STOLEN GEAR//OCT '05 UPDATE

Per SONICYOUTH.COM's news update, OCTOBER '05:

"Two guitars stolen in 1999 have been recovered by the band. The guitars recovered are both ones played by Lee: a Fender Telecaster Thinline (#370090), and a Travis Bean (#375). Both have been painted and otherwise ravaged, with pickups hanging loose and parts missing, but they are the guitars. This brings to three the total number of stolen guitars recovered. The other was Travis #102."

Per an interview done while in California for Arthurfest in September:

The kid says he’s got the guitars, and it’s all true. He wasn’t part of the heist, that black summer of ’99, when a truck packed to the ceiling with guitars, drums, amps, and pedals (all hot-rodded for sonic noise and pleasure) disappeared while the members of Sonic Youth slept in their hotel beds, preparing for a summer rock festival down in the O.C. That was the kid’s uncle or somebody, a guy serving time even now for unrelated sins. Anyway, that caper was six years ago, and this kid’s barely out of high school, away from home and living in his car, and he’s got the guitars!

So this kid walks right up to Lee Ranaldo, right here in Hollywood, and he says something like: "Remember me? We’re the guys that have some of your guitars." Ranaldo remembers. He’s been trying to work something out with the kid for some time, but the kid’s skittish, not asking for money, but maybe worried about ending up in trouble. And there are others like him. Not long ago, Ranaldo found another of his beloved and scattered guitars on eBay and managed to reclaim it - for quadruple the original price.

A rendezvous is planned. Drummer Steve Shelley will meet with the kid and a friend the next morning with $500 cash. Ranaldo is not angry at all. He just wants his gear. "These kids had nothing to do with stealing it," he says. "But they were, in their own sort of fucked-up way, trying their best to help us, even though it took them forever to finally do so."

The guitars recovered were Lee's F-hole Telecaster from his Pre-SY Flucts days (his main 'screwdriver' guitar on all the early records, later resigned to F#GA for the 90s live act -- viewed here) and Lee's "target" Travis Bean, his primary F#F#F#F#EB guitar during the 90s (used extensively on Washing Machine -- viewed here). Here are pictures of how the guitars look today:

TELECASTER