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You'll have heard of Brian Jones. In the summertime of 1966, his band, the Rolling Stones, had been on a North American tour. They'd two exhibits on June 26: a day present in Washington and a night present in Baltimore.
I’ll let Debbie take it from there: “This letter is directed to the boy who took Brian Jones’ dulcimer on the June twenty sixth Rolling Stones live performance at Washington Coliseum,” she wrote. “Due to this incident, the Stones could by no means play D.C. once more.”
Debbie defined that she had spoken with the band’s tour supervisor at Friendship Worldwide Airport (at this time’s BWI-Marshall) and discovered that after the D.C. gig, an electrical dulcimer constructed particularly for Jones had been nicked. The band needed the instrument again, not least as a result of it was important to the track “Woman Jane.”
Wrote Debbie: “You had been being very silly and egocentric if you took the instrument. Nobody is benefiting by your unwise prank. The true Stones’ followers don’t need the Stones to recollect Washington as a thieves’ den.”
Shortly after the letter ran within the Star’s Teen part, a 15-year-old boy walked into Empire Music, a document retailer on Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda. Mike Burke was behind the counter.
“Many of the workers had been in bands,” stated Mike, who performed in two: the Addicts and the Resumes.
There was a room in the back of the shop with a pinball machine and jukebox the place teenagers might hang around. The Empire employees would learn music commerce magazines, scrutinizing the charts to see what songs they’d should study.
“This child got here in,” Mike stated. “He stated, ‘I’ve bought one thing to indicate you.’”
The boy stated it was a cool instrument he needed to study to play. It was an electrical dulcimer, the electrical dulcimer, supposedly the one one in existence.
By now, this was essentially the most well-known dulcimer in Washington, its theft talked about not solely within the Star however, in Mike’s recollection, on native TV, too.
The boy didn't disguise its provenance. He advised Mike he’d been kicked out of the Stones present. Angered, he later lifted the dulcimer via the open window of an tools van parked behind the coliseum. (One other account stated the boy was mad after a roadie smacked one in every of his associates with a pair of pliers.)
Mike strummed the dulcimer a couple of instances then stated, “Nicely, I understand how to play keyboard and guitar. Possibly I can determine it out and train you.”
Mike sensed the teenager was nervous, on the lookout for a solution to get out from underneath the burden of his thievery. Mike advised the boy to go away it with him. After which he referred to as Ron Oberman.
Oberman was the Star’s 22-year-old teen and pop music columnist. He would later go onto a profession within the document business, doing PR for David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen and signing such acts because the Bangles. On today, he referred to as the British Embassy.
“The subsequent factor I do know there’s a Bentley double parked on Wisconsin Avenue out in entrance of the document retailer,” Mike stated. “A chauffeur in full livery comes into the shop and presents a letter from the British ambassador and says, ‘I perceive you might have one thing that belongs to the Rolling Stones.’”
Mike handed over the dulcimer.
A narrative by Oberman ran on July 13 recounting the occasions. It quoted Mike Burke and, as was the customized again then, included the handle of the Bethesda home he lived in together with his dad and mom. Quickly, they began getting crank calls from strangers.
“It was the greasers versus the hippies again then,” he stated. “The telephone calls weren’t from hippies.”
They had been from greasers who detested the freaky, floppy-haired Rolling Stones and anybody linked to them.
“They had been calling and cursing at my mother,” stated Mike. “When my father picked up the telephone, he’d curse again at them.
The Night Star later ran an editorial complimenting itself on its involvement within the affair, noting: “Over time it has typically fallen to newsmen to behave as discreet intermediaries between lawbreakers and the general public.”
The Star in contrast the episode to how New York mobster Louis “Lepke” Buchalter had used columnist Walter Winchell to show himself in to the FBI.
“The teenager has a transparent conscience, and the Stones have all their noise makers in tow,” the Star editorialized. “Maybe on their means again via Washington, they could flip down their quantity knobs in silent appreciation.”
Brian Jones died in 1969 at age 27. Ron Oberman died in 2019 at age 76.
Mike is 73 now and lives in Wheaton. Because it occurs, he was at that 1966 Stones present. How was it, I requested.
“I don’t bear in mind,” he stated. “It was nice? I don’t bear in mind Woodstock and I used to be there for 3 days.”
Are you the boy who stole the dulcimer? Are you the Debbie Clark who wrote the letter? Drop me a line: john.kelly@washpost.com.
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