Michael J. Fox Needs Help Finding His "Back to the Future" Guitar

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Marty McFly playing “Johnny B. Goode” at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance in Back to the Future, and it turns out a crucial prop from that iconic scene — the cherry red Gibson ES-345 guitar that Michael J. Fox played as Marty — has been missing for decades.

There’s no real indication of what might have happened to the guitar; apparently filmmakers went to look for it in 1989 when they were making the sequel and were unable to track it down. Now the hunt is on again. Fox and some other Back to the Future cast members are teaming up with Gibson to launch a website and tip line in the hopes of locating the instrument. If you have any information about the whereabouts of the guitar, you can visit LostToTheFuture.com or call/text 1-855-345-1955.

Gibson Films has also begun production on a documentary about the search for the guitar called Lost to the Future, which will feature interviews with Fox, Lea Thompson, Christopher Lloyd and Harry Waters Jr., who delivered the famous line “Chuck! Chuck! It’s your cousin Marvin. Marvin Berry! You know that new sound you’ve been looking for? Listen to this!” Huey Lewis, whose song “Power of Love” is featured prominently in the movie, also appears in the new documentary.

“This is probably one of the most exciting moments at Gibson for me,” Cesar Gueikian, president & CEO of Gibson, said in a press release announcing the documentary. “Back to the Future is one of the most important and significant movies of my life, and the ‘Enchantment Under the Sea’ dance scene marked me musically in a profound way. Working with Michael J. Fox, Bob Gale and the rest of the Back to the Future team is a dream come true. I hope we find Marty’s Gibson ES-345! To everyone out there who is as passionate as I am about this iconic film, please help us find it!”

You can check out a video about the search for the guitar below. Fingers crossed that someone out there knows where it is.