McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass (2026) Movie Script
1
Hey, guys.
- Alright, it's going.
OK.
Right.
HE HUMS
The lost bass! Yay.
It's a story.
- It is a story.
You know, it's quite a thing, yeah.
And this being my first bass
that I'd got in Hamburg...
all those years ago.
Yeah, I had an attachment to it,
you know.
It just went off
into the universe, you know?
It was like...
Where did it go?
There must be an answer, you know.
Somebody's got it.
THROUGH SPEAKERS:
Oh, darling
Please believe me
I'll never do you no harm
Believe me when I tell you
I'll never do you no harm
- CROWD SCREAMS
Oh, darling
If you leave me
I'll never make it alone
Believe me when I beg you
(Woo!)
Don't ever leave me alone
When you told me
You didn't need me anymore
Well, you know
I nearly broke down and cried
When you told me
You didn't need me anymore
Well, you know
I nearly fell down and died
MAN:
Fantastic, isn't it?
And, as you see, if you think
what's been written in them...
behind them doors there...
- "OH! DARLING" PLAYS ON VAN RADIO
This was one of the main places
where they used to sit and write songs.
They'd sneak, bunk off school,
come in here, eat some fried eggs.
There's a thing about fried eggs.
I don't know why.
You go to Hunter Davies' story,
they're all eating fried eggs.
There must've been a...
Just after the war,
they must've just loved fried eggs...
MIKE MCCARTNEY:
This is where we used to live.
Our humble abode
in Forthlin Road, Allerton, Liverpool.
And this is where
we used to live as a little family.
And there's some people out there.
What are they doing there?
That's why we left.
Lots of lovely memories.
Not enough of me mum.
And the smells that would've
come from the kitchen
when she did Sunday dinners.
She'd do off-cuts of lamb or beef
and sneak 'em in to us, her little boys.
"Shh, don't tell your dad, shh."
See, whenever I talk about my mum
it's always dangerous
cos this is where she went from.
This is our kid's little room.
Yeah, I...
stopped them going in there for many years
because it was too important
to me and my brother.
I was 12, my brother was 14
and she died of cancer.
When you're 12 or 14,
you don't understand.
You have to get on with life.
You have to survive.
And because Dad
had been in his own band
at the back of his mind
he always thought, well,
that was a way out.
And so he bought me a banjo
and my brother a guitar,
a Spanish guitar.
I took that out the back window.
Our kid was sitting in the back garden
lost, just...
miles away with his guitar.
My brother was 14 in that photograph.
Beatlemania came six years later.
PAUL:
If I'm in a not very good mood
a great thing to do is just take a guitar
cos, you think about it,
you sort of hold it to you, a guitar.
And it's kind of a comforting thing to do.
You go off into a little room somewhere,
you know, on your own
and tell the guitar your troubles,
kinda thing.
It's like a cheap psychiatrist, really.
And it turns round and the guitar
sort of sends it back to you
and it comes back as a song somehow.
ANNOUNCER IN GERMAN:
KLAUS VOORMANN:
Well, it started in Hamburg.
MUSIC: "Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey"
by The Beatles
You had gangsters... pimps...
You had prostitutes.
You had all you could imagine.
ARCHIVE REPORTER:
Hamburg is echoing to the invasion
from the latest beat groups
in Britain who've taken over.
KLAUS: I heard the music
through a window, a cellar window.
I just wanted to see
that rock 'n' roll music.
The next band came on
and that was The Beatles.
Paul came up and I think he was
the one to talk to the audience first
because he could speak German.
"Hello! Wie geht us?"
"Guten Tag."
HE LAUGHS
It was really sweet.
I mean, they were young kids.
George was 17, you know.
And I was a little older then.
We became friends,
and they came to the house.
They got great food
put them in a bathtub
because they didn't have any
mother or father to look after them.
There was a friendship.
A friendship grew up, you know.
AUTOMATED VOICE SPEAKS GERMAN
PAUL ON VOICEMAIL:
Oh, danke schoen.
Hey, Klaus, Paul here.
And trying to reach you so we can have
a nice telephone conversation.
So, I'll try again.
Lots of love, bye-bye.
Hm.
He is still that same little Paul he was
when he was 19 years old.
It's the same guy.
I'm a graphic designer.
I had the job to do the cover on Revolver
and a bass player.
But now I can't play any guitar chords
with a cramp, this cramp.
Hand can't do a fist.
Can't do a fist, you know.
Doesn't work, doesn't work.
Luckily enough, I can still hold my pencil.
I'm going to do drawings
of the story of the bass.
I decided to start with the Top Ten.
That's the first time
I actually saw the bass.
INTERVIEWER ON TAPE:
Well, let's...
PAUL:
So what do you want to talk about?
INTERVIEWER: We wanna talk about you
as a bass player, really.
So, I've got Paul's guitar.
And next to it, Stuart Sutcliffe's guitar.
Like that.
PAUL ON TAPE:
My bass guitar days
go back to when Stuart
was the bass player.
Stu had fallen in love
with this girl called Astrid.
Stu decided he was gonna stay in Hamburg
so that meant we didn't have a bass player.
And John and George thought,
I'm not doing it.
So that left me.
PAUL ON TAPE: Eventually then,
I found a nice little shop
in the centre of Hamburg
and I saw this bass in the window.
- SHOP BELL RINGS
The violin-shaped bass, the Hfner.
I don't think it was very expensive,
something like about 30 quid.
Then once I got my own bass,
then I was the bass player.
ECHOING INSTRUMENTS AND CROWD NOISE
KLAUS:
I remember it was the last day
the band played in the Top Ten Club.
And Stuart, it was his last night of playing.
And we were sitting outside,
the sun was shining.
I think it was Sunday morning.
And we were all sitting there,
being all pretty stoned.
Stoned meaning... pills and stuff.
Talking, talking, talking.
John was sitting next to me
and I said, well, Stuart isn't playing,
I could play the bass.
And he said, "Oh, sorry, Klaus,
Paul already bought the bass.
He's gonna be the next bass player."
DIRECTOR:
Could've been your moment, Klaus.
You could've become Beatle number five.
Yeah, alright.
I don't know. Anyway,
I don't even want to think about it!
MIKE: I lived in Hamburg
through my brother's letters.
Then suddenly, he came back one day
and he had that Hfner.
It's so unique.
We were the roadies.
I probably held that bloody thing.
And then our kid got a Ford classic.
Looked cool.
CAR ENGINE REVS
And their music, then...
you know, going to The Cavern.
The difference was unbelievable.
It was like, whew...
Wow, what happened?
We knew we were going somewhere.
We always felt that we had something.
You put John...
Lennon, you know,
he's a very witty cat...
with me, who could hold his own
with George, who was, like, spectacular
and then finish it all up with Ringo.
So we had a kind of magic.
MUSIC: "Some Other Guy" by The Beatles
Some other guy now
Has taken away my sweet desire,
oh now
Some other guy now
I just don't want to
hold my hand, oh now
I'm a lonely one
As lonely as I can feel, alright
Some other guy...
I'm the least technical person you will meet.
So, I don't know what I do.
I just play with it.
It's a lovely instrument to play,
and it's kind of easy to play.
And so I got...
I got very used to it and loved it.
CROWD CHEERS
Close your eyes and I'll kiss you
Tomorrow, I'll miss you
Remember I'll always be true
This Hfner bass really suited
Paul's style of playing.
It's very rhythmical but at the same time,
it's very, very melodic.
All my loving to you
I'll pretend that I'm kissing
The lips I am missing...
AMPLIFIED BASSLINE
You can hear lots of songs
that the songs are very, very simple
and the bass does more movement
than any other instrument.
I'll write home every day
AMPLIFIED BASSLINE
And I'll send all my loving to you
I'm a big fan of James Jamerson,
who was the Motown bass player.
Cos normally, bass is...
SIMPLISTIC BASS IMPRESSION
But he was...
LIVELY IMPRESSION OF "MY GIRL"
I was going, wow,
that's a great way to use the bass.
All my loving...
That set me free.
I was like, great.
OK, I can make up melodies.
So as the guys were doing the main song
I would just try and put
something imaginative behind it.
And it was a great feeling.
I mean, I still remember it,
the moment, bingo!
I will send to you
CROWD APPLAUDS AND CHEERS
MUSIC: "Day Tripper" by The Beatles
Got a good reason
First time I was aware of The Beatles,
I would've been about nine years old.
My clear memory of that is seeing them
on the six o'clock television news
and all the girls were screaming outside
the cinemas and that kinda thing.
And they were playing electric guitars
and let's face it, you know,
electric guitars are so sexy.
My mother would've thought it not
the right thing to have an electric guitar.
That was for bad boys, you know.
Years later, I was the electric guitar
manager with Hfner
a small German guitar company.
Subsequently, I met Paul McCartney.
It was at his studio down south in England.
He just walked in and said,
"Oh hello, you're Mr Hfner.
Do you know where my old Hfner's gone?"
And I knew what he meant straight away.
"My old Hfner", he meant the '61 bass.
PAUL: We'd been looking
for my old bass for years.
But that's what happened with Nick.
I started talking about it and just saying,
yeah, we're looking for it.
I don't know if we'll ever find it.
NICK: Of course, I had to say to him,
you know, I've got no idea where it's gone.
It's all a bit of a mystery.
It's the most important bass
of any bass ever anywhere.
In terms of anybody actually
totally associated with an instrument
yeah, McCartney and the Hfner bass.
There's just something
in the soul of the two of them.
Here's the old Hfner factory
down in Bavaria.
It's still standing.
Poor old place.
And it was here in these premises
that they built the bass,
all those years ago.
That moment.
That turn in history.
You almost had to be there, really,
to feel the electricity in the air.
ECHOING CROWD NOISE
I was probably bored on a wet Wednesday
when I designed and put up
the web page on the Hfner website
with the usual sort of things,
"If you've got any information, email us."
And I think Cathy came up with the name
"trace the bass",
with the hashtag on the front.
I think it was you, was it?
- It was me, yes.
There you are. Genius.
- It's catchy.
Very catchy.
- It's good.
Genius, you see, "trace the bass".
The whole of our marriage,
you know, for the last 20-odd years
Cathy's just supported me
with one lunatic scheme after another.
And she used to be a bank manager,
you see, so she's good at filing stuff.
We talked about it endlessly.
- Endlessly, yeah.
I don't think there was one purpose
in searching for the bass.
There was a hundred million fans out there
who I knew would be thrilled to bits
to know that this thing had come back.
So it was for everybody, not just Paul.
ECHOING CROWD NOISE
CROWD SINGS:
You know you should be glad
Woo!
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
ELVIS COSTELLO:
I was in Liverpool
so I could go every game
that I could afford to go to.
27,000 people used to be on the Kop.
And very emotional sound.
CROWD SINGS:
Pride can hurt you too
Among the many things I memorised
before I picked up an instrument
were the harmony parts.
I can't sing in Paul's register now
but I could then, when I was a kid.
And you know you should be glad
Woo!
And we would cut out cardboard
likenesses of the guitars we liked
and draw the controls on them.
And then mime alone with records.
HE LAUGHS
It was a perfect apprenticeship
for being on Top of the Pops.
You know! Pretending to play.
The hardest thing
was to make a Hfner bass
because you needed a longer
piece of cardboard for the neck.
This is, like, when I'm nine
or something, you know.
Woo!
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
The thing about the Hfner is
it's very lightweight, which is great.
It makes it easier to play.
So that was the one
on all the early Beatles records.
It was a very rich period for music, for us
and particularly for making records.
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...
NICK: That bass was used
an enormous amount
and it started to fall to bits.
And we don't know when, again,
because all the records are long gone.
They ordered another Hfner bass.
We think it gets delivered into
his hand on October 4th, 1963.
They did a gig on an old TV programme
called Ready Steady Go.
And there's pictures of him at rehearsal
and pictures of him actually
doing the performance to camera
and both basses are there.
He's got the '61 from Hamburg.
It has two pickups close together.
And he's got this new one.
They've moved this pickup
down to near the bridge.
And in some of the shots,
he's got the new one
and he's holding it up
but it hasn't even got a strap on it.
So we're kinda concluding
that it arrived that very day.
And the '61 gets put on
backup duties, poor thing.
Within a couple of months of that,
the February
they're playing in front of
70 million people in the USA.
I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
Meanwhile, the '61 bass
is away being repaired.
But I just had to look...
PAUL: Our roadie, Mal, took it off
and brought it back
like new, but with a completely
different paint job on it.
NICK: When it returned,
it had been completely resprayed.
It came back with what's now called
a three-part sunburst
which is more or less black, red, yellow.
It's very distinctive
when you look at this bass now.
KLAUS: For me, the whole charm of
the instrument was gone.
I don't know how Paul feels about it.
I think he was a bit pissed off too.
MUSIC: "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles
Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs
and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs
and had a smoke
And somebody spoke
and I went into a dream
I mean, from a look point of view,
I think the '63 is nicer
maybe even better.
Better pickups,
better sound, louder, whatever.
NICK: He very singularly played
that '63 bass then continuously
and you never see him playing the '61.
You know, he didn't swap and change
between the two or anything.
They went back to America in 1965.
The '61 is being used as the backup
but not played.
At Shea Stadium, if you look really careful
you see Ringo up on the drum riser
and just down below Ringo
on the back of the amp, there's the bass.
You have to look very eagle-eyed
but it's there.
MUSIC: "Get Back" by The Beatles
What happened to it after that
is a mystery.
It's just luck and a lot of peering
at grainy old black and white pictures.
The only time you see it again
you have to wait till a quick shot of it
by the coffee table
on the Let It Be sessions
and then we don't see it anymore.
It's just not around.
Get back
Get back
Get back to where you once
Get back
CLATTERING
- CROWD APPLAUDS
ARCHIVE REPORTER: The event is so
momentous that historians may one day
view it as a landmark in the decline
of the British Empire.
The Beatles are breaking up.
SOBBING
NICK: When they split up,
I mean, all the rancour starts.
The lawyers are in and it was chaotic.
There were guitars here,
there were guitars there
and nobody was really taking care of stuff.
This is the remarkable thing.
It's from the end of The Beatles
nobody had ever seen this bass.
It just wasn't there anymore.
I was never able to establish any
firm basis as to when it disappeared.
I put my hand up absolutely and say
I started this from nowhere,
not knowing how to do it.
So, I was kind of a bit handicapped,
I suppose
and as green as a cabbage as well.
It got to the point where it needed
somebody better than me
to start poking about.
SCOTT JONES:
It was June 2022
when I was watching
Paul McCartney headline at Glastonbury.
But there was one moment in the show
where the stage just went black
apart from one light
just picking out Paul's Hfner bass.
And it just caught the varnish
and the wood and everything.
It was almost like shining like gold
for this split second, and I thought
is that the original Hfner bass?
And so I googled it and saw that it wasn't.
The original bass that he'd got
in 1961 was lost.
And I instantly started googling to see
and find out more about that story.
But in terms of an investigation
and then thinking, I want to find this thing
I thought, well,
if no one else is doing that
and that guitar is so important,
we need to do it.
DIRECTOR:
Who do you mean by "we"?
SCOTT:
Me and my wife, we work together.
And we convinced ourselves that
we may not find the bass,
but we'd find stories about the bass.
We'd find what the bass meant to people.
You know, that sort of
Beatlemania fan thing.
By July 2023
I'd seen that Hfner
over in Bavaria had run a search
and I was really curious
to find out what they know.
So I wrote this very polite email
to sort of introduce myself,
thinking he was German
and being conscious of the sort of
English language that I was using.
And then within 24 hours,
I realised that Nick was from London
and he was on the end of the phone
and we were talking like old mates.
And I thought, oh my God,
these are exactly the people
I've been looking for, for a long time.
We got together and I said,
Scott, look, I've got a lot of emails
and I passed him the lot over
for him to read and get a sense of
what we were dealing with there.
SCOTT:
All of these leads that came in
you knew it was people that had
lived with this story for a long, long time.
It's just that it was wrong.
"A man claiming he had
one of Paul's guitar
walked into a pawn shop in Las Vegas
called the Gold and Silver
Pawn Shop to sell it.
There's a television programme
called The Pawn Stars
where it was aired, hope it helps."
"I definitely saw the bass
in an auction of music equipment
in the mid '80s in London.
It sold for 100
to a music rental studio company."
"I've heard that the bass is in Japan
in the possession of a Japanese banker.
This information was given to me
by a guy that knows the Beatles
and the Beatles gear website well."
I had this vision of...
I used to say to people,
I know what's happened.
Some German guy
rich German guy, has nicked it
and he's got a big castle
in the Bavarian mountains.
And he invites you up
and then after a few drinks
he says,
"Come, I show you something special."
And there over the mantlepiece
is hanging my bass.
So, it's a treasure hunt
but also, people love The Beatles
and love Paul McCartney,
and wanted to help.
TRIBUTE BAND SINGS:
Took me so long to find out
And I found out
She's a big teaser
She took me half the way there
ANDY DICKINSON: I've always admired
Paul McCartney as a bass player.
He made the bass guitar cool.
Beatles fans know that
the bass has disappeared
and no one knows where it's gone.
So, it'd be amazing if
somebody ever did find it
cos that's history, isn't it?
It's history.
Day tripper
Day tripper, yeah
Ever since I can remember,
I've been a Beatles fan.
There's only ever been
one band for me, I think.
First time I ever opened
the Sergeant Pepper's
and you open it up,
and they've all got moustaches.
And I thought, when I get older,
I'm gonna have a moustache.
HE CHUCKLES
So...
I bought it second-hand,
only paid 80 for it
which is not much more
than Paul paid for his probably.
DIRECTOR:
Can you play anything on it?
A little bit of Day Tripper, but...
Yeah, only a little bit.
I need a plectrum!
I've always wanted to play guitar.
I tried for years.
And I thought it might be
easier to play bass
cos there's only four strings.
Here's a Vox.
Vox. Have to have a Vox, don't you,
if you have a Beatles bass?
Oh, no.
After all that, mate, it's broken.
HE LAUGHS
Cut.
AMP HUMMING
- It works.
Lordy...
HE PLAYS BASS LINE
FROM "DAY TRIPPER"
That's it.
Got there in the end.
- Yeah, practice makes perfect, doesn't it?
One way ticket, yeah
It took me so long to find out
And I found out
School drop-off time, innit?
I work for the ambulance service.
I've been doing it 23 years now.
So I'm on the patient transport side,
so it's all non-emergency.
There's a guy, Steve, I work with,
he's a lovely guy
known him for two, three years.
We always have a good laugh
when we're crewing up together.
We bounce off each other quite nicely.
I'm always looking online
for guitars and things
and I think I just,
might have been by accident
went on to the Hfner website
saw that Nick Wass was looking for it
and that was like, yeah,
the holy grail for me.
It's like finding the bible,
trying to find Paul McCartney's bass.
You know,
if you're a fan that's like, wow.
Well, I was with Steve one day
and I said, well, I've still got a bass
that's a bit like Paul McCartney's
and he just sort of said,
I think I know where that is, you know.
And I said, you're joking, aren't you?
STEVE GLENISTER:
So, I just said to him, I said
I've got an idea where
that might be, you know?
And he sort of looked at me,
and I went...
right, I'm gonna tell you something.
I don't know if it's right or proper
but I'm gonna tell you something.
It's only a story I've heard.
He said, where?
I said, it don't matter where, but...
I think it was nicked
from a house in London.
ANDY:
So, I said to Steve, can I tell the story
and can I tell Nick
what little bit you've told me?
STEVE:
I said, don't put my name on it.
No, he said, what we'll do,
he said, I'll email it in
and say it's a story that someone
told us on the back of the ambulance.
A patient.
NICK: I mean, the emails
were quite mixed, if I'm honest.
One of them in particular
was from these two guys
who are a crew on an ambulance.
And they told me this bullshit story
about having a client in the back of
the ambulance, as they described it.
DIRECTOR: A patient?
- Yeah...
I think they call it "client" now,
don't they?
Who'd given them some story about
the fact that the bass had been stolen
and that it had been given
to a guy in a pub
up at Ladbroke Grove, London.
And I thought, yeah, bit more bullshit
but I wrote a polite reply.
"That sounds like a really good book,
Tales From the Back of an Ambulance."
And I left it there.
SCOTT: I had a call from the news editor
at The Telegraph
looking for stories
and I said, look, we're looking for
Paul McCartney's lost bass.
And the minute I said it,
Ben commissioned the story on the spot.
The story in The Telegraph went live
on the 2nd September.
It was a Saturday.
It was around about four o'clock, online.
Within minutes, the BBC were in touch
saying they wanted us on BBC Breakfast.
Well, I'm delighted to say
we're joined now by Nick Wass
who is a Hfner and lost bass expert
and he's provided Paul McCartney
with many of his iconic instruments...
NICK: Lots of interviews
and radio station interviews
day and night.
I realised why being famous
must be absolutely awful.
The difference with the lost bass is
Paul McCartney had it refinished in 1964
and the two pickups are now mounted
in a big black piece of wood here
but I think you've shown your audience
some pictures of what we're after.
But this is it, yeah.
- And the thing is
it is distinctive,
and it should be identifiable.
But of course, it may have been
destroyed somewhere along the line.
It may have just been chucked away.
It could've been taken by
someone at the Apple offices.
We just don't know, do we?
- No, we don't know.
This is the problem.
It was put away, presumably after
they'd finished filming Get Back.
And after that, nobody has
any clear idea of what happened
where it was actually stored...
- PIGEONS FLUTTERING, COOING
...who might have been there.
We're just not clear about that.
SCOTT: In the first 24 hours,
we must have had more than a dozen
major newspapers and radio
and TV stations on
NBC in America and The New York Times
and Le Monde, Spiegel in Germany.
It just went on and on, and then TV channels
that we'd never ever heard of
were getting in touch,
from Brazil and other places.
We thought that we'd almost plugged
into that spirit of The Beatles.
You know,
we thought that we had connected
with that positive vibe
around peace and love and the band,
and what the music meant to people.
We got 600 emails in the first 48 hours.
And the emails were just
landing and landing and landing.
That's when the journalists in us took over
and we started to pick out
what could be really important.
I heard the news today, oh boy
GUITAR STRUMS
About a lucky man who made the grade
SCOTT:
When we read Ian Horne's email
we knew instantly
that we had to speak to Ian.
I just had to laugh
And Ian's lead was the only lead that said
I know Paul McCartney.
- Yeah.
And it was the only lead that said,
I worked for Paul McCartney.
After he broke up with
The Beatles, we met up.
I think Paul was definitely
getting back in the saddle, I call it.
Which was a big step because
I think he hid away for a while.
PAUL: Yeah, you know,
it was very depressing.
Cos you were breaking from
your lifelong friends.
You weren't going to see them again.
It was depressing.
And not knowing whether I was
going to continue in music.
Certainly, I wasn't having a good time.
It wasn't working.
Whereas, Linda had sort of said, you know
you've just gotta get it together
and we gotta do something.
So, we ended up forming Wings.
I knew that if I
kept playing Beatles songs,
which I knew people wanted
then I would become a Beatles tribute band.
And I thought maybe
that's not the greatest look.
IAN: He was experimenting with things
he hadn't done before.
Had a Yamaha bass, a Fender bass.
He went through all the basses
he'd seen people are playing, you know.
And all the people
Say that all people must be free
But meanwhile, back in Ireland
There's a man who looks like me
PAUL: We went on the road.
Boy, did we go on the road.
Tell us about it.
- I mean...
Well, cos the thing is,
normally you go on the road
at least you book hotels.
Anyone books hotels.
But we decided to really
just busk the whole thing.
So, we had a Tranny and we just
headed off up the motorway.
We had the kids, a couple of dogs,
the whole group, all our instruments.
There was a U-Haul
following behind with the roadies.
And we literally turned up
at universities and stuff.
We turned up at Nottingham University,
was the first one.
And we said... in fact, we didn't,
I didn't say anything.
I stayed in the van.
One of the lads, Ian Horne,
actually went in.
"I got Paul McCartney out in the van,
d'you want him on lunchtime tomorrow?"
Really? I need to come out
of the van to sort of check.
Oh yeah! Yeah, we'll have him.
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Make Ireland Irish today
IAN: He was loving it,
being back in the saddle.
He never played the Hfner,
as far as I know.
It was around.
Sort of lugging it around
from place to place?
Yeah, maybe that was more me than him.
I mean, if he asked for it, I've got it.
We'd just finished the university tour
and we were recording an album
called Red Rose Speedway.
And on this particular day,
we'd been in the studio.
We didn't leave till quite late,
so we drove back to Trevor's.
Yeah, Trevor's my brother-in-law.
He was my assistant.
Though he had a truck full of gear
which we had the Hfner bass,
acoustic guitars, some amplifiers.
I couldn't park at Trevor's,
cos opposite Trevor's house was a school
so it was restricted parking.
Just went up the road a bit, turn right
and there's a T-junction there,
which is Cambridge Gardens.
There was a parking place right on the edge,
so I thought I'd put it there
with the back of the truck
visible to everybody.
Basically, it had a big heavy-duty
padlock on the back.
It was a roller shutter on the back.
So I felt fairly secure.
I walked back to Trevor's
and we went to sleep.
And then of course in the morning,
the nightmare began.
We could see that the padlock was off
and I went, oh, God...
you know, cold sweat.
So I've thrown the roller door up
and immediately notice
there's stuff missing, you know.
So there's a couple of amplifiers,
two guitars, including the Hfner bass.
I was beside myself with worry
and anger and pain.
Right opposite where the truck is
so the back of the truck's there,
is 100 Cambridge Gardens.
At the time, it seemed kosher
but all these hippies and people
that lived around Lancaster Road
and Cambridge Gardens in these
squat houses, there's a lot of musicians.
You know, there's obviously
thieves amongst them.
Trevor thought that this guy Dik Mik
was a bit iffy, you know.
DIRECTOR: Why?
- I don't know why really.
He flagged him up.
I didn't flag anyone.
I did feel it was one of that mob because
they all knew we worked for Paul.
And so we sort of got tooled up
in case it got nasty.
DIRECTOR: So, wait, hang on.
In case what got nasty?
I decided we go and check this guy out
so we could end the thing there.
So we went in there,
quite threatening behaviour.
Dik Mik, who's still in bed,
he was shitting himself.
We looked around, no stuff.
And eventually, you know,
we had to go to Paul and tell him the news.
Knock on the door,
and he comes to the door.
The truck's been broken into.
The Hfner bass has been stolen
and a few other things.
And I took a deep breath,
stood there thinking
what's gonna come back at me?
And he was absolutely amazing.
He just turned around and said,
"It's alright, Ian, I've got another one."
I had a feeling in me,
did he think I've done it?
So I rung the police
and the police didn't seem that bothered.
GRAEME BOWD: I think all the papers
used to have contacts in the police.
Their friend's on the news desk,
maybe they'd get a small payment.
That's the way it used to work.
So, in this particular case,
The Standard had got a tip-off
that this had happened,
but they didn't know very much about it
or even if it was true.
Obviously,
the best person to confirm whether
a guitar of his had been stolen,
would be him.
I set off for his house, and I didn't feel
very comfortable about doing this.
I didn't think that this was the kind of
journalism I really wanted to do.
I thought that if he did come out,
he's gonna tell us to fuck off.
HE LAUGHS
Probably an hour passed,
standing around in the road
chatting to the photographer.
Suddenly, without any warning,
a wooden gate swung open
and there was Paul.
I can clearly remember his first words were
"What do you want, boys?"
And the first question I think I asked him
first of all, to confirm that
the guitar had been taken
and he said it had,
so that confirmed the story.
And he confirmed that it was
the original one
that he'd bought back in Hamburg
which I knew about
because I followed the Beatles.
So, then I suddenly realised
that I was actually
in the middle of a very big story
the most famous
or iconic instrument of that era
had been stolen,
and I was talking to the guy who owned it.
And he was quite happy to chat about it.
He'd pose for pictures for the photographer
and I think we probably spoke for
maybe four or five minutes
and at that stage, our presence
is starting to get noticed.
A small crowd of people
are starting to gather
so he politely thanked us
and closed the gate
and went back into the house.
This was the first time I had met a Beatle.
Beatles music has enriched my life
enormously and I just kind of felt
maybe this sounds a little bit sycophantic
but I just really felt that
I'd have liked to have said
can I just thank you
for everything you've done?
I think your music's great.
It's something which will
stay with me forever.
Just something like that.
Just a thank you,
I think that would've been nice.
But I was in a rush
and I never got to do that.
NAOMI: Paul had given a quote
to a newspaper at the time
and so we thought
that you would remember that
or you'd remember, you know,
it was his favourite bass.
It had been stolen.
Nick was scratching his head
as to why he hadn't been told
that that information hadn't been passed on.
NICK:
I have to presume that he'd forgotten.
I mean, this is a guy who's actually
done quite a lot, hasn't he?
He's been a few places and around, so
it may well have just not
registered with him. I don't know.
INTERVIEWER: There has been
a report recently that you have said
that you might get back with The Beatles.
Is this true?
No, I wouldn't think so.
I don't think any of us fancy it,
tell you the truth.
NAOMI: Perhaps the bass
wasn't as important to Paul in 1972
as it was to him when he asked
Nick to start the search.
I think in a way,
The Beatles have done it, you know?
Beatles started from nothing
and got everywhere.
The thing is, I don't know
whether anyone really would even
like to even try and push it
any further, you know?
NICK:
The Hfner was a Beatle bass
and he wasn't a Beatle anymore.
And I don't blame him, you know.
Those guys had had a hell of a life.
For all their fame and money,
they'd had a hell of a time.
I think the Hfner was part of that time
and they just wanted it gone.
SCOTT: Ian thought that the bass
had gone into 100 Cambridge Gardens.
So, we were interested to find out
more about this character Dik Mik
that, at that time, certainly
Trevor suspected and Ian did as well.
Dik Mik was a roadie
and he'd been a weed dealer.
We were able to find that,
in the basement flat
of 100 Cambridge Gardens
a band called Hawkwind
and a lot of members of the band
called Pink Fairies, lived.
Good. That's a good girl.
Trevor and Ian were both very
good friends of mine.
It was the next day
when I saw Trevor, and he just said
"Fuck," he says, "Paul's bass
got stolen out of the van
last night outside Cambridge Gardens."
I said, what?
They said,
keep your ears peeled and...
you know, see if there's any word
coming out or any word on the street, or...
DIRECTOR:
And Dik Mik, who was Dik Mik?
PAUL RUDOLPH: Dik Mik was one of
the people in the original Hawkwind.
Dik Mik was unfortunately, most of the time,
out of his head on Mandrax.
But he could've been outside
blagging away or leaning against the van
or whatever, having a smoke.
You know, and somebody could've said,
whose van is that?
"Oh, it's Wings' van, you know."
I heard reports of
Hawkwind's gear going missing
but that's only the tip of the iceberg.
The whole dynamic around
Hawkwind is somewhat troubled.
NAOMI: In May 1972, Hawkwind
had had 10,000 worth of kit
stolen from their van.
In old newspaper searches,
we found out that
they'd been banned from the BBC
because they'd stolen a microphone.
I think, didn't they write a song
that was sort of anti-The Beatles?
They were anti-The Beatles.
NAOMI:
So they felt quite anarchic.
SCOTT:
It felt like Hawkwind had a motive
and it also felt like they had
the personality to go and do it.
PAUL R:
Ladbroke Grove was pretty funky.
You know, there was the hippies,
there was the...
all the people who had
the fruit and veg stalls.
A lot of thugs showed up
on Portobello Road
and that's when things
started to go downhill.
You know, rougher...
People started injecting.
People started getting stuff stolen.
SCOTT: Paul Rudolph described a place
with a lot of poverty
a lot of people really clinging on.
That it wasn't a big deal for something
to be stolen out the back of a van.
It happened all the time.
The bass did feel like that's
the last place on Earth it should really be
which is a long, long way
from these dark, poorly-lit streets.
You know, lots of political banners
written on bedsheets
sort of hanging out the windows.
And anarchists, and theft.
To picture the bass
in the middle of all of that
makes you feel like this little thing is
out there that desperately needs saving.
But then a penny dropped
and I thought, ah.
I got an email about six months before this
from a guy talking about the bass
being stolen in Ladbroke Grove.
So, I naturally went and dug back
through the pile of emails and found it.
It was from a guy called Andrew,
Andrew Dickinson.
And so, yeah, I contacted them
and said, look, you know...
something's occurred.
We didn't tell them what,
but that further information's arisen.
Can they tell me more?
ANDY: I didn't think we were gonna
hear any more, to be honest.
It was a very small story to tell.
Whereabouts are you struggling?
- Ah, just me neck.
He was, like, really digging in hard,
you Know.
I think he was using his elbow or something.
I think they do a lot with their elbow,
sort of dig in, you know.
Did you get a happy ending?
No.
- No.
I didn't fancy it.
ANDY:
I got back to Steve and said
it's Nick, he's emailed me again.
Next time.
- Yeah.
ANDY: I think, you know,
it's your story to tell.
Do you want to get involved
and say a little bit more?
Oh, God...
Straight away, I thought
I've opened my mouth here
and he's not gonna let this go now.
What I didn't want to come out was
our first house was
just off of Ladbroke Grove
not far from Grenfell Tower.
It was quite a carousel of people
coming and going, really.
I think I was made aware of
who you could talk to
and where you could go.
You had boundaries of where
you could go and where you couldn't go.
So, there was only so many people
you were likely to get to meet
or likely to get to see.
Dad had a couple of jobs.
He played a lot of football,
Saturdays and Sunday mornings.
Dad's mates, they would always tell me
how good my dad was
as a semi-pro footballer.
Cos he was good, Dad.
And there was a pub,
it's called The Admiral Blake.
And that's where they all used to
congregate, my dad and his mates.
So, occasionally I'd get taken across.
It was a good source of information.
It was a good source of recreation.
It was just a good way of socialising
and getting around
and getting to know what was going on
and who was doing what
around the area and stuff like that.
There was racketeering going on
and people going around
and if you want a...
garden fork or a spade,
there's a couple in the back of that lorry
that no one knows they're there,
if you want that.
If you couldn't get rid of it
or you hadn't sold it
take it up the pub,
someone'll have it off ya.
Someone, you know, will buy it off ya.
Obviously, I wasn't always
crewed up with him
so I was getting little bits of information
here, there and everywhere.
So, it got to the stage where,
when I was looking at the rota
I thought, oh no, I'm working with him again,
I know what's coming here.
I'll just have to try
and muddy the waters a little bit here
cos he's not gonna let it go.
ANDY: He'd heard that it had been stolen
from the road that they were in.
They sold it to the barman in the pub
and then they'd sort of
dumped it in the canal
just because they knew
it was Paul McCartney's
and they'd never be able to get rid of it.
We got an A-Z out of the...
out of the van.
I said that was the pub,
so there's the canal there
so I'm assuming there.
He says, whereabouts do you think?
I said, Andy, I don't know, I wasn't there!
So, no idea.
I said, but that's the canal.
If I lived in that pub
I would've walked over that bridge
and just lobbed it there.
And then he said
do you reckon we can get a boat and...?
I said no. No, I don't think
we can get a boat and go and find it.
NICK:
I think Andrew replied to me
saying he would ask his partner
and it's then I get an email from Steve.
NAOMI:
Now, we had a strong lead
it's been stolen and it went on to this pub.
The email had said that it had
been thrown into the canal.
SCOTT:
That was quite a low point, really.
It was almost like, you know,
the body of the guitar
had been dumped into the water there.
And I remember feeling
that the result isn't what we wanted
but we might actually have a story now
that we know where
Paul McCartney's bass is.
But sadly, it's at the bottom of that canal
and probably gone forever.
Three, four
My--
Oh.
INSTRUMENTS RIFFING
ELVIS:
My manager at the time got a call
from Paul's manager at the time.
Richard wants you to go down
to work with Paul.
I said, you're kidding. It was like...
You know, I was 33, I think,
when we started doing that.
He wasn't calling up an eight-year-old
kid who was in the fan club.
One, two, three, four
My brave face
We got off to a flying start, you know.
Unaccustomed as I am
And we just recorded with two guitars
and vocals, and it was good fun.
Only it didn't hit back
There's a version of me singing
My Brave Face where I'm singing lead
so Paul could fly around on the bass,
and he's doing all these moves that I...
but I never felt like
you could hear the voice
because this bass was just too...
it was too big sounding.
At some point, I asked about
the whereabouts of the Hfner
and it suddenly appeared.
Elvis Costello said,
what about your Hfner bass, you know?
Your violin bass, the Beatle bass?
And I was saying, well...
I can try it, but it's not very good
at keeping in tune
which it is isn't, cos they're
not very expensive instruments.
So I'd given up recording with it, really
in favour of more modern instruments.
But he said, "I love the sound of it,
you know, go on."
NICK: But it wasn't the lost bass,
the '61 bass.
This was the '63.
But I think at that point,
things changed for Paul.
Ever since you left,
I've been trying to compose
Will you please come home?
Not meant for you
PAUL: And it recorded great.
It's got a lovely tone for a little bass.
ELVIS: Honestly, I felt vindicated
when I heard the part.
You could hear his personality
really clearly
and it had the tone,
it had the tone.
It was like somebody singing, you know.
Elvis Costello suggested
bringing out the '63.
Maybe that kinda like...
He might've thought, oh yeah.
Maybe that's when
the whole conversation
started up again about,
where is the original one?
By the time we got to '89, '90
when we were about to embark on
a big, massive world tour
and Paul said, what are people
gonna want to...
you know, they're gonna come to the gig,
what are they gonna want?
They're gonna want Beatles.
They're gonna want some big, big moments.
Close your eyes and I'll kiss you
Tomorrow, I'll miss you
Remember I'll always be true
And then while I'm away
I'll write home every day
And I'll send all my loving to you
MUSIC CONTINUES,
MUFFLED AND DISTANKEITH SMITH:
Paul's quite nostalgic about things.
They're important to him.
Not maybe in a collectible way,
but just emotionally.
And they're part of his history
and part of his life, and he...
yeah, he probably missed the bass.
He just wanted it back.
Yeah, well, I think anything
that's nicked, you want back.
You know, especially if it has
a sentimental attachment.
Plus, I was annoyed
that someone nicked it.
You know, it's like, how dare you?
Give me it back, you know.
SCOTT: Very often in investigations,
there's a breakthrough moment
where you're effectively
given something on a plate.
NAOMI:
Who's Stephen?
Who is this person and how does he know
so much about the theft of this guitar?
I'd made an enquiry about
the residence of 100 Cambridge Gardens
so who was on the electoral register?
And I just remember
reading through the list of names
and we got to the name Glenister.
Oh, my God.
His parents are on the electoral register
in 100 Cambridge Gardens.
We was on holiday in Spain
and my phone went.
Is that Steve Glenister? Yep.
Erm, it's Nick Wass here
from the lost bass.
I said, oh right. Hi, you alright?
He said...
I think you know a little bit more
than you're letting on.
Are you prepared to... say anything?
I said, not really, I don't know
anything other than I've told you.
And he said, I think you do.
I knew I had to ask him the question
and say to him, look, Steve...
just tell me what happened.
You know. I know you know, because
you wouldn't have sent me all this stuff.
And I know you were in the house.
Just tell me what happened.
My dad used to come
and watch me play football a lot.
He was never complimentary
about the way I played.
There was always something
I could've done better and that, so
we was coming home one day
and I had the radio on in the car.
DIRECTOR: How old do you think
you were at this point?
I may have just had the kids,
so mid-20s, something like that.
This song come on.
And I just said, oh, it's the Beatles.
I like these.
And I done it more.
The louder the radio was,
the less he could talk.
I was getting a bit fed up with it all,
so I just sort of turned the radio up.
And he said...
he said, did I ever tell you about
that guitar then?
I said, what guitar?
He said, the one...
Paul McCartney's guitar.
So I said, no, and he started to laugh.
So I turned the radio down.
He said...
well, he said, I nicked it.
I said, what do you mean, you nicked it?
He said, I didn't even know
it was the guitar.
He said, I just opened this van up.
He said, when I realised what it was,
I thought, oh...
you know, it's Paul McCartney's.
It's the obvious shape,
that proper shape guitar.
I can just imagine, bless him, his face.
"Oh... what we gonna do with that?"
You nick the Mona Lisa,
what you gonna do with that?
You can't sell it.
You know, it's just one of those things.
SCOTT:
It was that family up on the top floor.
They were ignored by
Ian and Trevor on the day.
Nobody went with a wrench
to those people up on the top floor.
NAOMI: And to be honest,
they were ignored by us
in the early days of the search.
- And that is perhaps
one of the most extraordinary things
about this whole story.
STEVE:
It got given to a pub landlord
who run the Admiral Blake.
The landlord at the time
was a chap called Ron.
He said, "I just said to Ron,
'Here y'are, I tell you what.
Give this to one of your kids.
They can learn it.
Just give us a couple of drinks.'"
I said, what? He said, well...
I just had... he said...
he said he bought me
a days' worth of light ales.
So, this guitar ended up with Ron
and I think one of his kids,
Graham, ended up with it.
NAOMI: It had gone to a pub landlord
called Ron Guest.
We knew that it had then been
passed on to his son Graham
who unfortunately had died
in this terrible car crash.
But then we decided to look at
the other children
and I was able to contact Elaine Guest
who was the youngest of the children,
and talk to her.
That's me on the roof
with the two dogs.
Cos the roof was our garden.
I mean, I grew up with Graham
always having a bass.
I can't remember a time
when it suddenly appeared.
It was always Graham's bass.
He was just always playing, you know.
And he didn't mind if I plonked
myself down and listened to it.
Where was it kept here?
In the little bedroom.
DIRECTOR: You don't think he would've
known it was Paul McCartney's?
Definitely not! Definitely not.
I mean, when you think about it,
who in their right mind
would buy a bass
knowing it was Paul McCartney's
and then give it to your son?
Who's gonna take it God knows where
and somebody's gonna say,
but that's Paul McCartney's bass!
But no.
Do you wish you'd played it a bit now?
Now I know it was his, yes!
THEY LAUGH
Were you into The Beatles?
- No.
No. No. I always thought
The Beatles were like a girly band.
NAOMI:
After Graham had died
her brother Hayden took the bass
from their family home.
Hayden got divorced in the 1990s
and then married someone else,
and had ended up in Hastings.
He left his wife and kids and then
got involved with somebody
and that's hence why there's been
NO communication at all.
From what I gather, the bass was just
in the loft in the house at Hastings.
MUSIC: "The End" by The Beatles
KEITH: We were in Los Angeles.
We were rehearsing, I think.
And I got a phone call from a colleague, said
somebody's turned up
at the farm with a bass
and they think it might be Paul's,
this lost bass
that everybody's talking about
all of a sudden
cos it had been in the press by then.
And she'd left some photos
and then took the bass back.
So, I was emailed the photos
and I just had a feeling,
I could feel it, I could...
"Ooh, this is... this is really interesting."
And the next day,
I was with Paul in the morning
and I had my laptop,
and we were about to leave for the studio
and I said, I've got something
I need to talk to you about.
And he thought it was something bad,
he said, is it bad?
I said, no, it's not bad.
And I opened up my laptop
and I was shaking.
I was literally shaking.
The minute I saw the case it was in,
whoa...
I've got it back.
Oh, my God.
And I'm checking it and thinking,
well, yeah that's it, and...
you know, that's how it looked
and this is definitely the case.
And I remember carrying it in that case.
KEITH: So, I organised for somebody
to go and pick it up
and then I said, have you got it?
He said, yep, it's here. I said...
Keep it. Don't let anybody...
Just put it away.
And in the end
The love you take...
We've hardly let it out of our sight.
Is equal to the love
You make
NICK:
And I'm sitting at home on my sofa.
Cathy's sitting over there
and my mobile phone goes
and this voice comes on
and saying,
"Hey, we've got the bass back.
We've got the bass."
And I'm thinking, who's that,
who's this, who are you?
Then the penny dropped,
the accent, the Liverpool accent.
I realised it was Paul McCartney.
Well, we didn't quite know who to tell.
There were factors that meant
we should keep it a secret
for a bit longer,
till we've got our act together
till we absolutely had everyone verify
that it was mine, people like Nick.
So, it was sweet
to be able to ring him up
and say, guess what?
It was stunning, you know. It was like...
Wow, what, really?
I think I said to Paul, I think I'm gonna go
and get a beer out of the fridge for this.
He said, I would.
He said, is it a German beer
like I used to drink in Hamburg?
It was just amazing,
cos I could hear Paul on the phone to Nick
and it was just amazing.
That was incredible for us
to just sit here, thinking
that Nick was in Germany, Paul was in LA
the bass was in Sussex,
and we'd done it.
What happened to me over the last year,
I've had two strokes
which has certainly changed
things for our life.
And the bass has certainly
lightened that situation
for us, I would say.
NICK:
Yeah, sure. Focuses the mind.
NEWSREADER: Paul McCartney's
most treasured bass guitar
that he had played throughout
the early days of The Beatles
vanished without trace.
Now, 51 years later, it has been found.
James Dunham went to meet
the mother of two
who was unaware she was
holding on to an iconic instrument.
I was actually cataloguing
lots of guitars that I've got
and when I googled it,
it immediately came up.
I panicked and then went
straight to his house
cos I knew he lived nearby.
And I eventually found it
after going through a lot of fields.
It had broken in the press that we were
looking for this lost bass.
That might have been one of the reasons
Cathy thought, I better give it back.
There's this little side life it's gone off
and living with all these people
I don't know.
And it ends up with Cathy.
KEITH: You have to remember,
this is Paul's bass.
This is something he really truly
cares and loves
and if you leave a guitar in a loft,
it'll destroy a guitar, you know.
You gotta put it all together
put the strings on and then
just play that first chord
and just hope that you've got it right.
That's where the craftsmanship is
and Martin obviously is
an old-school craftsman
in the way he works,
the way he does things.
STEVE: These poor people that it means
a lot to but it doesn't really sort of...
I'm not that fussed about it.
I just think, get over yourself,
it's just a guitar.
And, you know, now I get it.
I get it now but I still don't
get it, get it, really.
You know, just leave it.
Thieving's nothing to be proud of,
full stop.
But that said, we've all done it.
We've all done it, so...
but it's...
the iconic guitar
that he had in his hands.
The implication, the size...
of it.
Its meaning to, obviously,
Paul McCartney and other people.
The enormity of it all
is just a bit sort of, blimey.
Overwhelming.
- Yeah, a little bit, yeah.
I don't want...
I don't want anyone to think of Dad
anything but a nice lad,
cos that's what he was.
He was a lovely, lovely lad.
But there wasn't always a receipt
in the house for what we had.
It was just...
to make ends meet a little bit.
PAUL:
I don't blame him too much.
You know, I think it's just petty thievery.
It's the kind of thing we would've
done a little bit of in Liverpool.
Just, you know, just...
it's there and I could nick it, so I will.
We got out of that pretty quickly
cos, luckily, The Beatles took over
and we found an honest profession.
But I can sympathise with people
who don't have that kind of luck.
So, I don't blame him too much.
STEVE: I'm not comfortable.
I'm not... alright with it.
You're sort of...
you're taking the name
or my dad, through muddy waters
and that's not what you do.
Growing up anyway, I don't remember
my dad ever telling me he loved me
not that that was a problem for me,
it was just how it was.
When...
we had a little boy
and I rang home, he...
he never told me, Mum told me.
But...
I later found out that he cried
which, Dad never did that.
Dad never cried. I never saw
a tear out my dad's eye.
God knows... I can't remember, I think.
But apparently he cried, cos...
like, to Dad,
it meant the name would never go.
KEITH: Did you just see the one I sent you?
The one with the glue?
Have you seen that one yet?
PAUL: No.
- Oh, I've just sent you...
Oh, I've just sent you another one with
Martin actually gluing the neck back on.
Oh, lovely. Is that Martin?
Yep, say hi.
- Hello, Paul.
Hi, Martin.
- Your bass is saved.
I know! Thanks for doing this.
It's great.
- You're welcome.
I like his workshop as well.
Oh yeah, it's a lovely workshop.
Well, look at his garden.
Oh yeah, that's... there you go.
How beautiful is that?
Yeah.
- The pond.
Beautiful.
Yeah, I can't wait to play it.
Yeah, won't be long.
Have a good one, Paul.
- Thank you.
Bye.
I feel like over the last 20 years or so
Paul, to me, seems to appreciate
more and more
how good they were,
and how good the songs were.
When he plays them,
he really enjoys them.
"This was a great song,
we really, really did well."
And he's so proud of what they achieved.
So, I think now him playing them
on stage is big for him.
I think he loves it.
He's come that full circle.
We can have a little break now.
OK, cool. I've actually got
something you might wanna see.
You've got something for me.
A little something you might wanna see
that I believe belonged to you.
If you wanna come this way.
Whoa, here it is!
Hey...
- Look at that.
Look at that.
Ooh!
- He's done a brilliant job, hasn't he?
Oh, yeah, I wanted to show you that.
Nice little note from Martin.
From Martin.
"Many times I've had the pleasure
of putting music back
into old, broken instruments.
It's been an absolute joy
to do that with your bass
so thanks and I hope you like it.
Keep on truckin'."
Thank you, Martin.
He's done a great job.
- Yeah.
I love those kind of guys.
50 years ago since you've last played that.
It's crazy, innit?
- It's true, isn't it?
It's over 50 years, yeah.
- That's crazy.
But I'd love to know what you were doing.
Maybe rehearsing for something.
Yeah.
And if the van had been parked...
I don't know. Yeah.
- I know it was a long time ago.
Well, the van's parked and the guys
go in for a couple of pints
and they decide they should leave the van
and go home,
come back in tomorrow morning.
Oops.
Slight mistake.
- Big mistake.
So, it gets nicked...
- Yeah.
And then ends up with the local...
pub.
- Is that a bit short, that strap?
Yeah. It's kind of a bigger,
rounder sound as well, isn't it?
HE PLAYS INTRO TO "DAY TRIPPER"
KEITH CHUCKLES
Yeah.
Wow.
There she is.
- Yeah.
Welcome home, honey.
Look at that, wow.
Crazy story.
Yeah. Yeah.
I keep going back to...
SCOTT: You've gotta go a long way
to find somebody
that's grown up without The Beatles.
And I think there's something about
the relationship between
us all, you know, normal people
and The Beatles
and you sort of think you know them,
because you know the music.
The music went global
but the bass,
by going off on that weird route
the minute it went from
that van in Cambridge Gardens
it's gone into that ordinary British world.
It's gone missing here, it's ended up here
in ordinary streets, ordinary pubs,
ordinary families.
And there's something incredible
about that in its own right.
Dad used to take us up...
I was only about four or five, I think.
But he used to pick us up, pick me up,
and we just used to sit on the bar.
I'm trying to be humble, but, you know
I think I was an important
jigsaw puzzle piece
cos, you know, I guess
if I hadn't been a Beatle fan
if I hadn't have met Steve
if I hadn't have played the guitar.
These little things that fall into place,
it might just have been a different story.
We might never have found it.
There you go, to your dad.
Cheers to the old man, absent friends.
NICK:
We didn't get it back just for Paul.
We got it back for everybody
who was a Beatles fan.
All the kids like me.
We were little kids back then.
We're old farts now, you know.
HE LAUGHS
They could see that bass
once more, you know.
CROWD CHATTER
BASSLINE PLAYS
Yeah.
It's much better.
- The logo's totally different.
Yeah, but that's the old logo.
Oh, yeah! Early logo.
Yeah, right!
How does it feel?
- It feels great.
Does it?
Come on, we'll go and open the doors.
Hello!
Always...
- Aww!
Good to see you, Nick.
My love! Fantastic to see you.
First time ever. Hello!
We meet at last.
Maybe he's gonna play the bass.
Who can tell?
CROWD CHEERS
PAUL:
So, a little tale to tell you here.
A while ago...
I had a bass besides this one
my original bass
and it got nicked, to tell you the truth.
And we've been looking for it,
for 50 years.
Well...
I got it back.
And here to make its first
stage appearance in 50 years
is my original bass.
CROWD CHEERS
Get Back.
You ready?
Come on then.
MUSIC: "Get Back" by The Beatles
Jojo was a man
who thought he was a loner
But he knew it couldn't last
Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona
For some California grass
Well, we'd love to see it in your hands
if you're happy to grab it.
I have it right here.
There she is.
There's my old baby.
Do you find yourself getting a bit more
reflective as you get older?
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Yeah, definitely.
Because it's so special.
Now, I don't have an amp.
We were just four guys in Liverpool
who didn't know each other.
I got introduced to John
via a schoolmate of mine
and, yeah, I really liked him.
It's lovely to play.
And then George,
I knew off the school bus.
And John was looking for
someone else to play guitar
and...
I said I've got this mate
who's pretty good.
Yeah, you can get right up there
and you wouldn't normally use that.
I said to George, go on, play,
he's looking.
So I encouraged George,
George got it out of the case
and he plays a thing called Raunchy
which is good, and he did it great.
Then suddenly we had
three of The Beatles then.
And it only needed Ringo to show up
for us to be complete.
MUSIC: "Get Back" by The Beatles
Jojo was a man
who thought he was a loner
But he knew it couldn't last
Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona
For some California grass
Get back
Get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back
Get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, Jojo
Go home...
Hey, guys.
- Alright, it's going.
OK.
Right.
HE HUMS
The lost bass! Yay.
It's a story.
- It is a story.
You know, it's quite a thing, yeah.
And this being my first bass
that I'd got in Hamburg...
all those years ago.
Yeah, I had an attachment to it,
you know.
It just went off
into the universe, you know?
It was like...
Where did it go?
There must be an answer, you know.
Somebody's got it.
THROUGH SPEAKERS:
Oh, darling
Please believe me
I'll never do you no harm
Believe me when I tell you
I'll never do you no harm
- CROWD SCREAMS
Oh, darling
If you leave me
I'll never make it alone
Believe me when I beg you
(Woo!)
Don't ever leave me alone
When you told me
You didn't need me anymore
Well, you know
I nearly broke down and cried
When you told me
You didn't need me anymore
Well, you know
I nearly fell down and died
MAN:
Fantastic, isn't it?
And, as you see, if you think
what's been written in them...
behind them doors there...
- "OH! DARLING" PLAYS ON VAN RADIO
This was one of the main places
where they used to sit and write songs.
They'd sneak, bunk off school,
come in here, eat some fried eggs.
There's a thing about fried eggs.
I don't know why.
You go to Hunter Davies' story,
they're all eating fried eggs.
There must've been a...
Just after the war,
they must've just loved fried eggs...
MIKE MCCARTNEY:
This is where we used to live.
Our humble abode
in Forthlin Road, Allerton, Liverpool.
And this is where
we used to live as a little family.
And there's some people out there.
What are they doing there?
That's why we left.
Lots of lovely memories.
Not enough of me mum.
And the smells that would've
come from the kitchen
when she did Sunday dinners.
She'd do off-cuts of lamb or beef
and sneak 'em in to us, her little boys.
"Shh, don't tell your dad, shh."
See, whenever I talk about my mum
it's always dangerous
cos this is where she went from.
This is our kid's little room.
Yeah, I...
stopped them going in there for many years
because it was too important
to me and my brother.
I was 12, my brother was 14
and she died of cancer.
When you're 12 or 14,
you don't understand.
You have to get on with life.
You have to survive.
And because Dad
had been in his own band
at the back of his mind
he always thought, well,
that was a way out.
And so he bought me a banjo
and my brother a guitar,
a Spanish guitar.
I took that out the back window.
Our kid was sitting in the back garden
lost, just...
miles away with his guitar.
My brother was 14 in that photograph.
Beatlemania came six years later.
PAUL:
If I'm in a not very good mood
a great thing to do is just take a guitar
cos, you think about it,
you sort of hold it to you, a guitar.
And it's kind of a comforting thing to do.
You go off into a little room somewhere,
you know, on your own
and tell the guitar your troubles,
kinda thing.
It's like a cheap psychiatrist, really.
And it turns round and the guitar
sort of sends it back to you
and it comes back as a song somehow.
ANNOUNCER IN GERMAN:
KLAUS VOORMANN:
Well, it started in Hamburg.
MUSIC: "Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey"
by The Beatles
You had gangsters... pimps...
You had prostitutes.
You had all you could imagine.
ARCHIVE REPORTER:
Hamburg is echoing to the invasion
from the latest beat groups
in Britain who've taken over.
KLAUS: I heard the music
through a window, a cellar window.
I just wanted to see
that rock 'n' roll music.
The next band came on
and that was The Beatles.
Paul came up and I think he was
the one to talk to the audience first
because he could speak German.
"Hello! Wie geht us?"
"Guten Tag."
HE LAUGHS
It was really sweet.
I mean, they were young kids.
George was 17, you know.
And I was a little older then.
We became friends,
and they came to the house.
They got great food
put them in a bathtub
because they didn't have any
mother or father to look after them.
There was a friendship.
A friendship grew up, you know.
AUTOMATED VOICE SPEAKS GERMAN
PAUL ON VOICEMAIL:
Oh, danke schoen.
Hey, Klaus, Paul here.
And trying to reach you so we can have
a nice telephone conversation.
So, I'll try again.
Lots of love, bye-bye.
Hm.
He is still that same little Paul he was
when he was 19 years old.
It's the same guy.
I'm a graphic designer.
I had the job to do the cover on Revolver
and a bass player.
But now I can't play any guitar chords
with a cramp, this cramp.
Hand can't do a fist.
Can't do a fist, you know.
Doesn't work, doesn't work.
Luckily enough, I can still hold my pencil.
I'm going to do drawings
of the story of the bass.
I decided to start with the Top Ten.
That's the first time
I actually saw the bass.
INTERVIEWER ON TAPE:
Well, let's...
PAUL:
So what do you want to talk about?
INTERVIEWER: We wanna talk about you
as a bass player, really.
So, I've got Paul's guitar.
And next to it, Stuart Sutcliffe's guitar.
Like that.
PAUL ON TAPE:
My bass guitar days
go back to when Stuart
was the bass player.
Stu had fallen in love
with this girl called Astrid.
Stu decided he was gonna stay in Hamburg
so that meant we didn't have a bass player.
And John and George thought,
I'm not doing it.
So that left me.
PAUL ON TAPE: Eventually then,
I found a nice little shop
in the centre of Hamburg
and I saw this bass in the window.
- SHOP BELL RINGS
The violin-shaped bass, the Hfner.
I don't think it was very expensive,
something like about 30 quid.
Then once I got my own bass,
then I was the bass player.
ECHOING INSTRUMENTS AND CROWD NOISE
KLAUS:
I remember it was the last day
the band played in the Top Ten Club.
And Stuart, it was his last night of playing.
And we were sitting outside,
the sun was shining.
I think it was Sunday morning.
And we were all sitting there,
being all pretty stoned.
Stoned meaning... pills and stuff.
Talking, talking, talking.
John was sitting next to me
and I said, well, Stuart isn't playing,
I could play the bass.
And he said, "Oh, sorry, Klaus,
Paul already bought the bass.
He's gonna be the next bass player."
DIRECTOR:
Could've been your moment, Klaus.
You could've become Beatle number five.
Yeah, alright.
I don't know. Anyway,
I don't even want to think about it!
MIKE: I lived in Hamburg
through my brother's letters.
Then suddenly, he came back one day
and he had that Hfner.
It's so unique.
We were the roadies.
I probably held that bloody thing.
And then our kid got a Ford classic.
Looked cool.
CAR ENGINE REVS
And their music, then...
you know, going to The Cavern.
The difference was unbelievable.
It was like, whew...
Wow, what happened?
We knew we were going somewhere.
We always felt that we had something.
You put John...
Lennon, you know,
he's a very witty cat...
with me, who could hold his own
with George, who was, like, spectacular
and then finish it all up with Ringo.
So we had a kind of magic.
MUSIC: "Some Other Guy" by The Beatles
Some other guy now
Has taken away my sweet desire,
oh now
Some other guy now
I just don't want to
hold my hand, oh now
I'm a lonely one
As lonely as I can feel, alright
Some other guy...
I'm the least technical person you will meet.
So, I don't know what I do.
I just play with it.
It's a lovely instrument to play,
and it's kind of easy to play.
And so I got...
I got very used to it and loved it.
CROWD CHEERS
Close your eyes and I'll kiss you
Tomorrow, I'll miss you
Remember I'll always be true
This Hfner bass really suited
Paul's style of playing.
It's very rhythmical but at the same time,
it's very, very melodic.
All my loving to you
I'll pretend that I'm kissing
The lips I am missing...
AMPLIFIED BASSLINE
You can hear lots of songs
that the songs are very, very simple
and the bass does more movement
than any other instrument.
I'll write home every day
AMPLIFIED BASSLINE
And I'll send all my loving to you
I'm a big fan of James Jamerson,
who was the Motown bass player.
Cos normally, bass is...
SIMPLISTIC BASS IMPRESSION
But he was...
LIVELY IMPRESSION OF "MY GIRL"
I was going, wow,
that's a great way to use the bass.
All my loving...
That set me free.
I was like, great.
OK, I can make up melodies.
So as the guys were doing the main song
I would just try and put
something imaginative behind it.
And it was a great feeling.
I mean, I still remember it,
the moment, bingo!
I will send to you
CROWD APPLAUDS AND CHEERS
MUSIC: "Day Tripper" by The Beatles
Got a good reason
First time I was aware of The Beatles,
I would've been about nine years old.
My clear memory of that is seeing them
on the six o'clock television news
and all the girls were screaming outside
the cinemas and that kinda thing.
And they were playing electric guitars
and let's face it, you know,
electric guitars are so sexy.
My mother would've thought it not
the right thing to have an electric guitar.
That was for bad boys, you know.
Years later, I was the electric guitar
manager with Hfner
a small German guitar company.
Subsequently, I met Paul McCartney.
It was at his studio down south in England.
He just walked in and said,
"Oh hello, you're Mr Hfner.
Do you know where my old Hfner's gone?"
And I knew what he meant straight away.
"My old Hfner", he meant the '61 bass.
PAUL: We'd been looking
for my old bass for years.
But that's what happened with Nick.
I started talking about it and just saying,
yeah, we're looking for it.
I don't know if we'll ever find it.
NICK: Of course, I had to say to him,
you know, I've got no idea where it's gone.
It's all a bit of a mystery.
It's the most important bass
of any bass ever anywhere.
In terms of anybody actually
totally associated with an instrument
yeah, McCartney and the Hfner bass.
There's just something
in the soul of the two of them.
Here's the old Hfner factory
down in Bavaria.
It's still standing.
Poor old place.
And it was here in these premises
that they built the bass,
all those years ago.
That moment.
That turn in history.
You almost had to be there, really,
to feel the electricity in the air.
ECHOING CROWD NOISE
I was probably bored on a wet Wednesday
when I designed and put up
the web page on the Hfner website
with the usual sort of things,
"If you've got any information, email us."
And I think Cathy came up with the name
"trace the bass",
with the hashtag on the front.
I think it was you, was it?
- It was me, yes.
There you are. Genius.
- It's catchy.
Very catchy.
- It's good.
Genius, you see, "trace the bass".
The whole of our marriage,
you know, for the last 20-odd years
Cathy's just supported me
with one lunatic scheme after another.
And she used to be a bank manager,
you see, so she's good at filing stuff.
We talked about it endlessly.
- Endlessly, yeah.
I don't think there was one purpose
in searching for the bass.
There was a hundred million fans out there
who I knew would be thrilled to bits
to know that this thing had come back.
So it was for everybody, not just Paul.
ECHOING CROWD NOISE
CROWD SINGS:
You know you should be glad
Woo!
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
ELVIS COSTELLO:
I was in Liverpool
so I could go every game
that I could afford to go to.
27,000 people used to be on the Kop.
And very emotional sound.
CROWD SINGS:
Pride can hurt you too
Among the many things I memorised
before I picked up an instrument
were the harmony parts.
I can't sing in Paul's register now
but I could then, when I was a kid.
And you know you should be glad
Woo!
And we would cut out cardboard
likenesses of the guitars we liked
and draw the controls on them.
And then mime alone with records.
HE LAUGHS
It was a perfect apprenticeship
for being on Top of the Pops.
You know! Pretending to play.
The hardest thing
was to make a Hfner bass
because you needed a longer
piece of cardboard for the neck.
This is, like, when I'm nine
or something, you know.
Woo!
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
The thing about the Hfner is
it's very lightweight, which is great.
It makes it easier to play.
So that was the one
on all the early Beatles records.
It was a very rich period for music, for us
and particularly for making records.
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...
NICK: That bass was used
an enormous amount
and it started to fall to bits.
And we don't know when, again,
because all the records are long gone.
They ordered another Hfner bass.
We think it gets delivered into
his hand on October 4th, 1963.
They did a gig on an old TV programme
called Ready Steady Go.
And there's pictures of him at rehearsal
and pictures of him actually
doing the performance to camera
and both basses are there.
He's got the '61 from Hamburg.
It has two pickups close together.
And he's got this new one.
They've moved this pickup
down to near the bridge.
And in some of the shots,
he's got the new one
and he's holding it up
but it hasn't even got a strap on it.
So we're kinda concluding
that it arrived that very day.
And the '61 gets put on
backup duties, poor thing.
Within a couple of months of that,
the February
they're playing in front of
70 million people in the USA.
I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
Meanwhile, the '61 bass
is away being repaired.
But I just had to look...
PAUL: Our roadie, Mal, took it off
and brought it back
like new, but with a completely
different paint job on it.
NICK: When it returned,
it had been completely resprayed.
It came back with what's now called
a three-part sunburst
which is more or less black, red, yellow.
It's very distinctive
when you look at this bass now.
KLAUS: For me, the whole charm of
the instrument was gone.
I don't know how Paul feels about it.
I think he was a bit pissed off too.
MUSIC: "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles
Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs
and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs
and had a smoke
And somebody spoke
and I went into a dream
I mean, from a look point of view,
I think the '63 is nicer
maybe even better.
Better pickups,
better sound, louder, whatever.
NICK: He very singularly played
that '63 bass then continuously
and you never see him playing the '61.
You know, he didn't swap and change
between the two or anything.
They went back to America in 1965.
The '61 is being used as the backup
but not played.
At Shea Stadium, if you look really careful
you see Ringo up on the drum riser
and just down below Ringo
on the back of the amp, there's the bass.
You have to look very eagle-eyed
but it's there.
MUSIC: "Get Back" by The Beatles
What happened to it after that
is a mystery.
It's just luck and a lot of peering
at grainy old black and white pictures.
The only time you see it again
you have to wait till a quick shot of it
by the coffee table
on the Let It Be sessions
and then we don't see it anymore.
It's just not around.
Get back
Get back
Get back to where you once
Get back
CLATTERING
- CROWD APPLAUDS
ARCHIVE REPORTER: The event is so
momentous that historians may one day
view it as a landmark in the decline
of the British Empire.
The Beatles are breaking up.
SOBBING
NICK: When they split up,
I mean, all the rancour starts.
The lawyers are in and it was chaotic.
There were guitars here,
there were guitars there
and nobody was really taking care of stuff.
This is the remarkable thing.
It's from the end of The Beatles
nobody had ever seen this bass.
It just wasn't there anymore.
I was never able to establish any
firm basis as to when it disappeared.
I put my hand up absolutely and say
I started this from nowhere,
not knowing how to do it.
So, I was kind of a bit handicapped,
I suppose
and as green as a cabbage as well.
It got to the point where it needed
somebody better than me
to start poking about.
SCOTT JONES:
It was June 2022
when I was watching
Paul McCartney headline at Glastonbury.
But there was one moment in the show
where the stage just went black
apart from one light
just picking out Paul's Hfner bass.
And it just caught the varnish
and the wood and everything.
It was almost like shining like gold
for this split second, and I thought
is that the original Hfner bass?
And so I googled it and saw that it wasn't.
The original bass that he'd got
in 1961 was lost.
And I instantly started googling to see
and find out more about that story.
But in terms of an investigation
and then thinking, I want to find this thing
I thought, well,
if no one else is doing that
and that guitar is so important,
we need to do it.
DIRECTOR:
Who do you mean by "we"?
SCOTT:
Me and my wife, we work together.
And we convinced ourselves that
we may not find the bass,
but we'd find stories about the bass.
We'd find what the bass meant to people.
You know, that sort of
Beatlemania fan thing.
By July 2023
I'd seen that Hfner
over in Bavaria had run a search
and I was really curious
to find out what they know.
So I wrote this very polite email
to sort of introduce myself,
thinking he was German
and being conscious of the sort of
English language that I was using.
And then within 24 hours,
I realised that Nick was from London
and he was on the end of the phone
and we were talking like old mates.
And I thought, oh my God,
these are exactly the people
I've been looking for, for a long time.
We got together and I said,
Scott, look, I've got a lot of emails
and I passed him the lot over
for him to read and get a sense of
what we were dealing with there.
SCOTT:
All of these leads that came in
you knew it was people that had
lived with this story for a long, long time.
It's just that it was wrong.
"A man claiming he had
one of Paul's guitar
walked into a pawn shop in Las Vegas
called the Gold and Silver
Pawn Shop to sell it.
There's a television programme
called The Pawn Stars
where it was aired, hope it helps."
"I definitely saw the bass
in an auction of music equipment
in the mid '80s in London.
It sold for 100
to a music rental studio company."
"I've heard that the bass is in Japan
in the possession of a Japanese banker.
This information was given to me
by a guy that knows the Beatles
and the Beatles gear website well."
I had this vision of...
I used to say to people,
I know what's happened.
Some German guy
rich German guy, has nicked it
and he's got a big castle
in the Bavarian mountains.
And he invites you up
and then after a few drinks
he says,
"Come, I show you something special."
And there over the mantlepiece
is hanging my bass.
So, it's a treasure hunt
but also, people love The Beatles
and love Paul McCartney,
and wanted to help.
TRIBUTE BAND SINGS:
Took me so long to find out
And I found out
She's a big teaser
She took me half the way there
ANDY DICKINSON: I've always admired
Paul McCartney as a bass player.
He made the bass guitar cool.
Beatles fans know that
the bass has disappeared
and no one knows where it's gone.
So, it'd be amazing if
somebody ever did find it
cos that's history, isn't it?
It's history.
Day tripper
Day tripper, yeah
Ever since I can remember,
I've been a Beatles fan.
There's only ever been
one band for me, I think.
First time I ever opened
the Sergeant Pepper's
and you open it up,
and they've all got moustaches.
And I thought, when I get older,
I'm gonna have a moustache.
HE CHUCKLES
So...
I bought it second-hand,
only paid 80 for it
which is not much more
than Paul paid for his probably.
DIRECTOR:
Can you play anything on it?
A little bit of Day Tripper, but...
Yeah, only a little bit.
I need a plectrum!
I've always wanted to play guitar.
I tried for years.
And I thought it might be
easier to play bass
cos there's only four strings.
Here's a Vox.
Vox. Have to have a Vox, don't you,
if you have a Beatles bass?
Oh, no.
After all that, mate, it's broken.
HE LAUGHS
Cut.
AMP HUMMING
- It works.
Lordy...
HE PLAYS BASS LINE
FROM "DAY TRIPPER"
That's it.
Got there in the end.
- Yeah, practice makes perfect, doesn't it?
One way ticket, yeah
It took me so long to find out
And I found out
School drop-off time, innit?
I work for the ambulance service.
I've been doing it 23 years now.
So I'm on the patient transport side,
so it's all non-emergency.
There's a guy, Steve, I work with,
he's a lovely guy
known him for two, three years.
We always have a good laugh
when we're crewing up together.
We bounce off each other quite nicely.
I'm always looking online
for guitars and things
and I think I just,
might have been by accident
went on to the Hfner website
saw that Nick Wass was looking for it
and that was like, yeah,
the holy grail for me.
It's like finding the bible,
trying to find Paul McCartney's bass.
You know,
if you're a fan that's like, wow.
Well, I was with Steve one day
and I said, well, I've still got a bass
that's a bit like Paul McCartney's
and he just sort of said,
I think I know where that is, you know.
And I said, you're joking, aren't you?
STEVE GLENISTER:
So, I just said to him, I said
I've got an idea where
that might be, you know?
And he sort of looked at me,
and I went...
right, I'm gonna tell you something.
I don't know if it's right or proper
but I'm gonna tell you something.
It's only a story I've heard.
He said, where?
I said, it don't matter where, but...
I think it was nicked
from a house in London.
ANDY:
So, I said to Steve, can I tell the story
and can I tell Nick
what little bit you've told me?
STEVE:
I said, don't put my name on it.
No, he said, what we'll do,
he said, I'll email it in
and say it's a story that someone
told us on the back of the ambulance.
A patient.
NICK: I mean, the emails
were quite mixed, if I'm honest.
One of them in particular
was from these two guys
who are a crew on an ambulance.
And they told me this bullshit story
about having a client in the back of
the ambulance, as they described it.
DIRECTOR: A patient?
- Yeah...
I think they call it "client" now,
don't they?
Who'd given them some story about
the fact that the bass had been stolen
and that it had been given
to a guy in a pub
up at Ladbroke Grove, London.
And I thought, yeah, bit more bullshit
but I wrote a polite reply.
"That sounds like a really good book,
Tales From the Back of an Ambulance."
And I left it there.
SCOTT: I had a call from the news editor
at The Telegraph
looking for stories
and I said, look, we're looking for
Paul McCartney's lost bass.
And the minute I said it,
Ben commissioned the story on the spot.
The story in The Telegraph went live
on the 2nd September.
It was a Saturday.
It was around about four o'clock, online.
Within minutes, the BBC were in touch
saying they wanted us on BBC Breakfast.
Well, I'm delighted to say
we're joined now by Nick Wass
who is a Hfner and lost bass expert
and he's provided Paul McCartney
with many of his iconic instruments...
NICK: Lots of interviews
and radio station interviews
day and night.
I realised why being famous
must be absolutely awful.
The difference with the lost bass is
Paul McCartney had it refinished in 1964
and the two pickups are now mounted
in a big black piece of wood here
but I think you've shown your audience
some pictures of what we're after.
But this is it, yeah.
- And the thing is
it is distinctive,
and it should be identifiable.
But of course, it may have been
destroyed somewhere along the line.
It may have just been chucked away.
It could've been taken by
someone at the Apple offices.
We just don't know, do we?
- No, we don't know.
This is the problem.
It was put away, presumably after
they'd finished filming Get Back.
And after that, nobody has
any clear idea of what happened
where it was actually stored...
- PIGEONS FLUTTERING, COOING
...who might have been there.
We're just not clear about that.
SCOTT: In the first 24 hours,
we must have had more than a dozen
major newspapers and radio
and TV stations on
NBC in America and The New York Times
and Le Monde, Spiegel in Germany.
It just went on and on, and then TV channels
that we'd never ever heard of
were getting in touch,
from Brazil and other places.
We thought that we'd almost plugged
into that spirit of The Beatles.
You know,
we thought that we had connected
with that positive vibe
around peace and love and the band,
and what the music meant to people.
We got 600 emails in the first 48 hours.
And the emails were just
landing and landing and landing.
That's when the journalists in us took over
and we started to pick out
what could be really important.
I heard the news today, oh boy
GUITAR STRUMS
About a lucky man who made the grade
SCOTT:
When we read Ian Horne's email
we knew instantly
that we had to speak to Ian.
I just had to laugh
And Ian's lead was the only lead that said
I know Paul McCartney.
- Yeah.
And it was the only lead that said,
I worked for Paul McCartney.
After he broke up with
The Beatles, we met up.
I think Paul was definitely
getting back in the saddle, I call it.
Which was a big step because
I think he hid away for a while.
PAUL: Yeah, you know,
it was very depressing.
Cos you were breaking from
your lifelong friends.
You weren't going to see them again.
It was depressing.
And not knowing whether I was
going to continue in music.
Certainly, I wasn't having a good time.
It wasn't working.
Whereas, Linda had sort of said, you know
you've just gotta get it together
and we gotta do something.
So, we ended up forming Wings.
I knew that if I
kept playing Beatles songs,
which I knew people wanted
then I would become a Beatles tribute band.
And I thought maybe
that's not the greatest look.
IAN: He was experimenting with things
he hadn't done before.
Had a Yamaha bass, a Fender bass.
He went through all the basses
he'd seen people are playing, you know.
And all the people
Say that all people must be free
But meanwhile, back in Ireland
There's a man who looks like me
PAUL: We went on the road.
Boy, did we go on the road.
Tell us about it.
- I mean...
Well, cos the thing is,
normally you go on the road
at least you book hotels.
Anyone books hotels.
But we decided to really
just busk the whole thing.
So, we had a Tranny and we just
headed off up the motorway.
We had the kids, a couple of dogs,
the whole group, all our instruments.
There was a U-Haul
following behind with the roadies.
And we literally turned up
at universities and stuff.
We turned up at Nottingham University,
was the first one.
And we said... in fact, we didn't,
I didn't say anything.
I stayed in the van.
One of the lads, Ian Horne,
actually went in.
"I got Paul McCartney out in the van,
d'you want him on lunchtime tomorrow?"
Really? I need to come out
of the van to sort of check.
Oh yeah! Yeah, we'll have him.
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Make Ireland Irish today
IAN: He was loving it,
being back in the saddle.
He never played the Hfner,
as far as I know.
It was around.
Sort of lugging it around
from place to place?
Yeah, maybe that was more me than him.
I mean, if he asked for it, I've got it.
We'd just finished the university tour
and we were recording an album
called Red Rose Speedway.
And on this particular day,
we'd been in the studio.
We didn't leave till quite late,
so we drove back to Trevor's.
Yeah, Trevor's my brother-in-law.
He was my assistant.
Though he had a truck full of gear
which we had the Hfner bass,
acoustic guitars, some amplifiers.
I couldn't park at Trevor's,
cos opposite Trevor's house was a school
so it was restricted parking.
Just went up the road a bit, turn right
and there's a T-junction there,
which is Cambridge Gardens.
There was a parking place right on the edge,
so I thought I'd put it there
with the back of the truck
visible to everybody.
Basically, it had a big heavy-duty
padlock on the back.
It was a roller shutter on the back.
So I felt fairly secure.
I walked back to Trevor's
and we went to sleep.
And then of course in the morning,
the nightmare began.
We could see that the padlock was off
and I went, oh, God...
you know, cold sweat.
So I've thrown the roller door up
and immediately notice
there's stuff missing, you know.
So there's a couple of amplifiers,
two guitars, including the Hfner bass.
I was beside myself with worry
and anger and pain.
Right opposite where the truck is
so the back of the truck's there,
is 100 Cambridge Gardens.
At the time, it seemed kosher
but all these hippies and people
that lived around Lancaster Road
and Cambridge Gardens in these
squat houses, there's a lot of musicians.
You know, there's obviously
thieves amongst them.
Trevor thought that this guy Dik Mik
was a bit iffy, you know.
DIRECTOR: Why?
- I don't know why really.
He flagged him up.
I didn't flag anyone.
I did feel it was one of that mob because
they all knew we worked for Paul.
And so we sort of got tooled up
in case it got nasty.
DIRECTOR: So, wait, hang on.
In case what got nasty?
I decided we go and check this guy out
so we could end the thing there.
So we went in there,
quite threatening behaviour.
Dik Mik, who's still in bed,
he was shitting himself.
We looked around, no stuff.
And eventually, you know,
we had to go to Paul and tell him the news.
Knock on the door,
and he comes to the door.
The truck's been broken into.
The Hfner bass has been stolen
and a few other things.
And I took a deep breath,
stood there thinking
what's gonna come back at me?
And he was absolutely amazing.
He just turned around and said,
"It's alright, Ian, I've got another one."
I had a feeling in me,
did he think I've done it?
So I rung the police
and the police didn't seem that bothered.
GRAEME BOWD: I think all the papers
used to have contacts in the police.
Their friend's on the news desk,
maybe they'd get a small payment.
That's the way it used to work.
So, in this particular case,
The Standard had got a tip-off
that this had happened,
but they didn't know very much about it
or even if it was true.
Obviously,
the best person to confirm whether
a guitar of his had been stolen,
would be him.
I set off for his house, and I didn't feel
very comfortable about doing this.
I didn't think that this was the kind of
journalism I really wanted to do.
I thought that if he did come out,
he's gonna tell us to fuck off.
HE LAUGHS
Probably an hour passed,
standing around in the road
chatting to the photographer.
Suddenly, without any warning,
a wooden gate swung open
and there was Paul.
I can clearly remember his first words were
"What do you want, boys?"
And the first question I think I asked him
first of all, to confirm that
the guitar had been taken
and he said it had,
so that confirmed the story.
And he confirmed that it was
the original one
that he'd bought back in Hamburg
which I knew about
because I followed the Beatles.
So, then I suddenly realised
that I was actually
in the middle of a very big story
the most famous
or iconic instrument of that era
had been stolen,
and I was talking to the guy who owned it.
And he was quite happy to chat about it.
He'd pose for pictures for the photographer
and I think we probably spoke for
maybe four or five minutes
and at that stage, our presence
is starting to get noticed.
A small crowd of people
are starting to gather
so he politely thanked us
and closed the gate
and went back into the house.
This was the first time I had met a Beatle.
Beatles music has enriched my life
enormously and I just kind of felt
maybe this sounds a little bit sycophantic
but I just really felt that
I'd have liked to have said
can I just thank you
for everything you've done?
I think your music's great.
It's something which will
stay with me forever.
Just something like that.
Just a thank you,
I think that would've been nice.
But I was in a rush
and I never got to do that.
NAOMI: Paul had given a quote
to a newspaper at the time
and so we thought
that you would remember that
or you'd remember, you know,
it was his favourite bass.
It had been stolen.
Nick was scratching his head
as to why he hadn't been told
that that information hadn't been passed on.
NICK:
I have to presume that he'd forgotten.
I mean, this is a guy who's actually
done quite a lot, hasn't he?
He's been a few places and around, so
it may well have just not
registered with him. I don't know.
INTERVIEWER: There has been
a report recently that you have said
that you might get back with The Beatles.
Is this true?
No, I wouldn't think so.
I don't think any of us fancy it,
tell you the truth.
NAOMI: Perhaps the bass
wasn't as important to Paul in 1972
as it was to him when he asked
Nick to start the search.
I think in a way,
The Beatles have done it, you know?
Beatles started from nothing
and got everywhere.
The thing is, I don't know
whether anyone really would even
like to even try and push it
any further, you know?
NICK:
The Hfner was a Beatle bass
and he wasn't a Beatle anymore.
And I don't blame him, you know.
Those guys had had a hell of a life.
For all their fame and money,
they'd had a hell of a time.
I think the Hfner was part of that time
and they just wanted it gone.
SCOTT: Ian thought that the bass
had gone into 100 Cambridge Gardens.
So, we were interested to find out
more about this character Dik Mik
that, at that time, certainly
Trevor suspected and Ian did as well.
Dik Mik was a roadie
and he'd been a weed dealer.
We were able to find that,
in the basement flat
of 100 Cambridge Gardens
a band called Hawkwind
and a lot of members of the band
called Pink Fairies, lived.
Good. That's a good girl.
Trevor and Ian were both very
good friends of mine.
It was the next day
when I saw Trevor, and he just said
"Fuck," he says, "Paul's bass
got stolen out of the van
last night outside Cambridge Gardens."
I said, what?
They said,
keep your ears peeled and...
you know, see if there's any word
coming out or any word on the street, or...
DIRECTOR:
And Dik Mik, who was Dik Mik?
PAUL RUDOLPH: Dik Mik was one of
the people in the original Hawkwind.
Dik Mik was unfortunately, most of the time,
out of his head on Mandrax.
But he could've been outside
blagging away or leaning against the van
or whatever, having a smoke.
You know, and somebody could've said,
whose van is that?
"Oh, it's Wings' van, you know."
I heard reports of
Hawkwind's gear going missing
but that's only the tip of the iceberg.
The whole dynamic around
Hawkwind is somewhat troubled.
NAOMI: In May 1972, Hawkwind
had had 10,000 worth of kit
stolen from their van.
In old newspaper searches,
we found out that
they'd been banned from the BBC
because they'd stolen a microphone.
I think, didn't they write a song
that was sort of anti-The Beatles?
They were anti-The Beatles.
NAOMI:
So they felt quite anarchic.
SCOTT:
It felt like Hawkwind had a motive
and it also felt like they had
the personality to go and do it.
PAUL R:
Ladbroke Grove was pretty funky.
You know, there was the hippies,
there was the...
all the people who had
the fruit and veg stalls.
A lot of thugs showed up
on Portobello Road
and that's when things
started to go downhill.
You know, rougher...
People started injecting.
People started getting stuff stolen.
SCOTT: Paul Rudolph described a place
with a lot of poverty
a lot of people really clinging on.
That it wasn't a big deal for something
to be stolen out the back of a van.
It happened all the time.
The bass did feel like that's
the last place on Earth it should really be
which is a long, long way
from these dark, poorly-lit streets.
You know, lots of political banners
written on bedsheets
sort of hanging out the windows.
And anarchists, and theft.
To picture the bass
in the middle of all of that
makes you feel like this little thing is
out there that desperately needs saving.
But then a penny dropped
and I thought, ah.
I got an email about six months before this
from a guy talking about the bass
being stolen in Ladbroke Grove.
So, I naturally went and dug back
through the pile of emails and found it.
It was from a guy called Andrew,
Andrew Dickinson.
And so, yeah, I contacted them
and said, look, you know...
something's occurred.
We didn't tell them what,
but that further information's arisen.
Can they tell me more?
ANDY: I didn't think we were gonna
hear any more, to be honest.
It was a very small story to tell.
Whereabouts are you struggling?
- Ah, just me neck.
He was, like, really digging in hard,
you Know.
I think he was using his elbow or something.
I think they do a lot with their elbow,
sort of dig in, you know.
Did you get a happy ending?
No.
- No.
I didn't fancy it.
ANDY:
I got back to Steve and said
it's Nick, he's emailed me again.
Next time.
- Yeah.
ANDY: I think, you know,
it's your story to tell.
Do you want to get involved
and say a little bit more?
Oh, God...
Straight away, I thought
I've opened my mouth here
and he's not gonna let this go now.
What I didn't want to come out was
our first house was
just off of Ladbroke Grove
not far from Grenfell Tower.
It was quite a carousel of people
coming and going, really.
I think I was made aware of
who you could talk to
and where you could go.
You had boundaries of where
you could go and where you couldn't go.
So, there was only so many people
you were likely to get to meet
or likely to get to see.
Dad had a couple of jobs.
He played a lot of football,
Saturdays and Sunday mornings.
Dad's mates, they would always tell me
how good my dad was
as a semi-pro footballer.
Cos he was good, Dad.
And there was a pub,
it's called The Admiral Blake.
And that's where they all used to
congregate, my dad and his mates.
So, occasionally I'd get taken across.
It was a good source of information.
It was a good source of recreation.
It was just a good way of socialising
and getting around
and getting to know what was going on
and who was doing what
around the area and stuff like that.
There was racketeering going on
and people going around
and if you want a...
garden fork or a spade,
there's a couple in the back of that lorry
that no one knows they're there,
if you want that.
If you couldn't get rid of it
or you hadn't sold it
take it up the pub,
someone'll have it off ya.
Someone, you know, will buy it off ya.
Obviously, I wasn't always
crewed up with him
so I was getting little bits of information
here, there and everywhere.
So, it got to the stage where,
when I was looking at the rota
I thought, oh no, I'm working with him again,
I know what's coming here.
I'll just have to try
and muddy the waters a little bit here
cos he's not gonna let it go.
ANDY: He'd heard that it had been stolen
from the road that they were in.
They sold it to the barman in the pub
and then they'd sort of
dumped it in the canal
just because they knew
it was Paul McCartney's
and they'd never be able to get rid of it.
We got an A-Z out of the...
out of the van.
I said that was the pub,
so there's the canal there
so I'm assuming there.
He says, whereabouts do you think?
I said, Andy, I don't know, I wasn't there!
So, no idea.
I said, but that's the canal.
If I lived in that pub
I would've walked over that bridge
and just lobbed it there.
And then he said
do you reckon we can get a boat and...?
I said no. No, I don't think
we can get a boat and go and find it.
NICK:
I think Andrew replied to me
saying he would ask his partner
and it's then I get an email from Steve.
NAOMI:
Now, we had a strong lead
it's been stolen and it went on to this pub.
The email had said that it had
been thrown into the canal.
SCOTT:
That was quite a low point, really.
It was almost like, you know,
the body of the guitar
had been dumped into the water there.
And I remember feeling
that the result isn't what we wanted
but we might actually have a story now
that we know where
Paul McCartney's bass is.
But sadly, it's at the bottom of that canal
and probably gone forever.
Three, four
My--
Oh.
INSTRUMENTS RIFFING
ELVIS:
My manager at the time got a call
from Paul's manager at the time.
Richard wants you to go down
to work with Paul.
I said, you're kidding. It was like...
You know, I was 33, I think,
when we started doing that.
He wasn't calling up an eight-year-old
kid who was in the fan club.
One, two, three, four
My brave face
We got off to a flying start, you know.
Unaccustomed as I am
And we just recorded with two guitars
and vocals, and it was good fun.
Only it didn't hit back
There's a version of me singing
My Brave Face where I'm singing lead
so Paul could fly around on the bass,
and he's doing all these moves that I...
but I never felt like
you could hear the voice
because this bass was just too...
it was too big sounding.
At some point, I asked about
the whereabouts of the Hfner
and it suddenly appeared.
Elvis Costello said,
what about your Hfner bass, you know?
Your violin bass, the Beatle bass?
And I was saying, well...
I can try it, but it's not very good
at keeping in tune
which it is isn't, cos they're
not very expensive instruments.
So I'd given up recording with it, really
in favour of more modern instruments.
But he said, "I love the sound of it,
you know, go on."
NICK: But it wasn't the lost bass,
the '61 bass.
This was the '63.
But I think at that point,
things changed for Paul.
Ever since you left,
I've been trying to compose
Will you please come home?
Not meant for you
PAUL: And it recorded great.
It's got a lovely tone for a little bass.
ELVIS: Honestly, I felt vindicated
when I heard the part.
You could hear his personality
really clearly
and it had the tone,
it had the tone.
It was like somebody singing, you know.
Elvis Costello suggested
bringing out the '63.
Maybe that kinda like...
He might've thought, oh yeah.
Maybe that's when
the whole conversation
started up again about,
where is the original one?
By the time we got to '89, '90
when we were about to embark on
a big, massive world tour
and Paul said, what are people
gonna want to...
you know, they're gonna come to the gig,
what are they gonna want?
They're gonna want Beatles.
They're gonna want some big, big moments.
Close your eyes and I'll kiss you
Tomorrow, I'll miss you
Remember I'll always be true
And then while I'm away
I'll write home every day
And I'll send all my loving to you
MUSIC CONTINUES,
MUFFLED AND DISTANKEITH SMITH:
Paul's quite nostalgic about things.
They're important to him.
Not maybe in a collectible way,
but just emotionally.
And they're part of his history
and part of his life, and he...
yeah, he probably missed the bass.
He just wanted it back.
Yeah, well, I think anything
that's nicked, you want back.
You know, especially if it has
a sentimental attachment.
Plus, I was annoyed
that someone nicked it.
You know, it's like, how dare you?
Give me it back, you know.
SCOTT: Very often in investigations,
there's a breakthrough moment
where you're effectively
given something on a plate.
NAOMI:
Who's Stephen?
Who is this person and how does he know
so much about the theft of this guitar?
I'd made an enquiry about
the residence of 100 Cambridge Gardens
so who was on the electoral register?
And I just remember
reading through the list of names
and we got to the name Glenister.
Oh, my God.
His parents are on the electoral register
in 100 Cambridge Gardens.
We was on holiday in Spain
and my phone went.
Is that Steve Glenister? Yep.
Erm, it's Nick Wass here
from the lost bass.
I said, oh right. Hi, you alright?
He said...
I think you know a little bit more
than you're letting on.
Are you prepared to... say anything?
I said, not really, I don't know
anything other than I've told you.
And he said, I think you do.
I knew I had to ask him the question
and say to him, look, Steve...
just tell me what happened.
You know. I know you know, because
you wouldn't have sent me all this stuff.
And I know you were in the house.
Just tell me what happened.
My dad used to come
and watch me play football a lot.
He was never complimentary
about the way I played.
There was always something
I could've done better and that, so
we was coming home one day
and I had the radio on in the car.
DIRECTOR: How old do you think
you were at this point?
I may have just had the kids,
so mid-20s, something like that.
This song come on.
And I just said, oh, it's the Beatles.
I like these.
And I done it more.
The louder the radio was,
the less he could talk.
I was getting a bit fed up with it all,
so I just sort of turned the radio up.
And he said...
he said, did I ever tell you about
that guitar then?
I said, what guitar?
He said, the one...
Paul McCartney's guitar.
So I said, no, and he started to laugh.
So I turned the radio down.
He said...
well, he said, I nicked it.
I said, what do you mean, you nicked it?
He said, I didn't even know
it was the guitar.
He said, I just opened this van up.
He said, when I realised what it was,
I thought, oh...
you know, it's Paul McCartney's.
It's the obvious shape,
that proper shape guitar.
I can just imagine, bless him, his face.
"Oh... what we gonna do with that?"
You nick the Mona Lisa,
what you gonna do with that?
You can't sell it.
You know, it's just one of those things.
SCOTT:
It was that family up on the top floor.
They were ignored by
Ian and Trevor on the day.
Nobody went with a wrench
to those people up on the top floor.
NAOMI: And to be honest,
they were ignored by us
in the early days of the search.
- And that is perhaps
one of the most extraordinary things
about this whole story.
STEVE:
It got given to a pub landlord
who run the Admiral Blake.
The landlord at the time
was a chap called Ron.
He said, "I just said to Ron,
'Here y'are, I tell you what.
Give this to one of your kids.
They can learn it.
Just give us a couple of drinks.'"
I said, what? He said, well...
I just had... he said...
he said he bought me
a days' worth of light ales.
So, this guitar ended up with Ron
and I think one of his kids,
Graham, ended up with it.
NAOMI: It had gone to a pub landlord
called Ron Guest.
We knew that it had then been
passed on to his son Graham
who unfortunately had died
in this terrible car crash.
But then we decided to look at
the other children
and I was able to contact Elaine Guest
who was the youngest of the children,
and talk to her.
That's me on the roof
with the two dogs.
Cos the roof was our garden.
I mean, I grew up with Graham
always having a bass.
I can't remember a time
when it suddenly appeared.
It was always Graham's bass.
He was just always playing, you know.
And he didn't mind if I plonked
myself down and listened to it.
Where was it kept here?
In the little bedroom.
DIRECTOR: You don't think he would've
known it was Paul McCartney's?
Definitely not! Definitely not.
I mean, when you think about it,
who in their right mind
would buy a bass
knowing it was Paul McCartney's
and then give it to your son?
Who's gonna take it God knows where
and somebody's gonna say,
but that's Paul McCartney's bass!
But no.
Do you wish you'd played it a bit now?
Now I know it was his, yes!
THEY LAUGH
Were you into The Beatles?
- No.
No. No. I always thought
The Beatles were like a girly band.
NAOMI:
After Graham had died
her brother Hayden took the bass
from their family home.
Hayden got divorced in the 1990s
and then married someone else,
and had ended up in Hastings.
He left his wife and kids and then
got involved with somebody
and that's hence why there's been
NO communication at all.
From what I gather, the bass was just
in the loft in the house at Hastings.
MUSIC: "The End" by The Beatles
KEITH: We were in Los Angeles.
We were rehearsing, I think.
And I got a phone call from a colleague, said
somebody's turned up
at the farm with a bass
and they think it might be Paul's,
this lost bass
that everybody's talking about
all of a sudden
cos it had been in the press by then.
And she'd left some photos
and then took the bass back.
So, I was emailed the photos
and I just had a feeling,
I could feel it, I could...
"Ooh, this is... this is really interesting."
And the next day,
I was with Paul in the morning
and I had my laptop,
and we were about to leave for the studio
and I said, I've got something
I need to talk to you about.
And he thought it was something bad,
he said, is it bad?
I said, no, it's not bad.
And I opened up my laptop
and I was shaking.
I was literally shaking.
The minute I saw the case it was in,
whoa...
I've got it back.
Oh, my God.
And I'm checking it and thinking,
well, yeah that's it, and...
you know, that's how it looked
and this is definitely the case.
And I remember carrying it in that case.
KEITH: So, I organised for somebody
to go and pick it up
and then I said, have you got it?
He said, yep, it's here. I said...
Keep it. Don't let anybody...
Just put it away.
And in the end
The love you take...
We've hardly let it out of our sight.
Is equal to the love
You make
NICK:
And I'm sitting at home on my sofa.
Cathy's sitting over there
and my mobile phone goes
and this voice comes on
and saying,
"Hey, we've got the bass back.
We've got the bass."
And I'm thinking, who's that,
who's this, who are you?
Then the penny dropped,
the accent, the Liverpool accent.
I realised it was Paul McCartney.
Well, we didn't quite know who to tell.
There were factors that meant
we should keep it a secret
for a bit longer,
till we've got our act together
till we absolutely had everyone verify
that it was mine, people like Nick.
So, it was sweet
to be able to ring him up
and say, guess what?
It was stunning, you know. It was like...
Wow, what, really?
I think I said to Paul, I think I'm gonna go
and get a beer out of the fridge for this.
He said, I would.
He said, is it a German beer
like I used to drink in Hamburg?
It was just amazing,
cos I could hear Paul on the phone to Nick
and it was just amazing.
That was incredible for us
to just sit here, thinking
that Nick was in Germany, Paul was in LA
the bass was in Sussex,
and we'd done it.
What happened to me over the last year,
I've had two strokes
which has certainly changed
things for our life.
And the bass has certainly
lightened that situation
for us, I would say.
NICK:
Yeah, sure. Focuses the mind.
NEWSREADER: Paul McCartney's
most treasured bass guitar
that he had played throughout
the early days of The Beatles
vanished without trace.
Now, 51 years later, it has been found.
James Dunham went to meet
the mother of two
who was unaware she was
holding on to an iconic instrument.
I was actually cataloguing
lots of guitars that I've got
and when I googled it,
it immediately came up.
I panicked and then went
straight to his house
cos I knew he lived nearby.
And I eventually found it
after going through a lot of fields.
It had broken in the press that we were
looking for this lost bass.
That might have been one of the reasons
Cathy thought, I better give it back.
There's this little side life it's gone off
and living with all these people
I don't know.
And it ends up with Cathy.
KEITH: You have to remember,
this is Paul's bass.
This is something he really truly
cares and loves
and if you leave a guitar in a loft,
it'll destroy a guitar, you know.
You gotta put it all together
put the strings on and then
just play that first chord
and just hope that you've got it right.
That's where the craftsmanship is
and Martin obviously is
an old-school craftsman
in the way he works,
the way he does things.
STEVE: These poor people that it means
a lot to but it doesn't really sort of...
I'm not that fussed about it.
I just think, get over yourself,
it's just a guitar.
And, you know, now I get it.
I get it now but I still don't
get it, get it, really.
You know, just leave it.
Thieving's nothing to be proud of,
full stop.
But that said, we've all done it.
We've all done it, so...
but it's...
the iconic guitar
that he had in his hands.
The implication, the size...
of it.
Its meaning to, obviously,
Paul McCartney and other people.
The enormity of it all
is just a bit sort of, blimey.
Overwhelming.
- Yeah, a little bit, yeah.
I don't want...
I don't want anyone to think of Dad
anything but a nice lad,
cos that's what he was.
He was a lovely, lovely lad.
But there wasn't always a receipt
in the house for what we had.
It was just...
to make ends meet a little bit.
PAUL:
I don't blame him too much.
You know, I think it's just petty thievery.
It's the kind of thing we would've
done a little bit of in Liverpool.
Just, you know, just...
it's there and I could nick it, so I will.
We got out of that pretty quickly
cos, luckily, The Beatles took over
and we found an honest profession.
But I can sympathise with people
who don't have that kind of luck.
So, I don't blame him too much.
STEVE: I'm not comfortable.
I'm not... alright with it.
You're sort of...
you're taking the name
or my dad, through muddy waters
and that's not what you do.
Growing up anyway, I don't remember
my dad ever telling me he loved me
not that that was a problem for me,
it was just how it was.
When...
we had a little boy
and I rang home, he...
he never told me, Mum told me.
But...
I later found out that he cried
which, Dad never did that.
Dad never cried. I never saw
a tear out my dad's eye.
God knows... I can't remember, I think.
But apparently he cried, cos...
like, to Dad,
it meant the name would never go.
KEITH: Did you just see the one I sent you?
The one with the glue?
Have you seen that one yet?
PAUL: No.
- Oh, I've just sent you...
Oh, I've just sent you another one with
Martin actually gluing the neck back on.
Oh, lovely. Is that Martin?
Yep, say hi.
- Hello, Paul.
Hi, Martin.
- Your bass is saved.
I know! Thanks for doing this.
It's great.
- You're welcome.
I like his workshop as well.
Oh yeah, it's a lovely workshop.
Well, look at his garden.
Oh yeah, that's... there you go.
How beautiful is that?
Yeah.
- The pond.
Beautiful.
Yeah, I can't wait to play it.
Yeah, won't be long.
Have a good one, Paul.
- Thank you.
Bye.
I feel like over the last 20 years or so
Paul, to me, seems to appreciate
more and more
how good they were,
and how good the songs were.
When he plays them,
he really enjoys them.
"This was a great song,
we really, really did well."
And he's so proud of what they achieved.
So, I think now him playing them
on stage is big for him.
I think he loves it.
He's come that full circle.
We can have a little break now.
OK, cool. I've actually got
something you might wanna see.
You've got something for me.
A little something you might wanna see
that I believe belonged to you.
If you wanna come this way.
Whoa, here it is!
Hey...
- Look at that.
Look at that.
Ooh!
- He's done a brilliant job, hasn't he?
Oh, yeah, I wanted to show you that.
Nice little note from Martin.
From Martin.
"Many times I've had the pleasure
of putting music back
into old, broken instruments.
It's been an absolute joy
to do that with your bass
so thanks and I hope you like it.
Keep on truckin'."
Thank you, Martin.
He's done a great job.
- Yeah.
I love those kind of guys.
50 years ago since you've last played that.
It's crazy, innit?
- It's true, isn't it?
It's over 50 years, yeah.
- That's crazy.
But I'd love to know what you were doing.
Maybe rehearsing for something.
Yeah.
And if the van had been parked...
I don't know. Yeah.
- I know it was a long time ago.
Well, the van's parked and the guys
go in for a couple of pints
and they decide they should leave the van
and go home,
come back in tomorrow morning.
Oops.
Slight mistake.
- Big mistake.
So, it gets nicked...
- Yeah.
And then ends up with the local...
pub.
- Is that a bit short, that strap?
Yeah. It's kind of a bigger,
rounder sound as well, isn't it?
HE PLAYS INTRO TO "DAY TRIPPER"
KEITH CHUCKLES
Yeah.
Wow.
There she is.
- Yeah.
Welcome home, honey.
Look at that, wow.
Crazy story.
Yeah. Yeah.
I keep going back to...
SCOTT: You've gotta go a long way
to find somebody
that's grown up without The Beatles.
And I think there's something about
the relationship between
us all, you know, normal people
and The Beatles
and you sort of think you know them,
because you know the music.
The music went global
but the bass,
by going off on that weird route
the minute it went from
that van in Cambridge Gardens
it's gone into that ordinary British world.
It's gone missing here, it's ended up here
in ordinary streets, ordinary pubs,
ordinary families.
And there's something incredible
about that in its own right.
Dad used to take us up...
I was only about four or five, I think.
But he used to pick us up, pick me up,
and we just used to sit on the bar.
I'm trying to be humble, but, you know
I think I was an important
jigsaw puzzle piece
cos, you know, I guess
if I hadn't been a Beatle fan
if I hadn't have met Steve
if I hadn't have played the guitar.
These little things that fall into place,
it might just have been a different story.
We might never have found it.
There you go, to your dad.
Cheers to the old man, absent friends.
NICK:
We didn't get it back just for Paul.
We got it back for everybody
who was a Beatles fan.
All the kids like me.
We were little kids back then.
We're old farts now, you know.
HE LAUGHS
They could see that bass
once more, you know.
CROWD CHATTER
BASSLINE PLAYS
Yeah.
It's much better.
- The logo's totally different.
Yeah, but that's the old logo.
Oh, yeah! Early logo.
Yeah, right!
How does it feel?
- It feels great.
Does it?
Come on, we'll go and open the doors.
Hello!
Always...
- Aww!
Good to see you, Nick.
My love! Fantastic to see you.
First time ever. Hello!
We meet at last.
Maybe he's gonna play the bass.
Who can tell?
CROWD CHEERS
PAUL:
So, a little tale to tell you here.
A while ago...
I had a bass besides this one
my original bass
and it got nicked, to tell you the truth.
And we've been looking for it,
for 50 years.
Well...
I got it back.
And here to make its first
stage appearance in 50 years
is my original bass.
CROWD CHEERS
Get Back.
You ready?
Come on then.
MUSIC: "Get Back" by The Beatles
Jojo was a man
who thought he was a loner
But he knew it couldn't last
Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona
For some California grass
Well, we'd love to see it in your hands
if you're happy to grab it.
I have it right here.
There she is.
There's my old baby.
Do you find yourself getting a bit more
reflective as you get older?
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Yeah, definitely.
Because it's so special.
Now, I don't have an amp.
We were just four guys in Liverpool
who didn't know each other.
I got introduced to John
via a schoolmate of mine
and, yeah, I really liked him.
It's lovely to play.
And then George,
I knew off the school bus.
And John was looking for
someone else to play guitar
and...
I said I've got this mate
who's pretty good.
Yeah, you can get right up there
and you wouldn't normally use that.
I said to George, go on, play,
he's looking.
So I encouraged George,
George got it out of the case
and he plays a thing called Raunchy
which is good, and he did it great.
Then suddenly we had
three of The Beatles then.
And it only needed Ringo to show up
for us to be complete.
MUSIC: "Get Back" by The Beatles
Jojo was a man
who thought he was a loner
But he knew it couldn't last
Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona
For some California grass
Get back
Get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back
Get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, Jojo
Go home...