Paul McCartney: Long-Lost Höfner Bass Finally Returned

Paul McCartney has been reunited with his long-lost Höfner bass.

A statement confirming this news was shared via his website. It says, "Following the launch of last year's Lost Bass project, Paul’s 1961 Höfner 500/1 bass guitar, which was stolen in 1972, has been returned. The guitar has been authenticated by Höfner and Paul is incredibly grateful to all those involved."

According to the Lost Bass project's website, the search for the Höfner bass first began in 2018. After the journalist couple Scott and Naomi Jones joined the project in May 2023, the project started getting more and more leads. The Lost Bass project's website says they received over 100 leads on the bass. Additionally, over 600 people contacted the project offering to help.

The website notes, "We received information about the actual theft, that it had been stolen from the back of a 3 ton van during the night of 10th October 1972, in the Notting Hill area of London ... We quickly realized that this information corresponded exactly with a story we had received in an email about the bass being stolen."

As the project's investigation continued, they determined that the person who stole the bass sold it to a man named Ronald Guest. Guest was the landlord of the Admiral Blake pub in London. Once the purchaser was determined, this information eventually led to the Höfner bass being found.

The found Höfner bass is in need of repairs, and it was still in its original case. It's likely that the finest luthiers will be able to repair the bass to make it playable again. As of publishing, there are no publicly known future plans for the iconic guitar. However, fans the world over are thrilled it's been returned to Sir Paul after being missing for over 50 years.

If Paul McCartney retired from music after the Beatles broke up, no one would blame him. How do you follow up nearly a decade of being in a band that changed music, changed culture, and maybe changed the world?

But McCartney clearly had a lot of fuel left in the tank. In the decades since, he's been a formidable force in music: he dominated radio in the '70s with Wings, he was ubiquitous on MTV in the early days of the cable channel and has collaborated with Kanye West and Rihanna, the surviving members of Nirvana, Diana Krall, David Gilmour, George Michael, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Elvis Costello, among others. He's delivered classic theme songs for Cameron Crowe and James Bond, and besides recording scores of rock and pop albums, he's also composed classical music and done experimental electronic music under the name The Fireman.

He continues to record and release new music at a surprising pace, as if he still has something to prove. During the pandemic, he returned to true "solo" artist mode, recording all of the instruments by himself (with the exception of one song, "Slidin'," which was started during the sessions for the previous album). But whether he's recording all by himself, with his longtime backing band, or collaborating with other big-name artists, it's always been interesting to follow his career. You never know when he's going to release another classic. He's been cranking them out, after all, for over six decades.

Now in his 80s, Sir Paul is amazingly still steadily touring. He recently announced a slate of tour dates in South America, Europe and his in native U.K. He still loves to perform live, still sounds great and continues to be a massive draw. Why wouldn't he keep it going until the wheels fall off?

It was tough to narrow it down, but here are the ones that we think are Paul's best post-Beatles songs.