Have You Seen Paul McCartney’s Lost Bass Guitar? Tips Welcome.

Before Beatlemania, there was the distinctive Höfner violin bass — the primary guitar that Paul McCartney purchased after changing into the bassist for the Beatles.

That bass might be heard on a few of the band’s most well-known hits, together with “Love Me Do,” “She Loves You,” and “Twist and Shout.”

Mr. McCartney picked up the instrument in a Hamburg music retailer in 1961, and it accompanied the Fab Four as they rocketed to gorgeous success, changing into essentially the most well-known band on the planet. But the guitar vanished eight years later.

A brand new marketing campaign is searching for to search out the lacking instrument, and tons of of individuals have responded, hoping to assist resolve the decades-old thriller: Where is Paul McCartney’s lacking bass guitar?

“It’s a hugely significant instrument in its own right,” mentioned Nick Wass, a semiretired guide for Höfner, the guitar’s producer, who has joined forces with two journalists to try to observe the guitar down. “It’s the bass that made the Beatles.”

“The bass was absolutely at the heart of the origins of the Beatles sound,” mentioned one of many journalists, Scott Jones, who labored for the BBC. “The smallest pieces of information can often lead to the biggest breakthroughs,” he mentioned of their enchantment for tips about its destiny.

Mr. Jones’s spouse, Naomi, is the opposite journalist behind what they’re calling The Lost Bass Project.

The three Beatles followers have urged members of the general public to come ahead with any info that may assist. No tip is simply too small, they are saying, and they’re promising to maintain sources confidential. They say they’ve already acquired a number of credible leads because the venture was launched on Saturday.

The instrument’s treasured place in Beatles mythology is intertwined with the band’s story. After the departure of their unique bassist, Stuart Sutcliffe, Mr. McCartney, who had been enjoying guitar, switched devices to interchange him throughout a residency in Hamburg in 1961. For that, he wanted a brand new bass guitar.

“I got my Violin Bass at the Steinway shop in the town center. I remember going along and there was this bass which was quite cheap,” he mentioned in a 1993 interview with Guitar Magazine, including that he had not wished to enter debt and will solely afford the Höfner, 500/1 guitar on the time. It price about £30 kilos, or $38, he recalled. “And once I bought it, I fell in love with it.”

Mr. McCartney took the guitar again to Britain, the place it accompanied the Beatles by means of tons of of gigs — from the band’s early live shows on the Cavern Club in Liverpool, the place they had been noticed by Brian Epstein, who would develop into their supervisor, to the recording of their first two albums. It was repaired in 1964, based on the staff behind the brand new search, after which used together with different bass guitars.

But the final confirmed sighting of the instrument was in London in 1969, in video footage of the band members writing their closing album, “Let It Be.” Rumors have percolated ever since about what occurred to the instrument: The Lost Bass Project means that it may have been stolen or misplaced both from the basement of Abbey Road Studios, or from the Apple Corps recording studio on Savile Row.

A consultant for Paul McCartney declined a request for an interview. But Mr. Wass mentioned he understood, from earlier communications with Mr. McCartney, that he was eager to be reunited with the instrument. “He calls it the ancient one,” Mr. Wass mentioned.

Among the leads that they had acquired, Mr. Jones mentioned, had been ideas that the instrument may have traveled to the United States or Japan. But he added that every one the leads should be vetted. “Somewhere among that information there is going to be the answer,” he mentioned.

Other iconic devices have been misplaced and located over time — one shut instance being a Gibson acoustic guitar belonging to John Lennon, which was purchased in 1962 after which misplaced the next yr. Half a century later, it re-emerged and was offered at public sale in 2015 to an nameless purchaser for $2.4 million.

It is unclear what the market worth of Mr. McCartney’s lacking guitar can be, however the staff behind the search insists that the trouble isn’t for financial achieve, calling the guitar “priceless.”

“We just want to know where it is,” mentioned Mr. Wass.