Most stolen guitars never find their way back to their owners. Lita Ford's electric did — when a guitarist auditioning for her band walked into her studio carrying it.
The instrument in question was a beloved B.C. Rich Mockingbird that Ford had long assumed was gone for good.
“It was a gorgeous guitar, a turquoise-green Mockingbird, ebony fretboard, no fret inlays,” she tells Guitarist.
Then, during auditions for her band, Ford got a shock.
“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?’”
Rather than confront him, Ford listened as the guitarist explained how he'd come to own the instrument.
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.’”
What happened next may be even more surprising than the guitar's reappearance.
“I just couldn't take it away from him,” Ford says. “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.”
That decision makes Ford's story especially unusual. Recoveries of famous stolen guitars are rare enough in rock history; cases where the original owner knowingly lets the instrument disappear a second time are even rarer.
Among the better-known recovery stories is George Harrison's Cherry Red "Lucy" Gibson Les Paul, heard on the Beatles' “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” which eventually found its way back to him after being stolen. Nuno Bettencourt was likewise reunited with his double-neck Washburn after it disappeared in one of rock's more brazen stage thefts.
Other famous instruments remain missing, however, including Eric Clapton's "Beano" Les Paul, Harrison's 1965 Rickenbacker and Joe Satriani's Pearly prototype.
Occasionally, thefts produce unexpected twists. After Sonic Youth's gear was stolen in 1999, Patti Smith gifted Thurston Moore a Fender Jazzmaster that later proved to be an exceptionally rare instrument. Former Guns N' Roses guitarist DJ Ashba's prototype signature model surfaced on Pawn Stars, while Randy Bachman recovered his prized 1957 Gretsch 6120 some 45 years after it disappeared.
The most remarkable recovery story may belong to Paul McCartney's 1961 Höfner 500/1 violin bass. Long presumed lost, the instrument became the focus of an international search effort after McCartney casually wondered about its whereabouts in 2019. The resulting Lost Bass project tracked it to an attic in England more than 50 years after it was stolen during the sessions for Wings' Red Rose Speedway. McCartney has since been reunited with the bass and performed with it again, as well as appeared in a documentary about its disappearance, McCartney: The Lost Bass.
