LONDON (AP) — It’s only rock ‘n’ roll, but it’s messy.
A guitar once played by two members of the Rolling Stones is at the center of a dispute between the band’s former guitarist Mick Taylor and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The 1959 Gibson Les Paul was donated to the Met as part of what the New York museum calls “a landmark gift of more than 500 of the finest guitars from the golden age of American guitar making.” The donor is Dirk Ziff, a billionaire investor and guitar collector.
When the Met announced the gift in May, Taylor thought he recognized the guitar, with its distinctive “starburst” finish, as an instrument he last saw in 1971, when the Stones were recording the album “Exile on Main St.” at Keith Richards’ rented villa in the south of France.
In the haze of drugs and rock ‘n’ roll that pervaded the sessions, a number of instruments went missing, believed stolen.
Now, Taylor and his team believe it has reappeared. The Met says provenance records show no evidence the guitar ever belonged to Taylor.
“This guitar has a long and well-documented history of ownership,” museum spokesperson Ann Bailis said.
Taylor’s partner and business manager, Marlies Damming, said the Met should make the guitar “available for inspection.”
“An independent guitar expert should be able to ascertain the guitar’s provenance one way or the other,” she said in a statement Tuesday to The Associated Press.
While its ownership is contested, there’s no disputing the instrument’s starring role in rock history. It was owned in the early 1960s by Keith Richards, who played it during the Rolling Stones’ first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964. The Met says that performance “ignited interest in this legendary model.”
The guitar – nicknamed the “Keithburst” – was also played by guitar legends Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. Taylor says he got it from Richards in 1967, two years before he joined the Stones, replacing original member Brian Jones. Jones died in 1969.
Taylor left the band in 1974, reuniting with them for the Stones' 50th anniversary tour in 2012-2013.
Jeff Allen, who was Taylor’s manager and publicist for decades from the 1990s, said Taylor “told me he got it as a present from Keith,” and also mentioned the theft.
“Mick did tell me that the guitar solo that he became quite famous for, on ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,’ was with the Les Paul that got stolen,” Allen said.
The Met’s records say the Les Paul was owned by Richards until 1971, when it was acquired by record producer and manager Adrian Miller, who died in 2006.
The guitar has changed hands several times since then, and reappeared twice in public.
It was put up for auction by Christie’s in 2004, when it failed to sell. Ziff bought it in 2016, and loaned it to the Met in 2019 for an exhibition titled “Play it Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll.”
It's unclear what will happen next. The Met, which plans to open a new gallery dedicated to its collection of American guitars, says it has not been contacted by Taylor or his representatives.
Associated Press writer Jocelyn Noveck in New York contributed to this story.
FILE - Mick Jagger, Mick Taylor, Charlie Watts, Keith Richards and Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones perform before a crowd of nearly 250,000 fans in Hyde Park, London, on July 5, 1969, during a five hour concert. (AP Photo/Peter Kemp, File)
FILE - Mick Jagger, center, Ronnie Wood, left, and Mick Taylor, of British rock band The Rolling Stones, perform on the Pyramid main stage at Glastonbury, England, June 29, 2013. (Joel Ryan/Invision/AP, File)
A federal appeals panel on Thursday reversed a lower court decision that released former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil from an immigration jail, bringing the government one step closer to detaining and ultimately deporting the Palestinian activist.
The three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t decide the key issue in Khalil’s case: whether the Trump administration’s effort to throw Khalil out of the U.S. over his campus activism and criticism of Israel is unconstitutional.
But in its 2-1 decision, the panel ruled a federal judge in New Jersey didn’t have jurisdiction to decide the matter at this time. Federal law requires the case to fully move through the immigration courts first, before Khalil can challenge the decision, they wrote.
“That scheme ensures that petitioners get just one bite at the apple — not zero or two,” the panel wrote. “But it also means that some petitioners, like Khalil, will have to wait to seek relief for allegedly unlawful government conduct.”
Thursday’s decision marked a major win for the Trump administration’s sweeping campaign to detain and deport noncitizens who joined protests against Israel.
Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security Department spokesperson, called the ruling “a vindication of the rule of law.”
In a statement, she said the department will “work to enforce his lawful removal order” and encouraged Khalil to “self-deport now before he is arrested, deported, and never given a chance to return.”
It was not clear whether the government would seek to detain Khalil, a legal permanent resident, again while his legal challenges continue.
In a statement distributed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Khalil called the appeals ruling “deeply disappointing."
“The door may have been opened for potential re-detainment down the line, but it has not closed our commitment to Palestine and to justice and accountability," he said. "I will continue to fight, through every legal avenue and with every ounce of determination, until my rights, and the rights of others like me, are fully protected.”
Baher Azmy, one of Khalil's lawyers, said the ruling was “contrary to rulings of other federal courts."
“Our legal options are by no means concluded, and we will fight with every available avenue,” he said.
The ACLU said the Trump administration cannot lawfully re-detain Khalil until the order takes formal effect, which won't happen while he can still immediately appeal.
Khalil’s lawyers can request that the panel's decision be set aside and the matter reconsidered by a larger group of judges on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, or they can go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
An outspoken leader of the pro-Palestinian movement at Columbia, Khalil was arrested last March. He then spent three months detained in a Louisiana immigration jail, missing the birth of his first child.
Federal officials have accused Khalil of leading activities “aligned to Hamas,” though they have not presented evidence to support the claim and have not accused him of criminal conduct. They also accused Khalil, 31, of failing to disclose information on his green card application.
The government justified the arrest under a seldom-used statute that allows for the expulsion of noncitizens whose beliefs are deemed to pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests.
In June, a federal judge in New Jersey ruled that justification would likely be declared unconstitutional and ordered Khalil released.
President Donald Trump's administration appealed that ruling, arguing the deportation decision should fall to an immigration judge, rather than a federal court.
Khalil has dismissed the allegations as “baseless and ridiculous,” framing his arrest and detention as a “direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”
New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, said on social media Thursday that Khalil should remain free.
“Last year’s arrest of Mahmoud Khalil was more than just a chilling act of political repression, it was an attack on all of our constitutional rights,” Mamdani wrote on X. “Now, as the crackdown on pro-Palestinian free speech continues, Mahmoud is being threatened with rearrest. Mahmoud is free — and must remain free.”
Judge Arianna Freeman dissented Thursday, writing that her colleagues were holding Khalil to the wrong legal standard. Khalil, she wrote, is raising “now-or-never claims” that can be handled at the district court level, even though his immigration case isn't complete.
Both judges who ruled against Khalil, Thomas Hardiman and Stephanos Bibas, were Republican appointees. President George W. Bush appointed Hardiman to the 3rd Circuit, while Trump appointed Bibas. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, appointed Freeman.
The two-judge majority rejected Freeman's worry that their decision would leave Khalil with no remedy for unconstitutional immigration detention, even if he later can appeal.
“But our legal system routinely forces petitioners — even those with meritorious claims — to wait to raise their arguments," the judges wrote.
The decision comes as an appeals board in the immigration court system weighs a previous order that found Khalil could be deported to Algeria, where he maintains citizenship through a distant relative, or Syria, where he was born in a refugee camp to a Palestinian family.
His attorneys have said he faces mortal danger if forced to return to either country.
Associated Press writers Larry Neumeister and Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this story.
FILE - Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil holds a news conference outside Federal Court on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025 in Philadelphia (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
