Icehouse frontman Iva Davies seeks return of stolen Les Paul guitar
For 44 years, Icehouse frontman Iva Davies has been mourning the loss of a dear friend. All these years later, he’s hoping to be reunited – and you may be able to help him.
For more than four decades, Iva Davies has been mourning the loss of a dear friend whose influence on his musical life was deep and indelible.
All these years later, he’s hoping to be reunited – and he hopes you might be able to help him make it happen.
The friend in question was a black Gibson Les Paul Custom electric guitar, which Davies used to record the 1980 debut album by his band Flowers, titled Icehouse, before the rock act adopted that name the following year.
“That particular Flowers album seems over the years to have worked its way right up into the pantheon of well-regarded Australian albums,” Davies, 69, told The Australian. “It’s always in a fairly short list – and I’m convinced that a lot of that reason is the sound of that guitar.”
They cut a fine pair, Davies and the black Les Paul, which he bought second-hand and was probably manufactured in the late 1960s; photographs taken at the band’s gigs capture him playing it with fierce intent.
It entered his life in 1977 as his first electric guitar powering Flowers: he made several modifications to it, including adjusting the height of its pickups, and otherwise spent plenty of time with it.
“I had a 100-watt Marshall [amplifier] in my bedroom, and so I could sit on my bed with this Les Paul and just spend hour after hour after hour [playing]. Considering this was in Lindfield – one of the quieter suburbs in Sydney – it was no secret that there was a guy in that flat, in that big old mansion, with a 100-watt Marshall,” he said with a laugh.
So where is that black beauty now? It’s a mystery.
It hasn’t been sighted since an opportunistic thief nicked it at a Sydney pub 44 years ago, in the period between when Flowers had recorded its debut album and before the Icehouse LP was released in October 1980.
Davies reckons the venue was the heritage-listed Mountbatten Hotel, at the corner of George Street and Ultimo Road in Haymarket, Sydney.
After the gig, the singer-songwriter was packing up with his bandmates, and momentarily left the instrument inside the pub, but visible from the street outside.
“It only took a split second; it was me going back down to get some more gear, and coming back again – and it was just gone,” he said. Somebody had seen it from just walking past the pub at the end of a hallway.
“It broke my heart – and I never really did find a successful replacement Les Paul,” said the Icehouse frontman, whose next run of eight outdoor concerts with his ARIA Hall of Fame-inducted band begins on January 4 at Mornington Racecourse as part of the Red Hot Summer tour.
This, though, is where you might be able to help. Davies has filmed a video detailing the various distinctive modifications he’d made to that Les Paul before it was spirited away.
If you’re a guitar lover, or know someone who is, do send the video on to them to see if you can play a part in reuniting old friends. If you have any information, email Davies’s manager (keith@velocer.com.au).
The heartbroken axeman is willing to pay “proper market price” for the stolen Les Paul.
“I might be whistling in the dark, but stranger things have happened,” he said. “I don’t want to ask any questions; I’d just like to have it back.”
It’s a romantic notion from one of Australia’s top musicians, but he’s also enough of a realist to know that even if he was to be reunited with his long-lost guitar, there’s every chance it won’t sound as good as it did in his memory.
“There is some kind of psychosomatic element to it, without a doubt,” he said with a laugh. “I have to steel myself against that possibility, really.”
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