Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood reunited with guitar stolen in Denver in 1995

Jonny Greenwood performing at a church in Oxford. Photo courtesy of the artist’s Facebook page.
by Julio Enriquez

Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood can give a firsthand account of the perils of Colfax.

In 1995, one of Greenwood’s guitars — an Ebony Frost Fender Telecaster Plus — was among the equipment stolen when Radiohead’s rental truck went missing outside of a Denver Days Inn.

“Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke and guitarist Jonny Greenwood played an acoustic set on rented gear that night, and then canceled a handful of shows while the band went on a shopping spree for instruments and amplifiers,” The Rocky Mountain News’ Michael Mehle wrote a year after the incident. “The stolen equipment has never been recovered.”

When the band gave Denver a “second chance” a year later to play the Ogden Theatre in 1996, bassist Colin Greenwood told the Rocky Mountain News, “I don’t think the gear will be leaving our sight for a second.”

Now, nearly two decades later, the King of Gear reports that Jonny Greenwood has been reunited with one of his guitars stolen during the incident.

According to the King of Gear, a fan recognized the Ebony Frost Fender Telecaster Plus as Greenwood’s stolen guitar. King of Gear functioned as a middleman and facilitated the safe delivery of the long lost guitar.
As the King of Gear writes:
Last year, someone contacted me via email, saying that they were browsing the site and recognized Jonny’s Ebony Frost Fender Telecaster Plus (old Tele2) as one that they had purchased in the 90’s in Denver, CO (the city in which all of the band’s gear was stolen on October 04, 1995). I directed them to Plank, the band’s guitar tech, and the result was that after nineteen years, the guitar was finally returned to Jonny.

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