The Cribs’ Ryan Jarman has revealed that the guitar used in the early days of the band is now in the hands of The 1975 and Beabadoobee, following it being stolen nearly 20 years ago.
The guitar in question is a vintage Fender Mustang that the Jarman brothers – bassist Gary, guitarist Ryan, and drummer Ross – used to write some of the music in their early days, as they rose to prominence in the mid-’00s in the UK indie rock scene.
Speaking to Guitar World, Gary explained how they first got the axe, with Ryan saving up the money from either his “18th or 19th birthday” to get the ‘78 Sunburst model. He also said that there were some things that made it stand out to them, adding: “For some reason, it had this birdseye maple [headstock]. It looked really cool.
“It was still cheap. It was £600 quid or whatever, in the late ’90s. It was a really nice guitar, and we used it on all the early Cribs stuff.”
He went on to share that the guitar later got stolen in 2000 “after a show in Leeds, at the Cockpit”, and went missing for years – until he came across it nearly 20 years later in an unusual coincidence.
“It was in 2002 – it got stolen – and then in 2020, during the pandemic, I was reading an interview online and there, in the background [of the photo], was the Mustang on the wall.
“I was like, ‘That looks like Ryan’s Mustang’,” he added, saying he could tell that it was the same model based on the figured maple headstock and a blemish on the pickguard.
“The interview was with the owner of the Dirty Hit [Jamie Oborne], which was The 1975’s label,” Gary continued. “I knew The 1975’s A&R guy, so I contacted him. I was like, ‘Hey, can you put us in touch with this dude? I think that’s Ryan’s Mustang.’”
“So then we started matching photographs to it, and it looked exactly the same,” Ryan chimed in. “Eventually, we heard from Matty Healy [The 1975 frontman] and he was like, ‘Yeah, it was my guitar for a bit!’”
The indie stars then told the outlet that they even went as far as getting the police to piece together some forensic evidence to confirm it was the same guitar they used in the ‘00s, but soon realised that it had changed hands yet again.
“He had given it to one of their other artists, Beabadoobee, and it then was like Beabadoobee’s main guitar,” Gary said. “So it was Ry’s guitar, then it went missing for 20 years, then it was with Matty Healy in The 1975, then it went to Beabadoobee!”
He continued: “I don’t know where it is now, but we’re still trying to get it back! That is one of the only guitars that’s ever meant anything to me. It was the guitar that I used in The Cribs before we became a professional band, and it sounded great.” Check out a photo of Beabadoobee using the guitar in question above.
The interview comes as The Cribs recently shared their new album ‘Selling A Vibe’, and are on track to get the album to the Number One spot on the charts – but facing tough competition from Olivia Dean.
That new record comes over five years on from their critically acclaimed 2020 record, ‘Night Network’, which NME called “their best album in a decade” in a five-star review.
Speaking to NME last summer about why they waited so long to share new music, Ryan replied: “In the past, we’d go from putting a record out, and then touring it for like 18 months to two years. And then getting straight back into the rehearsal room and writing, and focusing on the next record. It was just like a treadmill. We just never got off it, from 2004 when we first got signed. It was just that same routine forever, basically.”
He continued: “Now, we only write a record or put something out when we feel like it. It’s starting to take longer and longer. There’s no point in us coming off the road and immediately going into a rehearsal room and trying to write. Because I just don’t think you’re gonna get good results.”
The latest record was given a four-star review from NME, and praised as “the work of a group who’ve managed to grow up without losing their spark.”
“On ‘Selling A Vibe’, the trio are still finding new ways to sound like The Cribs – and that’s a more impressive and unusual feat than it might first appear,” it read.
