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Paul McCartney has given the Hofner 500/1 a thumbs up for nearly 50 years!

Many stories have circulated over the years about a special Hofner 500/1 with gold-plated hardware presented to McCartney. Most accounts agree that in 1964 Brian Epstein struck a deal with Selmer, the company that imported Hofner basses in England: McCartney would endorse their line of violin basses on little “swing tags” on each instrument and Selmer would give Epstein a piece of the action (£5 a pop) and McCartney a swanky new bass.

The most comprehensive scrutiny into this matter has been done by Andy Babiuk. In his excellent book Beatles gear Babiuk did a masterful job of unscrambling what happened after the ink dried. After Selmer made the presentation (the photos of the event have been lost), it apparently kept the special 500/1 to exhibit in an upcoming trade show, then either returned it to stock, which seems unlikely, or sent it to McCartney at NEMS or Abbey Road, where it was promptly stolen.

It surfaced the next year in a music shop in Luton, where a young bassist by the name of John Bunning bought it for £65. Apparently Bunning knew of the McCartney connection, because he bragged about it to a local newspaper, yet in ’71 he traded it to a friend, as Babiuk reports. The friend sold it to Jim Marshall, who ran a music store in Bletchley. Marshall sold it to a fellow named Stephen Boyce, who played it for 10 years. After Mr. Boyce passed away, his widow sold it to a music store in Biggleswade for £200. That outfit called around looking for a replacement pickguard, and when they contacted Music Ground in Doncaster, an intrigued Justin Harrison bought the bass for £800. Harrison figured out what he had, calculated its value at £4,500 and offered it for auction at Sotheby’s in 1994, but without proper documentation the bass didn’t sell.

In ’97 Music Ground tried again to auction the bass, this time in Tokyo through Bonhams, but their claim that McCartney had played the bass as a Beatle was shot down by various parties, including a British consumer-rights TV show — and McCartney himself. Eventually the bass went at auction but for some reason the sale was never finalized, so Music Ground still has this instrument.

What can be said about this bass? Well, Paul McCartney touched it.

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Young Paul McCartney stretching his fingers while playing a Rosetti Solid 7

Not a solid body but a sunburst (black to red) semi-acoustic made in Holland by Egmond and renamed by the Rosetti firm, which imported them into the UK and sold them for about £20, which included the Royal pickup/scratchplate kit.

“We went to play in Hamburg,” McCartney says in the Bacon interview, “and I’d bought a Rosetti Solid 7 electric guitar in Liverpool [at Hessy's Music] before we went. It was a terrible guitar. It was really just a good-looking piece of wood. It had a nice paint job, but it was a disastrous, cheap guitar.” (It looked pretty impressive in the advert.)

Back in Liverpool, after temporary bassist Chas Newby left, McCartney restrung the Rosetti with three or four bass strings reportedly “borrowed” from a piano and used it until Sutcliffe returned with his President bass. The Rosetti, once again with a full complement of strings, then played a return engagement in Hamburg, where it met its ignoble end.

McCartney recalled in a 1964 interview that he “didn’t want to get rid of it, but I had to, because it got smashed when I dropped it one day. It wasn’t a complete write-off, but I didn’t think it was worth repairing, so all of us . . . had a great time smashing it to bits by jumping up and down on it! Bit mad, I suppose, but we had to get rid of our pent-up energy sometimes and it seemed the ‘obvious’ thing to do at the time!”

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George Harrison playing his Gibson ES-345-TD Tobacco Sunburst – Stop Tailpiece; vintage ’63-’65

It’s been reported that one of the Moody Blues loaned this guitar to Harrison after his Country Gent was smashed on a roadway on 2 December ’65, but photos from the “Daytripper” and “We Can Work It Out” video session of 23 November show Harrison playing this guitar, so another myth bites the dust. Other photos show him using it on the December British tour, but after that — nothing. It doesn’t show up in current photos of his collection, so it may just be one of those guitars that passed through his hands. I wish I had more to report, but that’s show biz!

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John Lennon strumming his 1965 Martin D-28 Acoustic Guitar

This dreadnought acoustic took its place alongside the Gibson J-160E on Beatles albums, beginning with The Beatles. Lennon brought it to India in February 1968 and composed on it most of his “White Album” songs.

The front and back of a 1965 Martin D-28 much like Lennon’s axe!

In December 1969, Lennon took this guitar along on a visit to Toronto, and gave it to rockabilly guru Ronnie Hawkins. However, a recent inspection revealed that the guitar Hawkins now has is a 1972 D-28. The Hawk says Lennon’s gift “was ‘exchanged’ by someone I thought was a friend; didn’t know ’til lately . . . the way of the world.” Attention scoundrel house guest: Shame on you. Give it back.

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Rock band Kiss in full glam flare, now go on and join the Kiss army!

Artists such as The Kinks and The Who started experimenting with feedback and created the now infamous wall of amps that paved the way for a new level of intensity in rock and roll. By the late 60s, songs like Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild and Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida introduced rock radio to a beefier sound and lengthier song format. In 1969, the world was introduced to Led Zeppelin, who have come to be one of the most influential bands of all time, especially among metal artists. The 70s kicked right in with the emergence of Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, two bands that have long been hailed as the originators of heavy metal. In the mid-70s, metal was in full swing, with bands like AC/DC and Judas Priest hitting the scene followed by the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) that gave us bands like Iron Maiden and Motorhead, among many others.

By the late 70s, a new crop of rising stars such as KISS and Alice Cooper emerged that created a larger-than-life theatrical element, including stage makeup, that would lead the way for the dramatic music of the 1980s.

In the early 1980s, a whole new conglomeration of young rockers, such as Ratt, Motley Crue, Quiet Riot, and Van Halen dominated L.A.’s famous Sunset Strip, MTV, and radio waves with their glam-rock imagery, technically proficient musical skills and anthemic vocal melodies. Also rising in the mid-80s was an underground insurgence of thrash metal’s meaner and faster sound that gave us legendary bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax. By the late 80s, heavy metal was in full effect and taking the world by storm.

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Paul McCartney slinging a sunburst ’66 Fender Jazz Bass, live at Abbey Road studio!

Apparently not part of Fender’s “gift package” of guitars and amps (they’d included a right-handed Jazz Bass), this sunburst model shows up in Abbey Road studio photos from “White Album” sessions. Its oval-shaped tuners are peculiar to the 1966 model year; Fender basses otherwise featured “clover leaf” tuners.

Paul and George jamming along during the White Album recording sessions

According to Walter Everett in The Beatles as Musicians (Volume 1), this Jazz Bass is played on five tracks: “Yer Blues,” “Glass Onion,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Sun King” and “Mean Mr. Mustard.” [Everett infers that the right-handed model was also used during the sessions, by Lennon ("Helter Skelter") and Harrison ("Back in the USSR.")] McCartney’s kept most of his instruments, and this probably is no exception.

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George Harrison’s 1961 Fender “Rocky” Stratocaster from the Magical Mystery Tour TV special!

George Harrison got that Fender. In the studio one day he and Lennon dispatched Mal Evans to “get a couple Strats,” and because Brian Epstein was picking up the bill if they were identical, Evans came back with two ’61s in a rare blue color. Used first on “Nowhere Man” and then for the Rubber Soul sessions, and regularly thereafter.

In ’67, to commemorate the “All You Need Is Love” satellite broadcast, Harrison gave his Strat a psychedelic paint job and nicknamed it “Rocky.”

“The paint started flaking off immediately,” he recalls in the Anthology book. “We were painting everything at that time: our houses, our clothes, our cars, our shop. Everything. In those days day-glo orange and lime paint were very rare, but I discovered where to buy them — very thick, rubbery stuff. I got a few different colors and painted the Strat, not very artistically because the paint was just too thick. I had also found out about cellulose paint, which came in a tube with a ball tip, so I filled in the scratch plate with that and drew on the head of the guitar with [wife] Pattie’s sparkly green nail varnish.”

Later in ’67 it featured prominently in the “I Am The Walrus” scene in the “Magical Mystery Tour” TV special. In his solo years, Harrison had it set up properly for his slide guitar work, and dusted it off for “Free as a Bird.”

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John Lennon picking a few choice banjo chords on his Gallotone acoustic!

Lennon bought this 3/4-size guitar by mail for about £10 after seeing an advertisement in Reveille magazine. Made by the Gallo company of South Africa, it was “Guaranteed Not to Split.” Banjo player and sympathetic spirit Julia Lennon allowed her son’s new guitar to be delivered to her house, rather than that of disapproving Aunt Mimi. The lad started a band, the Black Jacks, with his mate Pete Shotton. His mother had shown him a few five-string banjo chords, so Lennon played the guitar with the sixth string left slack. With the addition of a few more members he rechristened the group the Quarry Men, and it was that outfit that played the St. Peter’s Parish Fete in Woolton, Liverpool on 6 July 1957 when McCartney entered the picture. Lennon wailed on this beginner model until it broke the following year. Whether the instrument — made of laminated woods — actually “split” is undetermined.

Long thought missing, this guitar recently turned up and was auctioned through Sotheby’s. The auction house called on original Quarrymen member Rod Davis to help authenticate the guitar, and in a Liverpool Echo story he remembers that when the band played that famous fete “John took the skin off the edge of his index finger while playing,” and when Davis changed one of the strings on Lennon’s guitar, he noticed a spot of blood inside. So Davis recounted that story to Sotheby’s and advised them to look inside for the spot, and “although faint, it was still there.”

So where has it been all these years? In its auction coverage, the Times of London reported that “when the Beatles became successful, Lennon left the guitar in the care of his guardian, Aunt Mimi. After his murder, she gave it to a family friend who had a disabled son. When the boy died, it was passed to another disabled friend, who is now in her twenties. Her stepfather sold it to safeguard her future.”

The Sotheby’s catalogue adds that “a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of this lot will be donated to the Olive Mount Learning Disabilities Directorate, Liverpool.” Interestingly, it also includes excerpts of an undated document accompanying Mimi Smith’s donation. Her typewritten and signed letter, sent from her home in Sandbanks, Poole, states:

“With regards to the request for items in support of your Liverpool handicapped musicians appeal, most requests I have to refuse, however, in this case I feel able to make an exception . . . The poor old guitar was in such a state when I found it I had it professionally repaired . . . I hope that through you John’s possessions can bring pleasure . . .”

The guitar, which was auctioned together with the trunk it sat in for years, now sports a brass plaque Mimi had mounted on the headstock memorializing her advice to the young, guitar-happy Lennon: “Remember, you’ll never earn your living by it.”

So whence this mythic instrument? An anonymous bidder later identified as a “private collector” named Adam Sender got it for £155,000 (about $250,000). In the fall of 2000 this guitar went on display at Boston’s Museum of Fine Art.

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Paul McCartney seen rocking out on his first guitar a Zenith Model 17 acoustic!

In June 1956, McCartney’s father gave him a trumpet for his fourteenth birthday. “I used to play it a little bit,” he recalls in Many Years From Now, the Barry Miles biography, “because that was the hero instrument then, The Man with the Golden Arm and everything, but it became clear to me fairly quickly that you couldn’t sing with a trumpet stuck in your mouth.”

At the same time, skiffle-band fever was sweeping England, and after getting his dad’s permission, young McCartney brought the trumpet back to Rushworth and Dreaper’s Music, where he traded it in for this model made in Germany by Framus.

When he got home with the £15 guitar, he “couldn’t figure out at all how to play it. I didn’t realize it was because I was left-handed, and it wasn’t until I saw a picture of Slim Whitman, who was also left-handed, and I saw that I had the guitar the wrong-way round.”

Once he re-strung the guitar “upside-down,” McCartney discovered that the first string rattled around in the wider notches designed for the sixth string, so he carefully shaved down a safety match and made a little block to keep the string from moving about. Later he mounted a little pickup near the bridge, and eventually removed the pickguard, and used this guitar until the Beatles’ first trip to Hamburg. The Zenith, on which McCartney composed his earliest songs, including “When I’m 64,” still hangs in his studio; he pulled it down for the “Anthology” video to play a bit of “Twenty Flight Rock.”

Great photo of Paul with his Zenith guitar…. notice John Lennon also strumming away!

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George Harrison live in action strummin’ on his 1958 Rosonet Futurama!

When Harrison went to Hessy’s Music in Liverpool on 20 November looking for a new guitar, he was thinking “Stratocaster,” but the closest Frank Hessy could come was this sleek three-pickup Futurama.

Originally called a Grazioso Resonet, manufactured by the Delicia company in Czechoslovakia, and renamed by Selmer, who imported them into the U.K. The price was a whopping £55, a small fortune in those days. Its advert bragged it was “made from the finest selected timbers” and was “practically indestructible.”

Harrison is seen playing it in pictures of the Larry Parnes audition and the Scotland tour (May-June 1960), and brought it along on the Beatles’ first trip to Hamburg later that year. During their second Hamburg trip he used it on their first proper recording session (for Bert Kaempfert, June 1961), which produced, among other tunes, “Cry For a Shadow.” A month later the band was back in Liverpool, and the rapidly improving Harrison went looking for a better guitar.

The Futurama “was a dog to play,” he recalled in the Guitar Player interview (November ’87).

“It had the worst action. It had a great sound, though, and a real good way of switching in the three pickups and all the combinations.”

In the Anthology book, Harrison recalls the day he found this instrument in Rushworth and Dreaper’s shop in Liverpool.

“Paul came with me when I bought the Futurama. It was on the wall with all the other guitars, and Paul plugged it into the amp but he couldn’t get any sound out of it, so he turned the sound right up. The guitar had three rocker switches, and I just hit one and there was an almighty boom through the amplifier, and all the other guitars fell off the wall. My mother signed the hire-purchase agreement for me . . . “

Records show that Brian Epstein eventually paid off the account on this guitar. What happened to the Futurama? In ’64 Harrison gave it to Beat Instrumental magazine to raffle off, but the winner decided he’d rather have the money, so publisher Sean O’Mahoney paid the man and kept the Futurama, and he still has it.

A photo of a similar vintage Rosonet Futurama shows more clearly the push-button pickup switches and the Stratocaster styling that appealed to young Harrison.

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