It’s a rock ’n’ roll mystery — call it the case of the “Sticky Fingers!”
Mick Taylor — who played with the Rolling Stones from 1969 to 1974, and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the band in 1989 — was surprised to discover that a long-lost Les Paul guitar used on the band’s 1972 album “Exile on Main St.” recently resurfaced at the Met, we’re told.
The Stones’ French villa was infamously robbed when they were holed up there nearly 54 years ago.
A rock historian and Stones fan said of the incident: “Villa Nellcôte was such an open house that, one day in September 1971, burglars walked out of the front gate with nine of [Keith] Richards’ guitars, Bobby Keys’ saxophone and Bill Wyman’s bass in broad daylight . . .The crime was reputedly carried out by [drug] dealers from Marseille who were owed money by Richards.”
Cut to May of this year. The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced a “landmark gift of more than 500 of the finest guitars from the golden age of American guitarmaking,” including a “1959 sunburst Les Paul guitar used by Keith Richards during the Rolling Stones’ first appearance on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ in 1964,” plus instruments used by Roy Rogers, Mississippi John Hurt and many more.
Now Taylor’s business manager and partner, Marlies Damming, says that Richards sold that same Les Paul to Taylor.
Damming said via a statement: “There are numerous photos of Mick Taylor playing this Les Paul, as it was his main guitar until it disappeared. The interesting thing about these vintage Les Pauls (from the late 1950s), is that they are renowned for their flaming . . . which is unique, like a fingerprint.”
A source added, “Taylor says he never received compensation for the theft and is mystified as to how his property found its way into the Met’s collection.”
A rep for the Met did not immediately comment, and an adviser for Dirk Ziff, the collector who made the donation, did not get back to us.
Stay tuned! We need to ask Keef!
