Smashing Pumpkins frontman, Billy Corgan recalled a ‘karmic’ experience he had with a yellow guitar that he later found out was stolen. The rocker explained:
“Jimmy Chamberlain showed up one day with a 1974 yellow Strat. Jimmy said, ‘I’ll sell it to you for 270 dollars.’ I later found out because that’s how much he needed for rent. Then fast forward 20 years. I’m walking down the street in Chicago, and a guy pulls me aside and says, ‘Do you still have that yellow guitar?'”
He continued:
“I said, ‘No, that’s the one that got stolen.’ The guy goes, ‘But you got it from Jimmy Chamberlain?’ He said, ‘How much did he charge you for it?’ I go, ‘270.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, he stole that guitar from me.’
Even though Billy shared that Jimmy had stolen the guitar, the guy who pulled him aside on the street didn’t hold it against him. Corgan expressed:
“He [the guy on the street] wasn’t mad because he loved Jimmy; it was some weird story like a kid’s story where Jimmy had stolen the guitar and sold it to me for rent money, and that was the guitar that I played on the band’s first records. That guitar got stolen some weird karmic thing and came back 27 years later.”
When Conan said that the guitar would return to him, the rocker shared how he reunited with it after decades by adding:
“A gentleman out of Nashville; somebody contacted him, and he, bless his heart got the guitar back. He obviously played somebody and didn’t ask me for any money; he just gave me the guitar after 27 years.”
Corgan had used the yellow guitar as his main instrument on the recording of Smashing Pumpkins’ debut album ‘Gish’ and the following tour. Billy recalled the night the guitar got stolen in an interview with Far Out last year, where he said:
“Played the show, walked offstage. I was down in the dressing room, and here comes the friend/roadie: ‘Somebody just walked out the back door with your guitar.'”
You can watch Billy Corgan’s interview with Conan O’Brien and listen to ‘Gish’ below.
