When Peter Frampton’s Gibson electric guitar vanished in a cargo plane crash 31 years ago, the musician thought he had lost his prized axe forever.
The guitar, crafted from Honduran mahogany, was gifted to Frampton in 1970 when he was a member of the band Humble Pie.
“That was the best guitar I ever played,” he told The New York Times.
Frampton played the guitar on Humble Pie’s “Rock On” and “Rocking The Filmore” albums, and on all of his early solo records — until the guitar was seemingly destroyed when a plane carrying concert equipment crashed on its way from Venezuela to Panama.
“For 30 years, it didn’t exist — it went up in a puff of smoke as far as I was concerned,” he said.
But the 1954 Gibson Les Paul survived the wreckage, and was found by a musician on the island of Curaçao in the Dutch Caribbean.
The musician wasn’t aware of the significance of the guitar.
Fate intervened two years ago when the instrument was located by a diehard Frampton fan who happened to be the head of the Netherlands tourism board. The fan noticed the similarities between the Gibson and Frampton’s famed “talking” guitar, and worked to get it back to its owner.
And after two years of negotiations, the guitar was finally returned to Frampton last month in Nashville.
Frampton said the return of the guitar was “emotional,” but that he knew immediately it was the same guitar he had decades ago.
The singer plans to play the guitar at his New York City concert in February, but for now it is in a repair shop in Nashville.
No word if he sang “Baby, I Love Your Way” upon reunion with the guitar.