British indie rock band The Cribs have shared the story of the vintage Fender Mustang that helped shape the group's early sound – which miraculously ended up in the hands of The 1975 and Beabadoobee after it was stolen nearly two decades ago.
The Cribs have their fair share of rock ’n’ roll stories. Spearheaded by the Jarman brothers – bassist Gary, guitarist Ryan, and drummer Ross – the lo-fi indie-rock band first came to public consciousness in the early to mid-aughts.
And, like many other touring rock bands, they also have a stolen guitar story. Theirs, however, is particularly wild – and it unites three iconic indie rock bands.
“For Ryan's 18th or 19th birthday – he’d saved up some money, but then he also got some more money put to it – he got a ’78 Sunburst Mustang, which was really cool,” recalls Gary Jarman in a new interview with Guitar World.
“For some reason, it had this birdseye maple. It looked really cool. It was still cheap. It was £600 quid or whatever, in the late ’90s. It was a really nice guitar, and we used it on all the early Cribs stuff.”
Unfortunately, the guitar was stolen in the early 2000s, but almost 20 years later, the Jarman brothers crossed paths with that formative Mustang in the most bizarre circumstances.
Gary continues, “It got nicked after a show in Leeds, at the Cockpit, and went missing for years. It was in 2002 – it got stolen – and then in 2020, during the pandemic, I was reading an interview online and there, in the background [of the photo], was the Mustang on the wall. I was like, ‘That looks like Ryan's Mustang!’”
The Jarman brothers recognized it immediately: it had a figured maple neck and also a little bit of the pickguard missing, just like Ryan's.
“I was like, ‘Ry, is this your guitar?’ 18 years down the line!” he continues. “He's like, ‘Yeah, it looks like it.’ The interview was with the owner of the Dirty Hit [Jamie Oborne], which was The 1975's label. I knew The 1975's A&R guy, so I contacted him. I was like, ‘Hey, can you put us in touch with this dude? I think that's Ryan's Mustang.’
“So then we started matching photographs to it, and it looked exactly the same,” adds Ryan. “Eventually, we heard from Matty Healy. He was like, ‘Yeah, it was my guitar for a bit!’”
The story doesn’t end there, however. After the police pieced together the forensic evidence and Fender confirmed it was the same guitar, the two contacted the Dirty Hit head honcho, only to learn that he no longer has the guitar.
“He had given it to one of their other artists, Beabadoobee, and it then was like Beabadoobee’s main guitar,” explains Gary. “So it was Ry’s guitar, then it went missing for 20 years, then it was with Matty Healy in The 1975, then it went to Beabadoobee! And I don't know where it is now, but we're still trying to get it back!”
And, in case you're wondering why Ryan is still adamant on getting it back after all these years, he explains, “That is one of the only guitars that's ever meant anything to me. It was the guitar that I used in The Cribs before we became a professional band, and it sounded great.”
Guitar World's full interview with The Cribs will be published in the coming weeks.
Speaking of stolen guitars, Lita Ford recently revealed how, after her prized B.C. Rich Mockingbird was stolen, she ended up crossing paths with it when she was auditioning guitar players.
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