Paul McCartney found the bass guitar that was stolen from him half a century ago

The little miracle occurred following a vast campaign launched by two journalists. With this instrument, the former Beatle experienced legendary hours on stage and in the studio in the 1960s.

According to a brief press release posted online Thursday, February 15 on Paul McCartney’s website, the instrument, a violin-shaped Höfner purchased for 30 pounds sterling (which would correspond to 35 euros at today’s rate) in Hamburg, Germany in 1961 , has been “authenticated by Höfner”. “Paul is incredibly grateful to everyone who participated” to research.

The bass was found “complete”, but its original case “requires repairs”, said in an online statement The Lost Bass Project, which launched an appeal and a major campaign in September 2023 to find the instrument.

Paul McCartney was able to find, therefore, this instrument missing for more than 50 years, on which he played songs that have become classics, Love Me Do, She Loves You Or Twist and Shout, in the studio and on stage.

Contrary to what the initiators of the project, the journalist couple Scott and Naomi Jones, initially thought, the instrument had not disappeared in 1969, but had been stolen in 1972 from the back of a van in the West London.

The thief lived in a Notting Hill squat

Among the approximately 600 calls and messages received following the campaign, one proved decisive, Naomi Jones explained on BBC Radio 4 on Friday, making it possible to “putting the puzzle together”. According to Scott Jones, the thief lived in one of the squats in Ladbroke Grove in Notting Hill, an area that is now middle-class but at the time populated by “musicians, artists and hippies”. The author of the theft, explains the journalist, was unaware of the identity of the illustrious owner of the instrument. When he found out, he asked the owner of the local pub to hide his loot.

“What’s incredible is that when we started this research, we thought” that the bass “could be anywhere in the world”, underlined Naomi Jones, but in fact, everything was played out within a perimeter of “a few miles” in the Notting Hill area.