LONDON – It’s only rock ‘n’ roll, but it’s messy.
A guitar once played by two members of the Rolling Stones is at the center of a dispute between the band’s former guitarist Mick Taylor and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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The 1959 Gibson Les Paul was donated to the Met as part of what the New York museum calls “a landmark gift of more than 500 of the finest guitars from the golden age of American guitar making.” The donor is Dirk Ziff, a billionaire investor and guitar collector.
When the Met announced the gift in May, Taylor thought he recognized the guitar, with its distinctive “starburst” finish, as an instrument he last saw in 1971, when the Stones were recording the album “Exile on Main St.” at Keith Richards’ rented villa in the south of France.
In the haze of drugs and rock ‘n’ roll that pervaded the sessions, a number of instruments went missing, believed stolen.
Now, Taylor and his team believe it has reappeared. The Met says provenance records show no evidence the guitar ever belonged to Taylor.
“This guitar has a long and well-documented history of ownership,” museum spokesperson Ann Bailis said.
Taylor’s partner and business manager, Marlies Damming, said the Met should make the guitar “available for inspection.”
“An independent guitar expert should be able to ascertain the guitar’s provenance one way or the other,” she said in a statement Tuesday to The Associated Press.
While its ownership is contested, there’s no disputing the instrument’s starring role in rock history. It was owned in the early 1960s by Keith Richards, who played it during the Rolling Stones’ first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964. The Met says that performance “ignited interest in this legendary model.”
The guitar – nicknamed the “Keithburst” – was also played by guitar legends Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. Taylor says he got it from Richards in 1967, two years before he joined the Stones, replacing original member Brian Jones. Jones died in 1969.
Taylor left the band in 1974, reuniting with them for the Stones' 50th anniversary tour in 2012-2013.
Jeff Allen, who was Taylor’s manager and publicist for decades from the 1990s, said Taylor “told me he got it as a present from Keith,” and also mentioned the theft.
“Mick did tell me that the guitar solo that he became quite famous for, on ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,’ was with the Les Paul that got stolen,” Allen said.
The Met’s records say the Les Paul was owned by Richards until 1971, when it was acquired by record producer and manager Adrian Miller, who died in 2006.
The guitar has changed hands several times since then, and reappeared twice in public.
It was put up for auction by Christie’s in 2004, when it failed to sell. Ziff bought it in 2016, and loaned it to the Met in 2019 for an exhibition titled “Play it Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll.”
It's unclear what will happen next. The Met, which plans to open a new gallery dedicated to its collection of American guitars, says it has not been contacted by Taylor or his representatives.
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Associated Press writer Jocelyn Noveck in New York contributed to this story.