Clandestine meetings, dramatic TV pleas, ransom demands, hurried getaway drives across the Mexican border...
It sounds like a thriller – a setup for the likes of Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, or Liam Neeson to Kool-Aid Man through the door, guns blazing, ready to re-possess what was unjustly taken.
Minus the action movie heroes and firearms (at least as far as we know), this was the exact scenario that no less than George Harrison found himself in when trying to get back his “Lucy” Gibson Les Paul, which was stolen from the Beatle in 1973 when he was living in Los Angeles.
Why go to such great lengths, you ask? Well, this wasn't just any ol' Les Paul.
Given to Harrison by his buddy Eric Clapton, “Lucy” had been used by the latter for his lead break on the Harrison-penned Beatles masterpiece, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, widely regarded as one of the greatest guitar solos of all time.
Harrison also went on to use the cherry red-finished guitar on other tracks on the Beatles' landmark White Album, and on Abbey Road.
Before it ended up in Harrison's, or Clapton's, hands, “Lucy” is said to have been owned by Rick Derringer, and the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian before him.
By the time Clapton bought it, the Les Paul had ended up at a New York City guitar store. When exactly Clapton bought it isn't certain (Clapton himself, in an interview about Gibson's 2013, ultra-limited edition re-creation of “Lucy,” wasn't entirely sure of the timeline), but by late 1968, the guitar was firmly in Harrison's possession.
It would remain so – contributing to the Beatles repertoire and subsequently Harrison's enormously successful early solo career – until April 13, 1973, when the guitar was swiped from his Beverly Hills home.
From there, the guitar was, reportedly, quickly sold to a shop, Whalin Sound City, that just as quickly sold it on to a Mexican musician named Miguel Ochoa.
Many years later, in 1988 – as Harrison re-emerged from a five-year hiatus with Cloud Nine, his biggest solo album in well over a decade – the Beatle sat down with Guitar World for a wide-ranging interview, which covered, among many other topics, the theft of the cherry red Les Paul.
We'll let Harrison take it from here.
“I called him [Ochoa] up,” Harrison told GW. “I said, ‘That's my guitar. I want it back, and I'll give you your money back.’ He said, ‘How do I know it's really you?’ I said, ‘Okay, I'll meet you.’
“A meeting was arranged, but the guy just took off, jumped in a car, and drove to Guadalajara and kidnapped my guitar!”
As if that wasn't surreal enough already, Harrison's close friend Ravi Shankar, the sitar master who taught Harrison the instrument for a time, just so happened to be in Guadalajara for a TV appearance.
Harrison recalled, “It was just after the Bangladesh concerts [two benefit concerts Harrison organized and headlined at New York City's Madison Square Garden in 1971 after the country was devastated by a massive cyclone] and Ravi went on TV saying, ‘He's very upset because his guitar's been stolen and it's in Guadalajara!’ Then he read the guy's name on TV!”
Even a public call-out didn't bring the ordeal to a swift conclusion.
“In the end it became a bit of a ripoff,” Harrison explained to GW. “I had to pay this guy to keep flying to Guadalajara doing deals with the other guy and I ended up having to go out and find a Les Paul of the same period and swap it for mine.
“I finally got it back, but it was a really good guitar, and also it had that personal thing, because it was the Guitar Gently Weeps guitar that Eric played, and I used it on the White Album and Abbey Road.”
And so, after many headaches, “Lucy” returned to Harrison's hands. It remains in possession of the late guitarist's family.
But what, you might be wondering, was the guitar that Harrison traded for “Lucy”?
Well, that guitar has an interesting story of its own..
Purchased from legendary vintage dealer Norman Harris, of Norman’s Rare Guitars, the guitar that got “Lucy” back was a Sunburst 1958 Les Paul.
Sold by Ochoa a decade after the “Lucy” dust-up, the so-called “ransom” Les Paul changed hands a number of times, before ending up on the auction block in 2022.
With the help of its colorful backstory, the guitar was sold for $312,500. We can assume no private flights to Guadalajara were necessary...
