The story of the bass stolen from Paul McCartney, in a documentary

The story begins far away, when Paul McCartney, in 1961, during one of the Beatles’ “residencies” in Hamburg, bought a Höfner violin-shaped bass, model 500/1, in a shop for the equivalent of 30 pounds. With that bass, in addition to playing in all subsequent performances – including the 292 at the Cavern in Liverpool – he also recorded all the Beatles’ songs until 1963. In 1963 Paul purchased a second Höfner bass, similar to the previous one but of a later model, and kept the first as a spare instrument. Later McCartney will switch to a Rickenbacker bass and a Fender Jazz, even alternating them depending on the songs, and to a five-string Wal, but the Höfner violin will remain a classic in the Beatles’ iconography.

One day in 1972, while Wings were rehearsing in a hall in the Ladbroke Grove neighborhood of London, someone cut the lock on the van where the band’s instruments and amplifiers were kept, and among other things took possession of the 1961 Höfner bass, which Paul had continued to own and use as a “spare bass”. The roadie who took care of the band’s equipment feared Paul’s reaction, but Paul shook his head and commented “I have another one anyway”.

McCartney’s “missing bass” became the subject of a search launched in 2018 by Nick Wass, an employee of Höfner, who by putting together various clues and testimonies managed to recover the instrument, which was found – in very poor condition – in the attic of a house in Hastings, Sussex, probably that of the son of the person who had physically stolen the instrument way back in 1972. Paul McCartney’s first Höfner bass was then returned to Paul, who did so restore and returned to play it live for the first time on stage at the O2 Arena in London on 19 December 2024.

The whole story, with plenty of details and interviews with the people involved, is told in the documentary “McCartney – The hunt for the lost bass”, directed by Arthur Cary and written by Naomi Jones and Scott Jones, with the collaboration of Klaus Voormann for the graphics, also a bassist and friend of the Beatles since the Hamburg years (the famous cover of “Revolver” and those of the “Anthology”, records and videos are his). Among the people interviewed in the documentary, which was screened in English cinemas in recent days and will soon be broadcast by the BBC on 11 April, there are, in addition to Paul McCartney and his brother Mike, also Nick Wass, Klaus Voormann and Elvis Costello, who tells how during the recording of “My brave face”, in 1988, it was he who suggested to Paul to use the Hofner (his second Hofner – the first had not yet been found).