28 years after he pawned it off for cash in L.A. during the first Lollapalooza tour, Jane's Addiction's Dave Navarro has been reunited with his long-lost custom Ibanez guitar.
"A lot of the great Jane's Addiction songs were written on this guitar, the music that just changed my life and put it in a different direction,” Navarro told guitarcenter.com. "When Ibanez signed me, it was a big deal unto itself, because I was a kid, self-taught listening to Hendrix and Page, and now I’ve got a sponsorship with the same guitar company as Steve Vai?"
Navarro pawned the instrument off in 1991, while Jane's Addiction were—on the backs of their multi-platinum album, Ritual de lo Habitual—in the midst of the inaugural Lollapalooza tour. Though he made a mental note to himself to go back and grab the instrument, he never did.
Improbably, the guitar resurfaced late last year, in fantastic condition no less.
"A couple of customers came into the store with the guitar, and I instantly recognized it," Eric Bradley, artist relations manager at Guitar Center Hollywood, said. "I was like, what? How do you guys have that?"
With the help of former Sex Pistols guitarist and Jonesy's Jukebox host Steve Jones, Navarro was soon reunited with the instrument.
"An instrument like this is not unlike a relationship with a human being," Navarro added. "It's something you connect to, that hears you, understands you. It's your tried and true that's never going to leave you—unless you pawn it for drugs.
"At the time, I was really trying to get clean. These forks on the side represent the fact that heroin cannot be cooked up in a fork, because it drips through. I was trying to change my utensil of choice from the spoon to the fork. And pawning this, clearly, I chose the spoon. But luckily, it found its way back, and I'm clean and healthy now. I get to take this home with me today, which I'm super psyched about!"
