It's no secret that the guitars you acquire as a teenager hold a special place – despite perhaps not being the most keenly spec'd or high-end instruments. However, these are the tools that every guitarist – or fledgling artist – uses to hone their craft and, for those who decide to take it a step further, attempt to make a dent in the music industry.
Sum 41's Deryck Whibley's mid-'70s Gibson Marauder served such a role. As the guitarist shares on social media, “I used it through all the early years of Sum 41. The Half Hour Of Power and All Killer No Filler tours. You can see it in the Fat Lip, In Too Deep and What We’re All About videos.
“When I was about 18, I had a repair shop route out the wood so I could put a humbucker pickup in there instead of the single coil ones they used to come with,” he further reminisces. “Those original pickups sound like ass! Back then, I installed a ’57 Classic pickup, but now it has a ’57 Custombucker.”
As indicative of many rock and pop-punk bands of that era, the Gibson had its fair share of black tape to keep it intact. “The black tape is there because for some reason, I lost the screws for that neck pickup and it was floating around loose,” he explains. “In order to keep it in place, I just threw some tape over it and never thought about it again.”
However, Whibley's story takes a dark turn when he explains that this guitar – which doubled as a memento from the band's early days – was stolen from him.
“I got this guitar when I was 17 years old. In 2003 it was stolen from my house. I thought it was gone forever. It took over 20 years but I finally got it back. Just in time to use it on this final tour!”
He continues, “I thought I would never see this guitar again. But a few months ago, I said fuck it, I’m gonna find it and try and get this thing back. It took a little bit but it’s now back where it belongs.”
While Whibley didn't specify on social media how he managed to recover his stolen guitar, he did share the details in his memoir, Walking Disaster.
He alluded to the band's ex-manager and Treble Charger frontman Greig Nori (whom Whibley also accused of grooming, as well as sexual, psychological and verbal abuse) as being the culprit behind the guitar's decades-long disappearance.
“The interesting thing was, when I picked it up again after all these years, it just felt like home. Like, no time had passed at all. As if I had been playing it just yesterday,” he concludes.
Speaking of Sum 41's farewell tour, Whibley also managed to get his hands on Steve Jones' 1974 Les Paul Custom, which he took out for a spin in front of 42,500 fans at Paris' La Défense Arena back in November.
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