"Somebody stole it from the hotel. Then Gibson made another one, and somebody stole that as well! I couldn't believe it": Tony Iommi on the time two of his prized early Gibson SGs went missing

Tony Iommi and the Gibson SG go hand in hand – and with the recent relaunch of Gibson's first-ever signature pickup, Iommi couldn't help but reminisce about not one, but two white SGs that got stolen from him.

“That was a really old one,” Iommi recalled at the official launch event, referring to the Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul SG with three humbucker pickups and a Maestro Vibrola that he brandished on Top of the Pops [a long-running British record chart television program] in 1970.

“Somebody stole it from the hotel. And then Gibson made another white one, and somebody stole that as well! I couldn't believe it,” he quipped.

“I've got another white one now. I actually did find a guitar memorabilia collector who found out who had gotten the guitar. It turns out it was some producer who owned it, and he was trying to sell it. He contacted this memorabilia guy who I know, and he got in touch with me, [and] said, ‘We know where your guitar is.’ But I never ever got it back.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Iommi talked about his coincidental start with Gibson and the heavily modified Strat that was once his main guitar, which he ditched for an SG due to a technical issue.

“I always, always played that [referring to the Strat],” he related. “I worked on it myself and got it so it felt right for me. And I happened to come across a right-handed Gibson, and I thought I should have another guitar just as a spare.

“And I met this guy – I don't even know how I met him – he was right-handed, and he had a left-handed guitar. So we met in a car park, and basically we swapped guitars.

“When we were doing the first album, I was using the Strat, and I did Wicked World with the Strat, and then the pickup went. We only got a day to record the album, the first album, so I had to use the Gibson.

“And from that day to this, I always used a Gibson-style guitar,” he concludes.

Iommi’s relationship with Gibson continues to be fruitful after all these years, as, aside from the relaunch of the signature pickup, he also released a signature SG Special a few years back in collaboration with the legacy brand.