LONDON (AP) — paul mccartney He no longer cries gently for an original bass guitar.
A five-year search by the instrument’s manufacturer, with the help of a husband-and-wife team of journalists, led to a 1961 in the shape of the Beatles star and the distinctive violin that had gone missing half a century earlier. Electric Hefner was able to reunite. Worth 10 million pounds ($12.6 million).
Mr. McCartney had asked Mr. Hefner to help him search for the missing instrument that helped spread Beatlemania around the world, he said, working with Hefner executive Nick Wass. Scott Jones, the journalist who tracked the instrument, made the announcement on Friday.
“Paul said to me, ‘Hey, since you’re from Hefner, can you help me find a bass?'” Wass said. “And that’s what sparked this big hunt. Sitting there and seeing what the lost bass meant to Paul, I decided to try and solve that mystery. ”
McCartney bought the bass for about 30 pounds (about $37) in 1961, when the Beatles were honing their skills during a series of stops in Hamburg, Germany. The instrument was played on his first two Beatles records and was featured on such hits as “Love Me Do,” “Twist and Shout,” and “She Loves You.”
“I was left-handed, so I didn’t look tacky because I was symmetrical,” McCartney once said. “I was hooked. And once I bought it, I fell in love with it.”
It was rumored to have been stolen in 1969, when the Beatles were recording their last album, Let It Be, but no one knew when it went missing.
What started as a long and winding road for Wass to chase bass accelerated when Jones happened to join the hunt after seeing McCartney headline the 2022 Glastonbury Festival. At one point, the stage lights seemed to illuminate only the sunburst pattern on his guitar. Bass and Jones wondered if it was the same instrument McCartney was playing in the early ’60s.
Later, when I searched the internet, I was stunned to discover that the original bass was missing and I needed to look for it.
“I was shocked and stunned,” Jones said. “I think we live in a world where the Beatles can do almost anything and get a lot of attention.”
Jones and his wife Naomi, a journalist and researcher, contacted Wass to help spread this information more widely.
After getting stuck following a lead on The Who’s Roadie, they rebooted the Lost Base project in September, but within 48 hours they had completed 600 copies, including “the little gems that got us here today.” Jones said he was flooded with emails. .
One of those emails, from Ian Horn, a sound engineer who worked for McCartney’s band Wings, was the first major breakthrough in the search. Mr Horne said the bass was stolen from the back of a van in the Notting Hill area of London one night in 1972.
The researchers published the new information on their website in October, adding that Horne continued to work for McCartney for six years after he told her not to worry about the theft.
“But I’ve carried the guilt my whole life,” Horne said.
After releasing that update, an even bigger change came when he was contacted by someone who claimed his father had stolen the bass. Jones said the man did not try to steal McCartney’s instrument, but that he panicked when he realized what he had.
The thief, who has not been named, eventually sold it to Ron Guest, the landlord of the Admiral Blake pub, for a few pounds and a few beers.
When the Joneses began searching for their guest’s relatives, the news had already reached his family. His daughter-in-law contacted McCartney’s studio.
Kathy Guest said an old bass that had been in her attic for years looked like what she was looking for.
This legacy was passed from Ron Guest to his eldest son, who died in a car accident, and then to his second son, Haydn Guest, who married Kathy and died in 2020.
The equipment was returned to McCartney in December, and it took about two months for it to be certified.
The project was scheduled to announce the news, but Kathy Guest’s son and film student Ruaidri Guest, 21, posted a photo of the guitar on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday and wrote: . It was returned to Paul McCartney. Please share the news. He posted a message on Friday saying his family has been flooded with requests for interviews and will tell the story in due course.
Jones said the instrument’s estimated value was based on the fact that the Gibson acoustic guitar Kurt Cobain played on MTV Unplugged sold for $6 million (£4.7 million). But for the past half-century, it has had little value.
“The thief couldn’t sell it,” Jones said. “Obviously the Guest family was never going to sell it. This is a red flag because the minute you step forward someone will say, ‘That’s Paul McCartney’s guitar.’ ”
It was McCartney’s again. A message was posted on the official website announcing his return, saying, “Paul is deeply grateful to everyone involved.”
