“Anything that’s nicked, you want back!”: A new documentary will recount the hunt for Paul McCartney’s stolen Höfner 500/1 bass
Last February, the “Holy Grail of Rock ‘N’ Roll” was finally found; Paul McCartney’s stolen 1961 Höfner 500/1 left-handed bass was found and returned to the Beatles legend after 52 years. A new documentary is set to recount the lost bass’s journey over the pass five decades.
The Beatle and the Bass will document the global hunt for the bass, from its disappearance on 21 January 1969, while the Beatles were filming the Get Back/Let It Be sessions, to its eventual discovery. “I think anything that’s nicked, you want back, especially if it has sentimental value,” McCartney tells the BBC. “It just went off into the universe and it left us thinking, where did it go? There must be an answer.”
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In many ways, the left-handed bass is one of the most significant instruments in Beatles history. It was McCartney’s ticket into the band; when bassist Stuart Sutcliffe dropped out of The Beatles, McCartney was asked to fill in for him at a show in Hamburg in 1961. McCartney, however, didn’t have a bass. Panicked, he bought the cheapest quality bass he could afford – a sunburst Höfner 500/1 for £30.
The bass would go on to feature on iconic tracks Love Me Do, She Loves You, Twist and Shout and more before being stolen in 1972.
The new documentary will explore just how The Lost Bass Project managed to track down the bass. Spearheaded by a team of journalists, researchers and Höfner aficionado Nick Wass, the project was founded in May 2023 before the team put out a global call in September the same year. The bass was eventually found up in an attic in Suffolk.
When the bass was found, the Fab Four’s official Facebook account announced the news. “Rauidhri Guest inherited the bass from his dad who recently passed away and the bass had been previously sitting in his attic in Hastings, England apparently restrung right handed, and he not knowing who it once belonged to for all these years,” the post explained.
“Sources said the family – who found the Höfner in a loft while clearing a house – approached Sir Paul and reps at his home. The guitar has been inspected and authenticated as genuine. When it was found, the family had no idea about the treasure in their attic.”
The bass made its official return to the stage last December on McCartney’s Got Back Tour. The Höfner was used during a performance of Get Back alongside The Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood. A worthy track to mark its return, considering it did indeed ‘get back’ to its rightful owner.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
