Paul McCartney, Beatles' 10 million bass guitar stolen in 1972 found

'Get back to where you once belonged', sang a bearded Macca in the Fab Four's last live performance. Everything goes back to where it belongs and, apparently, musical instruments are no exception: Paul McCartney has in fact managed to recover after more than half a century the Höfner 500/1 'Purple' bass guitar that was a symbol of the early years with the Beatles. The instrument, valued at around £10 million, had been stolen from him in 1972 in London and for over 50 years he had lost track of it.

In September last year, however, the German manufacturing company Höfner had launched a campaign entitled 'Lost Bass' to recover the first model of the legendary instrument owned by Paul and played in some of the most iconic bass lines in rock history such as I saw her standing there and Day tripper. In recent days, Ruaidhri Guest, a young English student, revealed on X that the bass guitar, which he received as an inheritance, has been returned to its rightful owner. Confirmation of the return comes from the official McCartney website: 'Following the launch of the Lost Bass project last year,' the note reads, 'Paul's 1961 Höfner 500/1 bass, stolen in 1972, has been returned. The instrument has been authenticated by Höfner and Paul is incredibly grateful to everyone involved'.

Macca bought his first Höfner 500/1 for 30 pounds in Hamburg in 1961, during the Fab Four's 'German apprenticeship' spent playing every night in Reeperbahn clubs such as the Hydra Club and the Keiserkeller. He fell in love with it, as he told interviewers several times, because of its characteristic lightness that made it a real anomaly on the guitar market of the early 1960s, populated by particularly heavy semi-acoustic basses.

Macca agli esordi dei Beatles, con il primo modello di 500/1 comprato ad Amburgo

The body of the instrument, designed by luthier Walter Höfner in the late 1950s, is in fact completely hollow. Paul used that model throughout the first phase of the Beatlesian parable. In 1963 Höfner gave him a new example, with distant pick-ups, which was to be replaced (partially) by the Rickenbacker 4001 Prince of Sgt. Pepper. But one never forgets one's first love and McCartney - who in the last two years of the Beatles tried in every way to rekindle the spark of the early days in his three companions - once again harnessed the model bought in Hamburg during the filming of Get Back, a film first aborted (and transformed into Let it be, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg), then exhumed in the form of a TV series by Peter Jackson for Disney+.

Paul nel celebre concerto sul tetto di Savile Row con il secondo esemplare di 500/1 usato durante il periodo con i Beatles

Macca was the luck of that bass: after him, many bass players wanted him, from one end of the planet to the other. From Aerosmith's Tom Hamilton in the US to Nicholas Allbrook of Australia's Tame Impala, and here in Italy to Red Canzian of Pooh. Not to mention the countless Beatles cover bands, practically obliged to include a 500/1 in their instrumentation. There are also numerous more or less cheap and successful attempts at imitation, such as the Violin Bass by the Italian Eko and the Epiphone Viola.