Touchstone
February 9, 1964. Ed Sullivan Show
Think back, readers. Back to the moment you knew, YOU KNEW that you were going to be a guitar player. It could have been a concert your parents took you to (or you went to without telling them). It could have been seeing your friend getting all that attention from the girls on the cheerleading squad because he could play a little guitar (and you were way better looking than he was). My generation has a shared moment that probably launched hundreds of thousands of players-good, bad and awful. That moment was February 9, 1964. That’s the night I knew I was going to play guitar. The “guitar boom” lasted from ’64 into ’68 and then started fading. Guitar makers largely limped through the ’70’s and those of us still playing by then were doing the rounds of the bars and small clubs and a few of us were making records. Many, defeated by the “F” chord, put their Silvertones and Harmonys under the bed and forgot about them. I was heading into my 20’s by the mid ’70’s and I stopped gigging and got a real job and started building a career. I didn’t pick up a guitar from 1975 until 1987. But something happened during that period that lit the fuse all over again. I wasn’t aware that a whole ‘nother generation had their touchstone moment in 1985 with the release of the film “Back to the Future”.
Michael Fox as Marty McFly plays an early ’61 ES-345 in “Back to the Future” in 1985.
I saw the movie when it came out and liked it but was completely unaware that the “Enchantment Under the Sea” prom scene was doing for GenX what The Beatles did for us boomers. Twenty one years after my touchstone moment, the next generation had theirs and Michael J. Fox and “Johnny B. Goode” opened the floodgates just like John, Paul, George and Ringo. It doesn’t matter if your motivation to play was the greatest band in the history of civilization or a very successful little piece of Hollywood pop culture. That moment, for a player, is indelible. It’s been forty years since the film was released in theaters and the folks at Gibson aren’t letting it go by without a promotion. You see, the red ES-345 that Marty McFly plays in the film has been missing since the movie wrapped. Now, Gibson has produced a documentary about the guitar and the filmmaker reached out to me to see if I had any insight.
Having spent 45 years in the film and TV industry, I have plenty of experience around film sets. Props disappear all the time. And it’s not necessarily the props crew that takes them. Actors are notorious for taking props that appeal to them. Then there are all the other crew folks-wardrobe, hair and makeup, gaffers, grips, publicists, camera crew, video assist and lots more. So, my thought was that someone from the film took the guitar home. In the course of my second interview with the film’s director, I was told that Norm Harris of Norman’s Rare Guitars in Southern California believes that the guitar came back to him (it was rented for the film) and was later sold-possibly to a Japanese collector. Records are nowhere to be found, apparently. So, Gibson has launched a worldwide search for the guitar and has asked me to check my archives to see if it passed through my hands at OK Guitars. It has not, although Michael J. Fox and his family came into my shop in Connecticut one Thanksgiving Eve around 2017 or 18 and we had a very pleasant conversation about guitars.
I think the best thing I can do is describe the guitar in detail. It has some very distinctive features. It’s an ES-345 finished in red. The year is somewhat questionable but I believe it’s either a very late ’60 or an early ’61; more likely an early 61. Nearly all 60’s have a long guard. The Back to the Future 345 has a short guard. I went through the scene frame by frame to try to see a serial number on the back of the headstock and there is a brief shot where Michael Fox swings the guitar around and you get a very clear shot of the back of the headstock. No serial number visible which means (assuming the neck is original) that the guitar can’t be later than early 61 when they started embossing the serial number into the back of the headstock. The chicken head knob on the Varitone has remnants of gold paint on it. The knob was painted gold on some ’61’s but I’ve never seen it on a ’60. So, I’ve dated it as an early “A” serial ’61. But there are lots of those so that doesn’t help us much. But there is a very distinctive feature that will almost certainly identify the guitar. Take a look at the inlay at the twelfth fret. Instead of the expected “split parallelogram”, there is a solid parallelogram. I’m not sure why that is…could be that the original fell out and the luthier who repaired it wasn’t able to source the proper inlay or it could have been custom ordered with the name of the owner at the twelfth fret (not a common occurrence but not unheard of). It doesn’t really matter why it’s there-only that it is the clearest identifier. It has a Bigsby B7 that appears to have been added quite a bit later than 1961-looks like ’70’s to me. They didn’t paint the top plate black in ’61. The stop tail studs are still in the guitar rather than the usual “Custom Made” plate that was used to cover the bushings from late ’60 until early 1965. These features will almost certainly authenticate the guitar as the one used in the film.
Take a good look at the inlay at the twelfth fret. It’s one piece and it should be two. That will likely be the feature that authenticates the guitar as the real thing.
Could someone fake the guitar using another early ’61? Sure-I could do it myself but there is one other factor that will make that impossible. The red finish on a Gibson is transparent and wood grain is as distinctive as a fingerprint so if you’re thinking about a big payday for some criminal effort…don’t. It won’t pass. It will likely be very valuable. Some billionaire who has that “Johnny B. Goode” moment etched into his brain as their touchstone will want it and the value will soar. To me, the guitar itself isn’t the point. The point is the scene itself. He could have been playing a Stratocaster or a Danelectro or any number of other period guitars. Worth noting-the scene takes place in 1955. The 345 wasn’t released until 1959. A Stratocaster probably would have made more sense but the director apparently wanted something a little flashier and a red 345 is pretty flashy. Look under Dad’s bed. Look in Uncle Bob’s closet. Ask Grandma whatever happened to that red guitar that Grandpa trotted out every Christmas to play a cringeworthy “Jingle Bell Rock”. It has to be out there somewhere. If you have a credible lead or you know where it is, leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll make sure the folks at Gibson are notified.
Why is it that nobody is looking for the tweed Bassman (wrong handle, added metal corners, no logo) that MJF is plugged into? I guess nobody gets inspired by an amplifier.
Or maybe the whole thing is a marketing campaign to promote the Custom Shop BAck to the future 345 coming out in October?
I’d say that’s almost certainly true. It’s a pretty good piece of PR in any case. And who doesn’t like a red 345? Granted, the Bigsby isn’t a big draw but I’m sure a stop tail version will be part of the package.
I heard Norm tried to convince the movie’s director to use a more era-appropriate Gibson guitar like an ES-350 or ES-5 but the dude had to have a guitar with a whammy bar. Still, could have used a Strat as you note or an “Alnico” Les Paul Custom or P90 Goldtop with a Bigsby…instead us guitar nuts cringe every time we watch this scene from “1955”