“I said, ‘I can’t accept this. I haven’t earned it.’ He was like, ‘You need to go pick it up’”: How a 17-year-old guitar prodigy ended up with a 1957 Goldtop Reissue from the foundation of a band she once hated – after her Number One Les Paul got stolen

Bella Rayne sits on the back of a trailer with her Les Paul Goldtop, wearing tie-dyed patterned flares and cowboy boots.

Like most teenagers, Bella Rayne holds strong opinions, particularly strong opinions about music. She was into punk rock and grunge, cutting her teeth on a Squier Stratocaster as she caught the guitar playing bug during the pandemic.

When her mom and dad played Grateful Dead albums in the house, Rayne would… Well, she would tell her folks exactly what she thought. She was in the Anthony Bourdain school of thought when it came to the Grateful Dead. i.e. hard no – not today, not ever.