[MrSandMan]

Gear-Monkey Blog reports: "There's a little bit of history behind the guitar," says veteran IRON MAIDEN guitarist Dave Murray of the 1957 Strat he used to produce the wailing sounds heard on each of MAIDEN's first eight albums. "It used to belong to Paul Kossoff of FREE. I bought it in 1976, a year after he died. I saw it advertised in an English magazine called Melody Maker, and I went down and checked it out. I got the serial numbers to make sure that it was his guitar!

"He used that guitar on a lot of FREE. I actually saw him many years ago using it during a FREE performance of 'My Brother Jake' on an English television show called 'Top of the Pops'. They were one of my favorite bands, and I had to have that guitar because it belonged to Kossoff.

"I paid about $1,400 for it, which in 1976 was quite a bit of money. But I didn’t care. I just sold everything I had so I could get it. And I used it from then on. It just felt like I was holding a piece of magic, because he used this guitar."

Read the entire article at Gear-Monkey.com.

[Redline68]

That's a cool story. I'm sure it was a chunk of change back then, but I'm also sure that he has no regrets about that purchase.