It’s the ‘guitar music is dead’ argument again, only this time it looks pretty bleak…
Famously wielded by such household names as Slash, Bob Marley, Dave Grohl, The Edge and Carlos Santana, the iconic Gibson Les Paul and SG guitars could well be a thing of the past, if their parent company doesn’t get its act together fast.
A report in the Nashville Post contends that Gibson, which has been making guitars since 1902, owes $375 million in secured notes, which are due to be paid later this year.
$16.6 million has recently been repaid on the notes which were first issued in 2013, but if the rest of the money isn’t paid by 23 July of this year, that will trigger another $145 million in bank loans that must be immediately paid off.
The report notes that Chief Financial Officer Bill Lawrence left the company after just over a year, with the Nashville-based guitar giant said to now be in “a race against time” to balance the books.
Gibson, which has annual revenues of over $1 billion, issued a statement in response to the report arguing that an ongoing streamlining strategy would lead to the “best financial results the company has seen in its history” inside the next year.
The statement also insisted that Gibson will have the ability to pay back the company’s debt in whole within seven years.
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