“It went off into the universe and it left us thinking, where did it go? There must be an answer…” The remarkable story of Paul McCartney’s Höfner 500/1 bass – which went missing for 50 years – to feature in new documentary

The story of Paul McCartney’s stolen Höfner 500/1 bass guitar is to be told in an all-new feature length documentary.

With a working title of The Beatle and the Bass, the film unpacks the mystery of what happened to Macca’s bass after it was stolen out of a van in London in 1972.

It had remained missing and of sight for 50 years until Höfner launched a global appeal in 2023, putting the investigative journalists Scott and Naomi Jones on the tail of the four-string. The Lost Bass Project was born. And the Lost Bass Project delivered the goods; they found it.

The bass turned up in an attic in Suffolk, England, in late 2023. A few months later the bass was back in McCartney’s hands, and made its return to the stage at the final show in his Got Back 2024 Tour, when he performed Get Back with Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood accompanying him on a Gibson Les Paul Custom.

In a quote from the documentary, McCartney explains why all this matters. This is a story of cosmic justice, musical history, and reconnecting with the instrument that helped him and the Fab Four make their name

“I think anything that’s nicked, you want back, especially if it has sentimental value,” says McCartney. “It just went off into the universe and it left us thinking, where did it go? There must be an answer…”

Paul McCartney with Ringo Starr and Ronnie Wood, The O2, London, 19 December 2024 - YouTube

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McCartney was just a teenager when he bought the Höfner in 1961. The Beatles were in Hamburg, and when he saw it, he knew it was the one. It felt right. McCartney has long credited it with shaping how he played the bass.

“The Höfner is so light, it encouraged me to play with a light touch and be more adventurous with it,” he told Bass Player in 2005. “I’d play it more like a guitar, whereas my big, heavy Wal five-string led me to play more solid, deep bass. So looking back, the Höfner was a key to my style.”

You can hear what he means on the Beatles’ Lovely Rita, from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, where his wayfaring bassline takes up the octave, adding musical information and melody as it goes, before coming back down to take care of the low end.

“It’s just something I love to do and recognize as a sort of signature of mine,” he said. “The slides and slurs are from playing guitar and using some of that approach on my Höfner.”

The Beatle and the Bass is being produced Passion Pictures, the same production team behind the award-winning Christopher Reeve documentary, Super/Man, and was commissioned by BBC Arts.

Ceire Clark, VP of non-scripted acquisitions at Fremantle, who’s distributing the film, says the film will take us on a “global journey” and explain why McCartney's Höfner 500/1 is considered to be “the most important bass guitar in history”. It is a must-watch for Beatlemanics; Macca plays a starring role.

“The documentary offers a fresh perspective on music history, with access to McCartney himself and those who witnessed The Beatles’ rise from the very beginning,” says Clark. “At Fremantle, we’re proud to be part of a project that celebrates the enduring power of music and storytelling to connect people around the world.”

Of course, we know how the story is going to end. What we don’t know is exactly where this bass has been all this time. It is said to have had a number of owners after a thief snatched it in Notting Hill. It was reportedly sold to a pub landlord for a paltry sum – “not much money plus a few free pints” – and somehow ended up in the possession of Cathy Guest, an English mother of two whose late husband had inherited it from his brother.

McCartney was so happy to be reunited with it that he reportedly gave Guest a six-figure reward. We’d have been happy with a few pints with Macca. For the record, some estimate its value to be in excess of $12.5m.