The mystery grows over a pair of George Harrison's Beatles Gretsch guitars
The Beatles rehearse at the Deauville Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida, for their February 16, 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Harrison is playing his second Gretsch Country Gentleman, as evident by the lever-style mute that can be seen to the treble side of the tremolo unit.
This past year saw the unraveling of one Beatles guitar mystery when Paul McCartney’s first Höfner bass was discovered more than 50 years after it was stolen. That guitar had been the focus of the Lost Bass Project, which tracked down the Höfner in the loft of a family home in East Sussex, England.
But the discovery of McCartney’s 1961 Höfner has opened up a new mystery in the world of Beatles guitar gear: Was George Harrison’s Gretsch Country Gentleman electric guitar really destroyed in a 1965 mishap during the Beatles’ Scotland tour? Or was the victim actually another guitar?
According to Beatles history, Harrison’s Country Gent — his second — was smashed to pieces on the evening of December 2 as the group journeyed from London in their Austin Princess limousine for a December 3 performance at Glasgow’s Odeon Cinema. Beatles chauffeur Alf Bicknell was left to transport two guitars after roadie Mal Evans left with the Beatles gear van ahead of the group.
As Bicknell told Andy Babiuk in Beatles Gear, the guitars were “a Rickenbacker and a Country Gentleman.” He further noted that it was “very rare for me to carry anything like this.”
Indeed it was, since his car was already carrying the four Beatles and their road manager, Neil Aspinall. With no room for the guitars inside the vehicle, Bicknell strapped them to the back of the car and drove off into the growing darkness.
Source: Christopher Scapelliti/guitarplayer.comguitarplayer.com