As electric guitars go, the Cherry Red Gibson ES-345 that Michael J Fox’s Marty McFly played in Back To The Future is Ark of the Covenant material. It is one of the great pop-cultural totems of the ‘80s, and it has been missing ever since the film wrapped. Gibson has launched a global campaign to find it.
The campaign is backed by the stars of the movie. Fox, Christopher Lloyd (Dr Emmett Brown), Lea Thompson (Lorraine Baines-McFly) and Harry Waters Jr (Marvin Berry) are all onboard, so too is Huey Lewis, who gave the movie its number one hit, The Power Of Love.
“No one has seen this guitar since 1985, and we need to find it,” says Waters. Everyone knows what this guitar looks like, what it sounds like. It was the big-bodied semi-hollow that McFly picked up to jam Chuck Berry's Johnny B Goode at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance scene.
The question is: where is the guitar?
The trail is cold. “Somehow it has vanished,” says Lloyd, who in the movie might have looked to physics for an explanation behind its disappearance – in the real world, all we have is the combined efforts of guitar and movie fans worldwide.
“Since we don’t have a functioning time machine, this effort is probably our best chance to solve a decades-long mystery,” says Bob Gale, co-creator of Back To The Future and its sequels, speaking to the Gibson Gazette.
GibsonTV is producing a documentary about the search. Some of Gibson’s salaried staff members have already invested considerable time looking for the guitar.
Mark Agnesi, an alumnus of Norman’s Rare Guitars, and now Gibson’s director of brand experience, has been hunting this ES-345 since 2009.
“I started playing guitar because of Michael J Fox and this scene from Back To The Future,” he wrote on Instagram. “I started looking for this 1960-61 Cherry Red ES-345 back in 2009 on my first day on the job at Norman’s Rare Guitars. After 16 years of looking, today I ask for your help. Have you scene this guitar? Did you see it somewhere in the ‘90s? Do you know who has it? Let’s go on this journey together, and let’s make a movie about it.”
That movie will be called Lost To The Future and is being narrated by Agnesi. Doc Crotzer is directing. Lost To The Future will take the audience through behind-the-scenes footage and archival material, through a warren of guitar shops, auction houses and prop warehouses, where, presumably, this guitar might be found.
The search is more Raiders Of The Lost Ark than Back To The Future but despite Steven Spielberg’s involvement in both this is sadly not a shared cinematic universe. Indiana Jones could have been of some use.
He might still be. Gibson is asking everyone if they have seen this guitar. And if so, to get in touch at Lost To The Future. There’s still time for this movie to have a happy ending.
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