Peter Frampton Reunited With Favorite Guitar 31 Years Later

(Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images)

Rocker Peter Frampton has been reunited with his favorite guitar three decades after it was presumed destroyed in a plane crash. The guitar was on a cargo plane that was destroyed in a fire after crashing on takeoff in Venezuela in 1980. But the guitar was plucked from the fire and ended up being sold to a musician on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao.

Last month Ghatim Kabbara of the Curaçao tourist board presented Frampton with the same guitar he thought had burned 31 years ago.

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Frampton said he knew as soon as he picked up the guitar that it was the same 1954 Gibson Les Paul with customized pickups that he played for a decade.

“For 30 years, it didn’t exist – it went up in a puff of smoke as far as I was concerned,” Mr. Frampton said in a telephone interview with the New York Times.

The story of the guitar belonging to Frampton started in 1970 when his band Humble Pie was playing the Fillmore West in San Francisco. His own instrument kept feeding back so he borrowed the guitar from a man named Mark Mariana for his sets.

“I used it for both sets and my feet didn’t touch the ground,” he recalled. saying he thought, “This is the best guitar I have ever played.”

After the show Frampton tried to buy the instrument, but Mariana insisted on giving it to him instead. It quickly became his favorite. He ended up playing it on a couple of Humble Pie albums and all of his solo records including his iconic Frampton Comes Alive.

The guitar on the back of the 'Frampton Comes Alive' LP

The guitar is currently being repaired in Nashville and Frampton has plans to use it when he performs in Boston next month.

Source: New York Times Artsbeat