take it away from him,” she adds. “I let him have it. Of course, he didn’t get the audition, but he got to keep the guitar, and he didn’t know it was mine.”
Sometimes, thefts can have silver linings. When Sonic Youth had their gear stolen in 1999, Patti Smith gifted Thurston Moore a Fender Jazzmaster, and would soon find out just how rare it was.
A prototype signature guitar for former Guns N’ Roses axe man DJ Ashba turned up on the TV show Pawn Stars, while Randy Bachman got his prized 1957 Gretsch 6120 back 45 years after it was stolen.
Yet few stories can top the mystery of Paul McCartney’s 1961 Höfner 500/1 violin bass which was the subject of a forensic hunt after the Beatle casually pondered its fate over coffee in 2019. That led to the establishment of the Lost Bass project and the guitar’s discovery in an English attic 50 years after it was stolen during the recording sessions for Wings’ Red Rose Speedway. McCartney has since performed with it once more.
Ford, meanwhile, isn’t reminiscing over the guitar that got away — she’s working on a brand-new custom guitar with luthier Neal Moser, who has a long history building B.C. Rich guitars and has worked with Stephen Stills.
“He’s made all the biggest and the baddest guitars, in my opinion,” she says. And there won’t be an inlay in sight, “because I like to mess people up when they look at me play. They don’t see the inlays, so they don’t know where I’m at. When you see it, you’ll just think, ‘Wow, that guitar is sick.’”
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings