Billy Corgan has been reunited with his guitar 27 years after it was stolen.
The Smashing Pumpkins frontman was devastated when his favourite instrument was pinched after the rock band’s concert in Detroit’s Saint Andrew’s Hall in June 1992.
However, on Tuesday (05.02.19), after giving up on the idea of ever seeing the Fender Stratocaster – which he played on the band’s fuzzy rock LP ‘Gish’ – again, he went to visit the guitar after a woman named Beth James got in touch to say she had been sold it at a junk sale in Michigan for $200.
The ‘Cherub Rock’ rocker told Rolling Stone: "Somebody sent me a picture a couple of weeks ago of another one of my guitars, and I wrote the guy back and said, ‘How did you get my guitar?’
"And he wrote back, ‘Oh, it’s a recreation.’
"He’d literally gotten the same stickers, worn them down in the same way and scraped the paint so it looked worn. You could have fooled me."
A friend of Beth, who wasn’t really into Smashing Pumpkins and kept the instrument in her basement, had noticed how similar it was to Billy’s guitar after a friend showed her a picture of it.
She then decided to contact a music royalties expert she knew, Alex Heiche, who was able to get in touch with the 51-year-old star.
Billy immediately recognised it because it has very distinctive marks from cigarette burns and he’d also painted it himself.
The ‘Stand Inside Your Love’ hitmaker says that the guitar was very special to him because it enabled him to play a certain way.
He said: "It instantly changed the way the band sounded and the way I played.
"When it was stolen, it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, gee, my guitar just got stolen.’
"It was the guitar that affected the way I played and I was heavily identified with the guitar."
He didn’t say whether or not he will be playing the instrument again when the band tour Europe later this year.
Billy Corgan reunited with stolen guitar 27 years later
