One of music history’s most famous bass guitars, the one that saw The Beatles’ transformation into a global sensation, has been returned to Paul McCartney five decades after it got stolen during the heady 1970s, reports the official website of the British singer-songwriter on Wednesday.
McCartney, who has been reunited with the guitar, thanked fans who formed The Lost Bass Project a few months back to track down the instrument. “Following the launch of last year's Lost Bass project, Paul’s 1961 Höfner 500/1 bass guitar, which was stolen in 1972, has been returned. The guitar has been authenticated by Höfner and Paul is incredibly grateful to all those involved,” reads an official statement released by his spokesperson.
The 1961 Höfner 500/1 was used to record the Merseyside group’s first two albums — Please Please Me and With The Beatles. Paul had also used it alongside pop classics like Love Me Do, Twist and Shout, All My Loving, She Loves You and many other hit singles.
“The bass is complete and still with its original case. It will need some repairs to make it playable again, but a team of professionals can easily carry these out,” The Lost Bass Project mentioned on its website.
A team comprising former Höfner GmbH marketing manager Nick Wass, TV producer Naomi Jones and former BBC journalist Scott Jones gave details of the actual theft that took place 51 years ago. “We received information about the actual theft, that it had been stolen from the back of a 3 ton van during the night of 10th October 1972, in the Notting Hill area of London,” they said in a statement.
“Further to this we gained information about what the thief did with the bass – they sold it to Ronald Guest the landlord of the Admiral Blake pub in Ladbroke Grove, London,” their statement added.
After analysing Ronald Guest’s family history, the team suspected that the guitar was probably staying with his descendants. “On September 2nd 2023 we wrote an article for The Sunday Telegraph newspaper outlining the search and who was on the team,” the statement said, adding that the search caught the attention of a large number of people, resulting in “someone living in a terraced house in Hastings on the south coast of England” contact McCartney’s company and return the guitar to him.
