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Instrument theft, however, is a frequent reality, with a modern examine revealing that 24% of musicians have experienced gear stolen. But there are some stand-out circumstances, not the very least people involving devices of illustrious heritage and eye-watering expense. In this article, in no certain purchase, are 10 of the most well known stolen devices in record.
1. Paul McCartney’s 1961 Höfner bass
In 1961, Paul McCartney of the then-little-regarded Liverpool band The Beatles, ordered his initial bass: a Hofner 500/1, which he made use of solidly right until Oct 1963 and continued to cherish for several several years just after that (pictured higher than). It’s the instrument he performed in the band’s initial solitary ‘Love Me Do’ in 1962, as very well as ‘She Loves You’ and ‘Twist and Shout’. But quickly after the Beatles filmed the ‘Get Back/Allow It Be’ sessions in January 1969, the instrument disappeared – probably stolen from the Beatles’ lock up at Abbey Road Studios – and has never ever resurfaced considering that.
2. 1734 Ames Stradivarius
The Polish virtuoso Roman Totenberg loved and performed this violin for a long time, until it disappeared, a person evening in 1980, from his dressing home at the Longy Faculty of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had just performed the violin at a concert, and the thief was an aspiring youthful violinist named Phillip Johnson, who experienced been seen loitering outside the house Totenberg’s workplace. With way too minor evidence to justify a research warrant, on the other hand, the violin remained in Johnson’s clutches for a few more decades.
Apparently anytime Totenberg was requested if he assumed his violin would at any time be discovered, he constantly answered: ‘after I have kicked the bucket’. He turned out to be ideal: he died in 2012, aged 101, the 12 months right after Johnson’s personal early loss of life from most cancers at the age of 58. The violin was uncovered four a long time afterwards, amongst Johnson’s possessions, although his ex-wife was undertaking some spring cleansing. It is now approximated to be value $5 million.
3. Tubas and sousaphones in California
Below was a confounding case: a collection of tuba and sousaphone thefts in various Los Angeles large educational facilities amongst 2011 and 2013. Much more than 20 brass devices, priced all around $2000-$5000 every, were stolen from at minimum eight faculties, leaving their marching bands bereft of tubas. Many suspected that the stolen products had been providing on the black marketplace for banda ensembles, a traditional Mexican audio – extremely sought after at parties in California – in which tubas enjoy a dominant position, and which can make at the very least $3000 for a night’s operate.
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It took place nine several years back in a Wisconsin Parking Whole lot. Frank Almond, concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, had just carried out at Wisconsin Lutheran, and was placing his violin scenario in the again seat of his automobile, when he seen a flashing light. He assumed anyone was seeking to just take his image. But a handful of seconds later on, he was on the floor, struck by a taser, as a van sped out of the parking whole lot carrying his violin and two bows.
That violin transpired to be the 1715 Lipinski Stradivarius, manufactured all through the luthier’s ‘golden period’ and really worth $5-6 million, with a heritage almost as well-known as its audio: it had been performed by Giuseppe Tartini, it had survived the Cuban revolution, all through which its sale assisted a Havana musician flee to the US, and it had been played in concert events across Europe by a lady who escaped the Nazis.
All of which turned out to be the robbers’ undoing, considering the fact that hawking an instrument of these kinds of fame and price is pretty not possible: the culprits – two gentlemen and a female – have been arrested by Milwaukee law enforcement on 3 February 2014.
5. George Harrison’s ‘Lucy’ guitar
An additional Beatles story, this 1 involving a cherry-purple Les Pauls electric guitar belonging to George Harrison. Affectionately named ‘Lucy’ soon after the redhead comic Lucille Ball, it was gifted to Harrison by his friend Eric Clapton in 1968, all over the similar time that the Beatles were recording the White Album. Harrison went on to play it as one particular of his principal guitars, not least in the marketing films for ‘Revolution’, ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’ and the 1970 documentary film ‘Let it Be’. But in 1973 Lucy was stolen from less than his mattress in a theft at Harrison’s household in Beverley Hills. It was marketed, and resold, eventually ending up in the palms of a musician in Mexico, before remaining returned to Harrison in a lengthy notation system. Harrison saved Lucy till his dying in 2001.
6. 1719 Lauterbach Stradivarius violin
Named just after Johann Christoph Lauterbach, a virtuoso German violinist, who acquired it in the mid-19th century, this violin has a darkish and murky daily life tale: it was deposited for safekeeping with the Nationwide Museum of Warsaw during the 2nd Environment War but was stolen from the museum chapel in 1944 by the retreating Germans – and no one is quite certain what happened subsequent.
In accordance to United States navy data, the instrument was uncovered in 1948 by Stefan P Munsing, an American officer, at the dwelling of Theodor Blank, a former SS member, in Heinrichsthal, Germany. The Us citizens insisted that it was later returned to Poland – a truth that the Polish Ministry of Lifestyle afterwards denied. Then, in 2022, an anonymous specific contacted Musique et Spoliations, an organisation in Paris that locates musical devices confiscated by the Nazis, to ensure the provenance of their violin: it was tentatively identified as the missing Stradivarius.
7. Francesco Goffriller cello
In this disturbing incident from 2018, the award-successful French cellist Ophélie Gaillard was robbed at knifepoint of her 1737 Francesco Goffriller cello, truly worth all-around £1.3 million, outside the house her property in a Paris suburb. But the attacker, who also ran off with her mobile cellphone and her 19th century Persoit cello bow, evidently got chilly toes just after Gaillard put an attraction on Fb, broadcasting the theft and value of the cello.
Presumably realising the threats included in any attempt to market this kind of an instrument, the thief smashed the window of a motor vehicle on Gaillard’s road, positioned the cello inside of, then manufactured an nameless phonecall telling Gaillard exactly where to discover it. ‘Beautiful and amazing news!’ Gaillard afterwards posted on Facebook, ‘The Francesco Gofriller cello…and my Jean-Marie Pursuit bow, were being found in Pantin this morning in superior ailment. These past two days have been appalling. I was devastated. A portion of myself was torn off…I have had outstanding luck which I would like on all victims of this sort of trauma!’
Now belonging to the violinist Joshua Bell, this hanging, flame-backed instrument will come with a outstanding heritage of theft and recovery, supplied that it was stolen not once, but two times, from its past owner, the Israeli violinist Bronislaw Huberman. The initial theft took position in 1916, when it was briefly taken when Huberman was on tour in Vienna, and recovered just a number of times afterwards. The second time, even so, in 1936, it disappeared for virtually 50 several years after currently being stolen from Huberman’s dressing area though he was playing his next violin in a Carnegie Corridor concert.
No person is very guaranteed specifically why it was stolen, or even who stole it. What we do know is that it ended up the fingers of a Juilliard-properly trained freelance violinist known as Julian Altman. Some say he had acquired the violin from the thief for $100, some others that he experienced stolen it himself. Either way, he played the instrument for the next number of decades, having pains to disguise it by covering its varnish with shoe polish. But in 1985 he produced a deathbed confession to his spouse, revealing the instrument’s genuine id. She took it to Lloyd’s, who, immediately after a lengthy restoration, offered it to Norbert Brainin, initial violinist of the Amadeus Quartet. He played it for the remainder of his job, right until marketing it to Joshua Bell for all-around $4 million in 2001. It is truly worth at the very least $14 million now.
8. Toddler Steinway Grand
You’d assume it would be pretty tricky to steal a piano, permit by yourself a single from a busy clinic, in broad daylight. But in 2013 three men did just that, overtly wheeling a child Steinway grand out of Toronto Normal Clinic on a trolley. When staff members questioned them what they have been carrying out, they explained they were being using the instrument to be tuned, and it took 4 days for volunteers at the clinic volunteers to observe that the piano, approximated to be value about $27,000, was lacking. Luckily the culprits – all in their twenties – have been caught on CCTV and the piano was recovered about a 7 days afterwards.
When the composer and viola player Sally Beamish went to bed a person night in 1989, with no getting her instrument upstairs with her as typical, she experienced no concept she was about to access a crossroads in her lifestyle. The pursuing morning she woke to the audio of a door closing quietly downstairs: the household had been burgled and amongst the stolen things was her important viola: a 1747 model designed in Florence by Gabriele with an ‘M’ branded on the back again to clearly show that it after belonged to the Medici family members.
Shedding the viola, she later recalled, was the darkest moment of her life, notably when, after months of scouring marketplaces and antique retailers, she had to give up hope of ever obtaining it. But it was also a pivotal moment: she credits it with giving her the courage to get started composing entire-time, a vocation choice that Beamish, who was awarded an OBE in 2020 for products and services to music, has under no circumstances regretted.
Photo: Paul McCartney with his 1961 Höfner bass © Getty