 1961: Hofner
500/1 3/4 scale "violin" bass: By the time
The Beatles
returned
to Hamburg to play an engagement at the Top Ten Club in
April 1961,
McCartney
had reluctantly assumed bass duty. Stuart
Sutcliffe had decided
to
leave the band -- discouraged by his poor musicianship
but also deeply
in love with a German lass, Astrid Kirchherr -- and to
return to his
art
studies.
And stand-in bassist Chas Newby had gone back to
school.
The
prevalent theme among the remaining Beatles was "Don't
look at
me."
"Nobody wants to play bass, or nobody did in those
days," recalls
McCartney
in Many Years From Now (Barry Miles).
"Bass was the
thing
that the fat boys got lumbered with and were asked to
stand at the back
and play . . . So I definitely didn't want to do it but
Stuart left,
and
I got lumbered with it. Later I was quite happy . . . "
There are
reports
but no photos of McCartney playing Sutcliffe's Hofner
President bass --
without re-stringing! -- and apparently the re-worked
Rosetti had
finally
disintegrated at this point, so McCartney found himself
in Hamburg's
Steinway
Musichaus one day. "I remember going along there,
and there was
this
bass which was quite cheap. I couldn't afford a
Fender.
Fenders
even then seemed to be about £100. All I
could really
afford
was about £30 . . . so for about £30 I found
this Hofner
violin
bass. And to me it seemed like, because I was
left-handed, it
looked
less daft because it was symmetrical. Didn't look
as bad as a
cutaway
which was the wrong way. So I got into
that." As
left-handed
instruments were rarely seen hanging on shop walls at
that time, some
researchers
contend McCartney merely saw a right-handed model and
ordered a
lefty.
Whatever the case, as with Lennon and his Rickenbacker
325, McCartney
soon
would become forever associated with this distinctive
model. He
used
this bass on stage and in the studio through With
The Beatles,
at which point Hofner gave him a new, updated
model. So in '64,
he
had this first bass refinished in polyester sunburst by
Sound City of
London
and had new pickups and pots installed. After that
it served as a
backup on the '64 tours but in general took a back seat
to its newer
brother.
It appeared again in late '68, minus its pickguard, for
the
"Revolution"
video from the David Frost show, and it's last seen in
footage from
Twickenham
Studios, where the Beatles were filming "Let It
Be." This guitar was finally tracked down in 2024 after "The Lost Bass Project" launched a campaign to find it. It had been stolen from a van after a Wings show in Notting Hill in October 1972. The thief had sold the guitar to a pub landlord. A party in the south coast of England saw press reports of the search and remembered an old bass in the attic, and the search was over. McCartney gladly accepted the prodigal Hofner and rewarded its unknowing keepers.
|
