One of 500 guitars recently donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was actually stolen from the Rolling Stones by drug dealers in 1972

Back in May, it was revealed that over 500 of the “finest guitars from the golden age of American guitar making” had been donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including Leo Fender’s first guitar to pre-war Martin acoustics.

But it’s now come about that one of those 500 instruments was a 1959 sunburst Gibson Les Paul, which was stolen from The Rolling Stones as they recorded their 1972 album, Exile on Main St.

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As the story goes, the guitar – which was played by Keith Richards during the band’s 1964 Ed Sullivan Show appearance, as well as by Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page in its lifetime – was one of nine guitars burgled from Villa Nellcôte, the mansion on the French Riviera where the Stones were recording Exile. 

A saxophone belonging to Bobby Keys and bass belonging to Bill Wyman were also taken.

According to Louder, the robbery was reportedly committed by local drug dealers to whom Keith Richards owed money.

But the 1959 sunburst Les Paul actually belonged to Mick Taylor, according to Taylor’s business manager Marlies Damming. She explains that Taylor bought the guitar from Richards in 1967 prior to joining John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers after the departure of Peter Green.

“There are numerous photos of Mick Taylor playing this Les Paul, as it was his main guitar until it disappeared,” she says. “The interesting thing about these vintage Les Pauls is that they are renowned for their flaming, which is unique, like a fingerprint.”

According to Messy Nessy, Villa Nellcôte provided the Stones privacy from the press as they were recording the album. “But with Richards’ ever-present entourage of hanger-ons and drug dealers, nearly half of the furniture was missing from the house by the time their stay was over,” the publication goes on.

“Villa Nellcôte was such an open house that, one day in September 1971, burglars walked out of the front gate with nine of Richards’s guitars, Bobby Keys saxophone and Bill Wyman’s bass in broad daylight while the occupants were watching television in the living room,” says Stones researcher Jack Vanderwyk.

Now, a source tells pagesix.com that Mick Taylor “never received compensation for the theft and is mystified as to how his property found its way into the Met’s collection”.

Guitar.com has reached out to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for comment.