Opinion
Some punk stole my guitar 50 years ago. I never thought the mystery would be solved
Red Symons
FlâneurWhen I traverse the streets in Melbourne’s inner north, my life flashes before my eyes. Dotted along the way are fragments, baubles and discomforts, people who once existed in the streets and houses that I pass. I am greeted by people who remember me from a band or a TV show or the radio. Do I know them?
Memories, like dreams, are reconstructed narratives of what may have happened.
In 50 years, Lygon Street has ebbed and flowed from an Italian enclave with students from the nearby university living in ramshackle shared houses to a variety of meccas – pubs, delicatessens, restaurants, coffee. Those students are still there, 50 years older, in those same houses, now renovated.
Red Symons, on stage with Skyhooks, plays the black Les Paul Custom that was stolen from his house decades ago.
I once greeted Mr Alphonse Gangitano on Lygon Street and complimented him on his Zegna suit. He was tall, handsome, nicely dressed and charming.
Among other things.
Brunswick Street was once largely abandoned. Why have a shop in a street that no-one visited? There was only the sandwich place, a variety store, with the Bearded Lady. This simple identifier, free of any pejorative intent, was the understood destination for roughly hewn, richly fulfilling ham, cheese and pickle made on the spot by the calm and contented wife and husband.
Brunswick Street was quiet in the ’70s. Pictured is the Melbourne Fringe Street Parade and Party in 1998.Credit: Mario Borg
Only decades later did Brunswick Street briefly become the hippest street in Australia.
Smith Street, next across, still had the remains of the workaday shopping trade that had started with the first Coles store in the city. I recall a haberdashers in which the shop assistants on the floor would put the cash in a shuttle to propel it along a wire to a matron, a warden, perched safely above and central to the room. She would furnish the change and receipt.
The retail strip withered and became a go-to heroin destination and then became smart again.
It was in Brunswick Street that my house was burgled. I was robbed of a guitar, a heavy black Les Paul Custom with which I had first demanded attention.
It was in Smith Street, 50 years later, that I met the man who robbed me.
I am used to being hailed by strangers. Their approach varies with context. Yesterday I met a woman on the tram in the city with a PhD in biochemistry who had arrived here at the age of 12 from South Africa. That may seem like a lot of information to glean from mere minutes on a tram ride but in conversation I tend to push past the pleasantries to the more bald questions – past “How are you?” to “Who are you? What do you know?”
On Smith Street, the more crazed jump on and off the tram to move a block or two down the street without bothering to pay. These people have, on occasion, bellowed a greeting from the far end of the tram. They recognise me. I respond with distant courtesy hoping to convey that I am neither foe nor friend.
A personal favourite: My intimate companion and I pulled up and parked in the street with a wound-down window.
A hovering gentleman enquired, “G’day Red. Got any change?”
My simple and direct response was, “No.”
“Argh Red, you tight c---,” he replied. We all laughed together at this brisk clarity of communication.
Folklore has it that Bob Dylan wandered the length of Smith Street years ago and, as a ragged and eccentric old man, went largely unnoticed. He was unexceptional.
Recently, on an early afternoon, I was greeted by an older man, neither shabby nor showy, shirt and pants without the conventional heraldry of an emblazoned T-shirt.
He was probably loosened by liquids and keen to tell me about himself. I listened courteously as minor tales dissipated into unresolved cul-de-sacs of thought. Perhaps he sensed my waning attention and so proceeded to tell me the big one.
“I burgled your house in the late ’70s.”
Now he had my attention because this had indeed happened.
“Yes ...” I said with an upward cadence, indicating please continue.
“We kicked down the back door.” This was a fact remarked upon by the police who ironically observed that the deadlock had indeed worked because force was needed to rip it from its mounting.
“Go on ...”
“We took a black Les Paul Gibson.” At this point, his information was conceivably part of the public record. Anyone could make this boast.
He continued. “We also took a blond Stratocaster with no tremolo arm.”
Bingo. This is an obscure variation of the Fender guitar. Even I have to look up the specification – hardtail. They were rare in Australia and I chose it because they stayed in tune.
At that moment I concluded that he had indeed, 50 years ago, robbed me.
The immediate and utterly pointless question is, “Where is it now?” I have no doubt he sold it to a stranger for a nominal, reduced price within days of acquiring it. Indeed, he didn’t know where it went then and he doesn’t know where it is now. He drank, smoked, snorted or injected the proceeds.
I mused, fascinated by this intersection of minor history, and we stood quietly together.
I have no particular moral compass. People do what they do according to the whims of their own continuance. For me, there was nothing to be done.
What I said next deeply disturbed him.
“I forgive you.”
I remain struck to this day at his discomfort at this utterance.
I don’t know him. I’m not his analyst. It is pointless for me to guess why my forgiveness unsettles him just as it’s pointless to deconstruct why he took my guitar in the first place.
Have I just spoiled the narrative of a favourite story?
Red Symons is a former ABC broadcaster and was lead guitarist in Skyhooks.
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