Yesterday, it was reported that Jerry Cantrell’s original ‘Blue Dress’ G&L Rampage had been stolen – but it turns out it, erm, was actually just misplaced...
Cantrell issued the update in a video posted to his Instagram, which saw the Alice in Chains icon stand next to the newly recovered legendary electric guitar.
In his message, Cantrell said he had been “worried to death” the guitar had been stolen. Fortunately, it was swiftly recovered having innocently been misplaced during transit.
“We found the damn thing! God, what a relief,” Cantrell says. “It was misplaced over the weekend during transit between photoshoots and the studio. I’m working on a record right now and I really thought this thing had gone missing.
“Thankfully it was just misplaced,” he continues. “So many of my brothers like Zakk [Wylde], [Tom] Morello, [Billy] Corgan etcetera have similar stories and I was worried to death that this thing was gone.”
In his message, Cantrell also praised the speed with which the guitar community rallied behind him to initiate a search party for the guitar, which serves as one of the most important instruments in grunge history.
Indeed, Cantrell used the ‘Blue Dress’ G&L on countless grunge classics. Cantrell bought the ‘84 model in 1985 and, as he told Seattle’s MPOP Museum in 2020, subsequently used it “on everything I’ve ever recorded, pretty much – 98.9% of every song, that guitar’s on there somewhere”.
“The headline here is how important this guitar is not only to me but to everybody else and that makes me feel very special,” Cantrell concludes in his new message.
“It's so amazing to me everybody's outreach and support and willingness to get the word out. I’ve been through a stolen guitar thing before with an EVH and it took me 18 years to get it back.”
As Cantrell mentions, his G&L Rampage has been recovered far quicker than his prized EVH model, which had been gifted to him by Eddie Van Halen. That guitar went missing around 2002, and wasn’t returned to its owner until 19 years later.
“A couple of AIC fans and collectors tracked it down and tried to do a sting on this kid who had it and was trying to sell it,” Cantrell once told Guitar World.
“He went dark on the first guy, who was from Florida. The second guy was a separate collector from San Diego. Between the two of them, it took about two weeks for me to get that guitar back… after 19 years!”
Fortunately, Cantrell didn’t have to wait that long to be reunited with his G&L Rampage.
Either way, he’s had better luck than blues rocker Tyler Bryant who recently discussed the unlikely return of his Jeff Beck-played Pinky One Strat – an instrument that was missing for five years before it was found, sanded-down, in the trunk of a car.
