On a pumpkin orange 1957 Gretsch 6120, a guitar he’d purchased with money earned as a kid, musician Randy Bachman created hits like “American Woman” and “Takin’ Care of Business.” It was the instrument that the original member of the Guess Who and Bachman Turner-Overdrive had learnt on.
“It was with me all the time,” he said on NPR’s Morning Edition. “I slept with this guitar every night.”
During the 1960s and 1970s, he feared it would be stolen while he traveled, so he chained it to hotel bathroom toilets.
“If someone wanted to steal it, they’d have to break the toilet from the floor,” he explained.
In 1976, it was stolen. His road manager had placed the guitar in a hotel room and it was taken.
“The road manager told me, ‘I’m going to take your guitar,’ and check out of the hotel and come back to pick you guys up,’ ” Bachman recalled. “He stole the guitar, put it in a hotel room, and five minutes later it was gone.”
It was a shattering tragedy for Bachman. He spent decades searching for the guitar, but it never came up on eBay or other places.
For years, Bachman has been looking for his guitar. He will finally be reunited with it after a fan found and returned it.
William Long, who has been dubbed a guitar sleuth, is now a song detective.
In interviews on YouTube last year, William Long learned about the stolen instrument. “I could feel and sympathize with his pain,” Long told NPR in reference to the epidemic. So he set out to find it during the outbreak.
“I didn’t really look for it because it was a well-known guitar,” Long added. “I looked for it because I felt I might be able to assist him in locating it with the talents I possessed.”
This collection of talents includes problem solving. He’s a detective who enjoys mysteries. And Long has an ear for music.
“I’m not a guitar expert,” he added. “When I first heard the tale, I had no idea how to spell Gretsch. So that was the first thing I had to figure out.”
Long, a Vancouver-based web searcher, used screen captures to search the internet for orange Gretsch guitars. He studied the characteristics of Bachman’s guitar, down to the grain of the wood. After that, it was a matter of elimination. Long spent months checking for a match, working days for a few weeks before he found one in Tokyo, Japan.
It was recently discovered that the guitar had been sold in 2016 to a Japanese musician known as TAKESHI.
TAKESHI said, “It spoke to me like no other guitar I’d ever played when I first strummed this guitar at a music shop in Tokyo. It was destiny.”
TAKESHI has agreed to a guitar swap with Bachman. “I’m honored and thrilled to be the one who can give back this stolen guitar to its rightful owner,” says TAKESHI’S statement.
Once COVID restrictions are lifted, the two plan to exchange guitars in Japan. TAKESHI has a similar make and model as Bachman Gretsch, which he owns.
“To me, that’s kind of a Cinderella story,” Bachman said. He believes he has a unique connection with TAKESHI.
“I’m good friends with this guy, and we’ve never met,” he added. “It’s a guitar friendship.”
I believe the best way to describe how this makes me feel is “hope”. The internet is a marvelous place with endless possibilities and the fact that in such a dark time, someone was able to bring light to multiple people without leaving his house, is beautiful.
William Long, you are a hero.
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