"Summer of '69" may have been the best days of Bryan Adams' life, but the Canadian singer isn't too happy about the spring of 2016.
The singer told NBC News that his entire collection of instruments — including his prized vintage guitar — was "defaced" by customs officials at Egypt's Cairo International Airport.
The airport's director of customs, however, denied the allegations and said the accusations were "false.""
According to Adams, customs officials initially "refused to release the equipment" with "zero" explanation. He said that when the instruments were finally returned, they had been scrawled on with green indelible marker.
This was likely "some sort of customs clearance identification," Adams added.
He took to Instagram to show the marking on his most prized instrument — a 1957 Martin D-18 guitar worth thousands of dollars.
"The problem is, it's a vintage guitar [from] 1957 and the outside of old instrument is fragile," he told NBC News via his official Facebook account.
The instruments "were all marked — even my harmonicas! So silly," Adams added.
Cairo airport's director of customs Jamal Turki rejected Adams' account.
"I followed the big fuss the international artist made on Facebook and these accusations are false," Turki told NBC News. "We don’t write on equipment whether arriving or departing and the international artist should specify which department wrote on his guitar."
Turki said that he assumed Adams' guitar was written on at the hotel, before departing for the airport.
"It may have been his room number or the car number taking him to airport," he added. "The number doesn’t mean anything to us in the airport."
This wasn't the first time Adams has said his instruments have been tagged by airport officials. He took to Twitter in July 2015 to allege that one of his guitars had been written on by Air Canada staff.
Adams is currently on a world tour to promote "Get Up," his 13th studio album released in October last year.
He was keen to stress that the incident had "not dampened my love for Egypt — I love the country and its people" but said that was "just extremely unfortunate that the customs people at the airport had no respect for our musical instruments."
