The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney reunites with long-lost Fender Mustang guitar

Tim Mosenfelder/Getty ImagesPatrick Carney is reunited and it feels so good…with a guitar, that is.

In an Instagram post, the Black Keys drummer shares how he finally found his old 1964 Daphne Blue Fender Mustang again, over 20 years after parting ways with it.

The story begins in March 1994, when a Nirvana “obsessed” Carney saw an ad for the Mustang, the same kind of guitar that Kurt Cobain played.

“My dad drove me to this guy’s house and I bought the guitar,” Carney recalls. “Cobain killed himself a few weeks later. It was my prized possession.”

A few years later, Carney was playing the Mustang in a friend’s garage and accidentally dropped it on the floor, damaging the paint and denting the body.

“I was so f***ing bummed about it,” Carney writes. “The thing was mint and I just f***ed it up.”

Carney then decided to trade the Mustang to another friend for a Fender Jazz Bass and a Telecaster. The Mustang continued to change hands throughout the years — and at one point was used as payment to purchase a neck tattoo — before it was finally sold on eBay to an unknown buyer.

Smash cut to 2020, with Carney’s 40th birthday approaching. He decides he should buy himself another Mustang to celebrate the occasion, and comes across a listing on Reverb for a 1964 Daphne Blue Fender Mustang.

“I just thought there is a chance somehow this is mine,” Carney writes. “The photos didn’t show the area where I dropped it but I thought hey there is a chance.”

Lo and behold, the guitar arrived with the same damage Carney inflicted upon it all those years back.

“I got my guitar back for my 40th birthday,” he says.

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