40 years after this guitar was stolen, its owner wants to get it back
Newfoundland country singer Bobby Evans remembers his American Stratocaster guitar very fondly. It's an instrument he thinks about frequently, often with a sense of longing.
But it was stolen from the stage at one of his gigs, and now, more than 40 years later, he wants it back.
Now, over 40 years after it was stolen from the stage at one of his gigs, he wants it back.
Evans last played the guitar during a New Year's Eve performance at the old Airport Inn ballroom in St. John's in the 1970s. He took the stage with his daughter along with the Stratocaster, a Hawaiian steel guitar and a mandolin.
He went to his room at the hotel at around 2 a.m. after the show, and shortly afterward got a call from the front desk.
"I just left everything on stage 'cause they said there was security in the building.… I wasn't in the bed not a half-hour when the phone rings from the front desk. Says 'Bobby, you should come out.' She said, 'I think somebody might have broke into the ballroom and got some of your stuff,'" Evans told CBC News this week.
"Sure enough, my little steel guitar was gone. The mandolin, and my prized, beloved Stratocaster."
Evans spoke to the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, who he says told him they believed the theft was done with the help of someone inside the hotel. The door the thieves used to leave couldn't be opened from the outside, he said.
In January, decades after the theft, he put out a call on Facebook to try to be reunited with the instrument he bought from a Montreal catalogue.
"It was probably the nicest thing that I had bought in these days. And I really thought a lot over it," he said.
"I was a proud man when I got that Strat. And they're still one of the most popular guitars of the day. I think about the Strat sometimes. I was watching a Roy Orbison show the other night, and he was using one just like the one I had."
Evans's guitar is either a 1967 or 1971 American Stratocaster with a blond yellow finish, he said. It features a special white strap he made of alligator skin with the initials "F.R." sewn into it.
"Somebody knows something. If I could only get some lead on it, you know, I might be able to get the guitar back."
