Rock ‘n’ roll’s biggest mystery: The case of the lost guitar belonging to Beatles' Paul McCartney

“Help, I need somebody,
(Help) not just anybody
(Help) you know I need someone, help.”

Many years ago, The Beatles – comprising Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr – sang this song, making it one of the band’s biggest successes. Now, many years later, fans of the quartet are responding to calls of ‘help’ to locate a missing bass guitar, belonging to Sir Paul, which many describe as a national treasure” and a piece of “modern social cultural history”.

A global search has been launched, dubbed the Lost Bass Project, inviting anyone to share information on Paul McCartney’s original Höfner bass guitar, which he had bought in 1961 and used in songs such as Twist And Shout, Love Me Do and She Loves You.

Notably in the first 24 hours of the project being launched, hundreds have volunteered their help in solving one of Rock and Roll’s great mysteries.

We take a closer look at how the guitar shaped the sound of the modern world and also trace how it went missing years ago.

The guitar that powered Beatlemania

In 1961, McCartney bought the violin-shaped Höfner 500/1 electric bass for £30 (Rs 3,133) from a shop in Hamburg, Germany. At the time, the Beatle had bought the instrument because it was cheap, and because its symmetrical violin shaped body looked elegant held upside down to suit his left-handed playing. McCartney, speaking of the guitar, said in the past, “Because I was left-handed, it looked less daft because it was symmetrical. I got into that. And once I bought it, I fell in love with it.”

And he did love it. McCartney used the guitar regularly only to put it aside in 1963. The guitar at the time was in need of repairs – the neck pickup frame had broken and was held together with black tape. However, he brought out the guitar when the band recorded the Let it Be album in London in 1970.

McCartney has said that the guitar mysteriously disappeared from his life just before The Beatles split up and he has been trying hard to track down the bass, but has had no effort. There are some who believe that the instrument was stolen from Abbey Road, while others think it went missing from a basement in the Beatles Savile Row offices.

Hunt for the missing guitar

McCartney has yearned to find his beloved guitar and even reached out to manufacturers Höfner to track down the instrument. But this is the genesis for the Lost Bass Project, which has been started by Nick Wass, who worked in Höfner prior to this hunt. Wass has also written about the guitar in the past and told BBC that it was after a recent conversation with The Beatle that the campaign began.

Joining him in this effort is husband and wife team Scott and Naomi Jones, both of whom have worked for BBC News in the past. Speaking to BBC, Scott said: “Now we’re working together on this. Nick has more technical knowledge about this guitar than anyone on the planet, and me and my Naomi are bringing some investigative skills.”

On their website, the sleuths write, “Paul McCartney has given us so much over the last 62 years. (This) project is our chance to give something back. If you have credible information about the bass, this is your chance to share it and be part of music history.”

But how does one spot a guitar that went missing years ago? The sleuths have offered some tell-tale signs to identify the bass.

The simplest way of identifying the instrument is the Höfner logo, which is written vertically on the headstock of the original model but was horizontal on later versions played by McCartney. McCartney’s missing bass also has been given a dark paintjob and had the pearl pickguard removed and had the two pickups mounted in a single piece of black wood.

Since being launched on 3 September, the project has already prompted some leads with Scott Jones saying that they have narrowed down two emails which collaborate what they believe. “We didn’t expect to get necessarily thousands of super-hot leads instantly … what I’m anticipating is that people who know something will probably just sort of reflect on what they know and then come forward at some point,” Jones was quoted as telling The Evening Standard.

Interestingly, Wass believes that the missing guitar could be valued “more like a Van Gogh or a Picasso than just an instrument. If one gauges by previous guitar auctions, then the instrument is priceless. John Lennon’s stolen guitar sold for $2.4 million (Rs 19 crore) when it resurfaced half a century later, and the acoustic Kurt Cobain played during the iconic MTV Unplugged set sold for $6 million (Rs 41 crore).

With inputs from agencies