Here’s an interesting story for you… Ronnie Montrose, founding member of the band Montrose, bought a guitar from J. Geils backstage during a 1972 concert in Dudley, Massachusetts.

The guitar went missing shortly thereafter.

Ronnie stopped the show and turned up the house lights, determined to catch the culprit, but whoever stole the guitar, one of the most expensive in the world at the time, got away with it.

Ronnie searched for the guitar, once even hiring a private investigator to track down a lead. But it went nowhere.

So, for years Ronnie continued his hunt, speaking with guitar dealers and collectors, hoping to find one who’d seen the missing guitar. Finally, he found one.

Michael Indelicato was that collector. At a Texas guitar show, a dealer gave Michael a picture of the missing guitar and told him it was owned by an English musician. A Google search on the serial number pointed him towards the Gibson site, where he verified that it was indeed the missing guitar. Indelicato tried to contact that musician, but his calls were never returned and the trail went cold.

Then, dumb luck intervened. Indelicato saw a picture of the guitar among those in Gary Moore’s collection in a British magazine named Guitar Buyer. Ooops.

Ronnie Montrose tried to contact Moore, who never responded. Now, Ronnie is suing Moore to get the guitar back.