An Ex-Stone Says the Met Has His Lost Guitar. The Museum Says No Way.

Representatives for Mick Taylor, the Rolling Stones’ former guitarist, said the Les Paul was stolen from him decades ago. The museum says he never owned it and has not made a claim.

By Michaela Towfighi

Aug. 1, 2025

They were shaggy and, to Ed Sullivan’s mind, under-shampooed, but the Rolling Stones cemented their arrival in the United States when they appeared on his variety show in October 1964, accompanied by screaming fans and aided by one Les Paul guitar in the hands of Keith Richards.

Guitar buffs have tracked the instrument for years. Eric Clapton is said to have played it. Jimmy Page was photographed with it. Bernie Marsden of Whitesnake owned it.

So it is perhaps no surprise that the 1959 Gibson — with its gleaming sunburst finish, mahogany body and maple top — would end up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the gift of a collector who this year generously donated 500 vintage guitars.

“These guitars are examples of outstanding artistry and craftsmanship as well as visually powerful tools of expression and distinction,” the museum said in a statement announcing the gift.

But in recent weeks, a representative for Mick Taylor, 76, a former guitarist for the Stones, surfaced to say that Taylor was surprised to learn that the guitar was in the museum.

Taylor’s account is that he purchased the guitar from a road manager for the Stones while playing with John Mayall, then brought it with him in 1969 when he joined the Stones for five years. His version has been recounted by music journalists, guitar aficionados and a Stones historian.

Taylor’s manager, Marlies Damming, said in a statement last month that at some point the guitar had “disappeared.”

But the museum maintains this account is all bunk. The Met says Taylor played the instrument, but never owned it, and that for decades the guitar has had a public history without apparently drawing a claim from Taylor. In 2004, as noted in the museum's provenance, the guitar went up for auction at Christie’s and appeared on the cover of the catalog. In 2019, it was featured in a Met exhibition.

“This guitar has a long and well-documented history of ownership,” the museum said in a statement.

The Les Paul in the Met is one of a number made by the Gibson company that came to be known as “bursts” because of their blazing coloring. Richards brought it with him when the Stones traveled to New York in 1964 to play two songs on Sullivan’s show: a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” and their version of “Time Is on My Side.” Richards, then 20, wore a black suit, but no tie, onstage as he strummed the Les Paul that came to be known as the “Keithburst.”

Taylor’s later ownership of the “Keithburst” is recounted in a 700-page anthology of Stones instruments, “Rolling Stones Gear,” published in 2013 by Andy Babiuk, an American musician and author.

There is no debate that Taylor played the instrument (and others) during his years with the Stones, including at his 1969 Hyde Park debut with the band. That session turned into a tribute for the guitarist he replaced, Brian Jones, who had died days earlier.

In his book, Babiuk says “Taylor’s ’59 Gibson Les Paul” was among the eight guitars stolen in 1971 when the Stones spent the summer at Villa Nellcôte, a mansion on the French Riviera near Nice. The storied home, with 16 bedrooms, became something of a recording studio for “Exile on Main St.,” the album many consider the band’s finest.

But the Met says Richards held onto the Les Paul until 1971 and that its own research suggests the guitar was not taken in that theft.

Its provenance, though, does have something of a gap. It lists Adrian Miller as the owner of the Les Paul in 1971, but it does not say that he bought the guitar from Richards or specify how Miller, who died in 2006, acquired it. Richards could not be reached for comment.

The Met provenance does say that Miller then sold the guitar in 1971 to Cosmo Verrico, a guitarist for the British rock band Heavy Metal Kids. By email, Verrico said he can’t recall how Miller acquired the guitar.

The museum’s provenance tracks all the subsequent owners and notes the very public attempted sale of the instrument at Christie’s in 2004. The bidding did not reach the price sought, but the guitar was purchased two years later by Peter Svensson, a Swedish producer. Ten years after that, Dirk Ziff, an investor and billionaire, bought it with the help and advice of Perry Margouleff, a music producer and guitar collector.

Ziff lent the guitar to the Met in 2019 for its exhibition “Play It Loud,” which later moved to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Richards sat for interviews promoting the exhibit, the museum said, and was well aware that his old Les Paul would be on display.

Taylor’s representatives surfaced last month to express what they described to The New York Post as his surprise that the guitar, with its signature flaming wood-grain finish, was in the museum. But they have not made Taylor available for an interview.

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Taylor, viewed by critics as a skilled guitarist known for his blues style, largely faded from the public eye after leaving the Stones in 1974. In a 2009 interview with the Sunday Mail, he said he feared he would have died if he had stayed with the band because its lifestyle would have only fueled his heroin addiction at the time.

In 2012, he joined his former band members on the Stones’ 50 & Counting tour, marking five decades of music. A few years later, though, he publicly critiqued the Stones on Facebook for not inviting him to a gallery opening of “Exhibitionism,” a Rolling Stones exhibit at the Saatchi Gallery in London.

In recent weeks, Damming and Rhonda Palmer, who describes herself as Damming’s personal assistant, have responded to several inquiries from The New York Times, but they have not provided Taylor’s account in any detail.

“One of our advisers has recommended holding off on publicity right now,” Palmer said in one email.

Damming has not gone completely silent though. In recent days, she sent an email to The Times that said, “We would like the Metropolitan Museum to make the guitar available so that we can inspect it, and confirm its provenance one way or the other.” The museum said it has not heard from anyone associated with Taylor.

Last month, Damming shared a video on her Facebook account from Happy Mag, an Australian arts and culture magazine. A montage of Taylor was accompanied by scrolling text.

“A long lost piece of rock ’n’ roll history has resurfaced, decades after it vanished,” the post said.

But, as is evident in the several public appearances the guitar has made over the years, the Les Paul may have once gone missing, but it had not fully disappeared.

[www.nytimes.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2025-08-01 19:37 by Cristiano Radtke.

@ M D: It seems to me that the only prove you have for this Les Paul to be M T's is the certificate seller, buyer, price and the serial number, or equivalent close-up pictures with preferably significant specific details. If you don't have that, you cannot prove the guitar is yours, even if you have played it a 1000 times. Every insurance company can tell you that. At least mine does when it comes to my electric and acoustic guitars, which are not the cheapest.

Good luck for Mick Taylor.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2025-08-01 19:40 by TheflyingDutchman.

A buddy sent this to me and I was planning on sharing this and I forgot!

"Keithburst". I recall I once found an old Finnish music magazine from 1964 and there was a short Keith Richards (or Rolling Stones) interview. They asked from him what a success means to him. Keith's short answer was: "A high-priced Gibson". We know the guitar he then was referring to...

- Doxa



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2025-08-01 20:34 by Doxa.

Sure, but is it now Taylor's, that's the question ? That business is cold as ice, and insurance companies are masters in finding loopholes.

Quote
TheflyingDutchman

Quote
RobertJohnson
[youtu.be]

Thank you Sir. With John Mayall, Taylor felt "most at home".

You are welcome and you are right: [youtu.be]

And fantastic: [youtu.be]

Pardon me if someone else already posted this, but The Iridium nightclub in NYC has recently posted a clip of Mick Taylor doing fragments of Start Me Up and Brown Sugar after the encore of his final show there in 2012 (May 14, 2012, 2nd show).

It appears to be part of the Teye Guitars promo he did after that show.

[www.youtube.com]

Quote
maidenlane
Pardon me if someone else already posted this, but The Iridium nightclub in NYC has recently posted a clip of Mick Taylor doing fragments of Start Me Up and Brown Sugar after the encore of his final show there in 2012 (May 14, 2012, 2nd show).

It appears to be part of the Teye Guitars promo he did after that show.

[www.youtube.com]

Thank you, never seen before. These guitars seem to sound great, judging Taylor's playing here.

Another view of this photo (forgot year this was);







Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2025-08-07 00:30 by DiamondDog7.

Ca 1977 I think.

Has it ever been confirmed that after the Carla Bley /Jack Bruce band broke up in June 1975,that Taylor reached out to the band about rejoining , but was rebuffed.This story is attributed to Bill Wyman, but it doesn’t sound reliable since I have never heard anyother band members say it happened .

Bill Wyman seems a reliable source to me. He even remembers exactly how many girls he screwed in the 6-tees.

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TheflyingDutchman
Ca 1977 I think.

I could be wrong, but isn't this from when Taylor visited them backstage after the Leicester-gig in 1976?

Quote
DandelionPowderman

I could be wrong, but isn't this from when Taylor visited them backstage after the Leicester-gig in 1976?

You could be right. Seemingly they didn't ask him to join for a couple of songs then...

Quote
TheflyingDutchman

Quote
DandelionPowderman

I could be wrong, but isn't this from when Taylor visited them backstage after the Leicester-gig in 1976?

You could be right. Seemingly they didn't ask him to join for a couple of songs...

Or is it when Taylor and Richards worked on the John Phillips album?

A former Rolling Stone says the Met has his stolen guitar. The museum disputes it

By JILL LAWLESS
August 5, 2025

LONDON (AP) — It’s only rock ‘n’ roll, but it’s messy.

A guitar once played by two members of the Rolling Stones is at the center of a dispute between the band’s former guitarist Mick Taylor and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The 1959 Gibson Les Paul was donated to the Met as part of what the New York museum calls “a landmark gift of more than 500 of the finest guitars from the golden age of American guitar making.” The donor is Dirk Ziff, a billionaire investor and guitar collector.

When the Met announced the gift in May, Taylor thought he recognized the guitar, with its distinctive “starburst” finish, as an instrument he last saw in 1971, when the Stones were recording the album “Exile on Main St.” at Keith Richards’ rented villa in the south of France.

In the haze of drugs and rock ‘n’ roll that pervaded the sessions, a number of instruments went missing, believed stolen.

Now, Taylor and his team believe it has reappeared. The Met says provenance records show no evidence the guitar ever belonged to Taylor.

“This guitar has a long and well-documented history of ownership,” museum spokesperson Ann Ballis said.

Taylor’s partner and business manager, Marlies Damming, said the Met should make the guitar “available for inspection.”

“An independent guitar expert should be able to ascertain the guitar’s provenance one way or the other,” she said in a statement to The Associated Press.

While its ownership is contested, there’s no disputing the instrument’s starring role in rock history. It was owned in the early 1960s by Keith Richards, who played it during the Rolling Stones’ first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964. The Met says that performance “ignited interest in this legendary model.”

The guitar – nicknamed the “Keithburst” – was also played by guitar legends Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. Taylor says he got it from Richards in 1967, two years before he joined the Stones, replacing original member Brian Jones. Jones died in 1969.

Taylor left the band in 1974, reuniting with them for the Stones’ 50th anniversary tour in 2012-2013.

Jeff Allen, who was Taylor’s manager and publicist for decades from the 1990s, said Taylor “told me he got it as a present from Keith,” and also mentioned the theft.

“Mick did tell me that the guitar solo that he became quite famous for, on ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,’ was with the Les Paul that got stolen,” Allen said.

The Met’s records say the Les Paul was owned by Richards until 1971, when it was acquired by record producer and manager Adrian Miller, who died in 2006.

The guitar has changed hands several times since then, and reappeared twice in public.

It was put up for auction by Christie’s in 2004, when it failed to sell. Ziff bought it in 2016, and loaned it to the Met in 2019 for an exhibition titled “Play it Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll.”

It’s unclear what will happen next. The Met, which plans to open a new gallery dedicated to its collection of American guitars, says it has not been contacted by Taylor or his representatives.

___

Associated Press writer Jocelyn Noveck in New York contributed to this story.

[apnews.com]

Jeff Allen, who was Taylor’s manager and publicist for decades from the 1990s, said Taylor “told me he got it as a present from Keith,” and also mentioned the theft.

“Mick did tell me that the guitar solo that he became quite famous for, on ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,’ was with the Les Paul that got stolen,” Allen said.

I remember reading an interview with MT in Guitar Player magazine, where he said he played the solo on "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" with a brown Gibson ES-345.

Now it's getting funny. The guitar belonged to Keith in the first place. He gave it as a present to Mick Taylor. When next the guitar got stolen like Mick Taylor stated, the thief knew how to illegally sell the guitar. I wonder if the original owner - Keith Richards- and eventually Jeff Allen are going to deal with it by being a witness. That's what friends are for.

Doesn't matter if it's his guitar, it got stolen in 1971, it has passed too many hands since then. Legally it's a lost cause - maybe the museum will hand him the guitar in good will then? That's his only chance.

pp



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2025-08-07 13:46 by TheflyingDutchman.

I read a Keith Richards interview from summer 1974 and it really bummed me out. It was during vocal overdubs and mixing the IORR album at Island studios and he was talking about Mick T really finally coming into his own. Ol’ Keith said he “can’t wait to see how Mick develops in the next few months”—which I am assuming he was talking about the planned recording of the next album.

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TravelinMan
I read a Keith Richards interview from summer 1974 and it really bummed me out. It was during vocal overdubs and mixing the IORR album at Island studios and he was talking about Mick T really finally coming into his own. Ol’ Keith said he “can’t wait to see how Mick develops in the next few months”—which I am assuming he was talking about the planned recording of the next album.

There was an interview with Keith in 1974, in a magazine , in which he said Brian never wrote a song in his life, but that he and Mick were working with Taylor on songs because he had the makings of being a great writer.How ironic



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2025-08-07 13:09 by Taylor1.

Keith Richards, Corsican drug dealers and the Rolling Stones’ stolen guitar

The Met Museum has got hold of a vintage Les Paul – but former Stone Mick Taylor says it’s his. Will the truth come out?

James Hall
07 August 2025


Keith Richards plays a guitar referred to as the ‘Keithburst’ Credit: David Redfern

From the article:

A goldmine for Stones information is the It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll website, or iorr.org. The folk who run the site are Stones sleuths extraordinaire. And according to posts on IORR, a definitive list of guitars stolen in France has never been agreed upon. Some say the Keithburst was one of them, others not. One IORR fan believes the guitar may have actually stolen during the Stones’ brief March 1971 tour of England and Scotland, just before they quit Britain and went to France as tax exiles in April 1971.

Full article - [www.telegraph.co.uk]

Thanks for the article! I loose track now. Did Taylor actually buy the guitar, or did Keith give it to Taylor, as a gift, confirmed by Jeff Allen, Taylor's former drummer.
Was it stolen in France,which means that the instrument was compensated by Keith's insurance company. Or was it stolen somewhere else. Does Taylor claim that it was stolen, or does his representative state this?

Maybe someone here can share his view on the case?

Early version with extended Mick-Taylor- solo: [youtu.be].

Quote
TheflyingDutchman
Thanks for the article! I loose track now. Did Taylor actually buy the guitar, or did Keith give it to Taylor, as a gift, confirmed by Jeff Allen, Taylor's former drummer.
Was it stolen in France,which means that the instrument was compensated by Keith's insurance company. Or was it stolen somewhere else. Does Taylor claim that it was stolen, or does his representative state this?

Maybe someone here can share his view on the case?

As posted earlier:

>>>

It's a total bullshit story, and Marlies Damming is (again and again) talking utter rubbish and bullshit.

Taylor owned this guitar as we all know, but mainly used it as a backup for his Gibson SG, which he used just about 100% of the time. He had a second 1959 Burst that he used sparingly on the 1970 and 1971 tours, still favoring his SG.

There's two stories on how he lost the guitar: Taylor left the guitar on a platform while changing trains, somewhere on the 1970 European Tour. This story was told by Robert Greenfield, and by Taylor's later tech, Hiroshi Suzuki, who was consulted when the guitar was offered at Christie's in 2004. This story was later again told when it sold in 2006 via two renowned vintage guitar experts.

The Nellcote story comes into play for the second story: there was a robbery, where they stole guitars (strangely, none of Taylor), and Taylor did sell some instruments in 1971-1974 to sustain his habits. It's too detailed for this board, but there have accusations from the inner circle to Taylor and his then wife that they sold items from the Stones camp to sustain their drug habits. Taylor did sell some Strats and Tele's in the mid-1970's, he sold Brian Jones's Firebird in the late 1970's, as well as the two Bursts used on the 1972 and 1973 tours.

Several people have stated that Taylor did not leave the guitar at a train platform, but sold it in London in late 1970 or early 1971 to sustain some habits. To me, this story always has made more sense, as Taylor never made an attempt to get the guitar back, nor did anyone in the Stones camp, even though they knew where the guitar was in the 1970's. My feeling is that they just didn't care enough, as they never really liked the guitar all that much.

I spoke with Taylor multiple times in the 2004 -2006 era, and we also discussed this guitar -he was not interested in it at all, and said 'it was a dog'. I even spoke to Marlies about it, no interest whatsoever.

The whereabouts of this guitar have always been known, and nobody doubted the origins. This leaves me to believe that Taylor sold the guitar, and that there never was any foul play.

>>>

On the ownership: Taylor claims he bought the guitar in 1967 through Ian Stewart. This can be true. We do know that both Clapton and Jimmy Page have borrowed this guitar, and both have passed buying it. Didn't they buy it because the guitar is, according to many, simply not a very good guitar? Or wasn't the guitar for sale, and was keith just friendly to loan guitars? Did keith sell the guitar to Taylor, or did he loan it as Taylor's own Burst was stolen?

Mathijs

This would imply that Jeff Allen's story is not true:."Taylor told me he got it as a present from Keith, and also mentioned the theft". He seems very reliable to me, but who knows for sure?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2025-08-10 14:19 by TheflyingDutchman.

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TheflyingDutchman
This would imply that Jeff Allen's story is not true:."Taylor told me he got it as a present from Keith, and also mentioned the theft". He seems very reliable to me, but who knows for sure?

If you mean with 'theft' that Taylor lost it while changing trains on the 1970 tour: that still could be a possibility. It was stated by a journalist in 1970 who was present. But many people, including Taylor himself, have stated he has sold it in late 1970.

Fact is: the guitar is not to be seen anywhere with the Stones after late 1970, an the guitar 100% sure never was at Nelccote.

BNtw, there never was an isurrance claim for the stolen guitars at Nellcote.

Mathijs

I can't make head or tail of it.