1
00:00:11,610 --> 00:00:13,230
Hey, guys. How's it going?

2
00:00:14,110 --> 00:00:15,110
Okay.

3
00:00:15,710 --> 00:00:16,710
Right.

4
00:00:19,030 --> 00:00:20,310
The Lost Base.

5
00:00:20,530 --> 00:00:21,530
Yay.

6
00:00:22,490 --> 00:00:25,530
It's a story. It is a story. It's quite
a thing, yeah.

7
00:00:26,090 --> 00:00:31,290
And this being my first bass that I got
in Hamburg.

8
00:00:33,390 --> 00:00:34,870
all those years ago.

9
00:00:35,690 --> 00:00:37,750
I had an attachment to it, you know?

10
00:00:38,270 --> 00:00:44,650
It just went off into the universe, you
know? It's like, where did it go?

11
00:00:45,010 --> 00:00:46,570
There must be an answer, you know?

12
00:00:48,530 --> 00:00:49,530
Somebody's got it.

13
00:02:39,490 --> 00:02:44,430
And as you see, if you think what's
being written in that... This

14
00:02:44,430 --> 00:02:51,130
was one of the main places we used to
sit and write songs.

15
00:02:51,390 --> 00:02:54,730
The sneak bunk off school, come in here,
eat some fried eggs. There's a thing

16
00:02:54,730 --> 00:02:56,210
about fried eggs, I don't know why,
anyway.

17
00:02:56,570 --> 00:02:59,250
They go to Hunter Davison's story,
they're all eating fried eggs. They must

18
00:02:59,250 --> 00:03:02,470
have been just after the war, they must
have just loved fried eggs. This is

19
00:03:02,470 --> 00:03:03,470
where we used to live.

20
00:03:05,100 --> 00:03:09,860
Our humble abode in Forthden Road,
Allerton, Liverpool.

21
00:03:10,580 --> 00:03:14,800
And this is where we used to live as a
little family.

22
00:03:15,800 --> 00:03:20,100
And there's some people out there. What
are they doing there?

23
00:03:22,220 --> 00:03:23,300
That's why we left.

24
00:03:25,620 --> 00:03:27,740
Lots of lovely memories.

25
00:03:29,420 --> 00:03:31,380
Not enough of my mum.

26
00:03:33,360 --> 00:03:35,460
the smells that would have come from the
kitchen.

27
00:03:35,740 --> 00:03:42,520
When she did Sunday dinners, she'd do
off cuts of lamb or beef

28
00:03:42,520 --> 00:03:45,660
and sneak them in to us, our little
boys.

29
00:03:45,980 --> 00:03:47,660
Shh, don't tell your dad.

30
00:03:47,920 --> 00:03:48,920
Shh.

31
00:03:51,740 --> 00:03:58,020
You see, whenever I talk about my mum,
it's always dangerous, because this is

32
00:03:58,020 --> 00:03:59,280
where she went from.

33
00:04:01,230 --> 00:04:03,010
This is our kids' little room.

34
00:04:03,930 --> 00:04:09,330
Yeah, I stopped them going in there for
many years

35
00:04:09,330 --> 00:04:15,430
because it was too important for me.

36
00:04:16,010 --> 00:04:17,149
I'm a brother.

37
00:04:21,390 --> 00:04:27,890
I was 12, my brother was 14, and she
died of cancer.

38
00:04:29,130 --> 00:04:30,790
when you're 12 or 14.

39
00:04:31,350 --> 00:04:32,650
You don't understand.

40
00:04:35,070 --> 00:04:38,850
You have to get on with life. You have
to survive.

41
00:04:39,770 --> 00:04:46,190
And because Dad had been in his own
band, at the back of his mind,

42
00:04:46,370 --> 00:04:49,990
he always thought, well, that was a way
out.

43
00:04:50,530 --> 00:04:56,470
And so he bought me a banjo and my
brother a guitar, a Spanish guitar.

44
00:04:59,210 --> 00:05:00,850
I took that out the back window.

45
00:05:01,650 --> 00:05:08,170
Our kid was sitting in the back garden
lost just miles

46
00:05:08,170 --> 00:05:10,530
away with his guitar.

47
00:05:11,050 --> 00:05:14,110
My brother was 14 in that photograph.

48
00:05:15,350 --> 00:05:17,950
Beatlemania came six years later.

49
00:05:23,050 --> 00:05:28,400
If I'm in a not very good mood A great
thing to do is just take a guitar,

50
00:05:28,520 --> 00:05:31,960
because you think about it, you sort of
hold it to you, you know, a guitar, and

51
00:05:31,960 --> 00:05:33,980
it's kind of a comforting thing to do.

52
00:05:35,360 --> 00:05:39,340
You go off into a little room somewhere,
you know, on your own, and tell the

53
00:05:39,340 --> 00:05:43,640
guitar your troubles, kind of thing.
It's like a cheap psychiatrist, really.

54
00:05:44,860 --> 00:05:50,080
And it turns round and the guitar sort
of sends it back to you, and it comes

55
00:05:50,080 --> 00:05:51,240
back as a song somehow.

56
00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:02,000
Well,

57
00:06:04,740 --> 00:06:07,100
it started in Hamburg.

58
00:06:12,760 --> 00:06:19,220
You had gangsters, pimps, you had
prostitutes,

59
00:06:19,360 --> 00:06:21,440
you had all you could imagine.

60
00:06:23,400 --> 00:06:27,420
Hamburg is echoing to the invasion from
the latest beat groups from Britain

61
00:06:27,420 --> 00:06:28,420
who've taken over.

62
00:06:32,340 --> 00:06:36,500
I heard the music through a window, a
cellar window.

63
00:06:37,200 --> 00:06:39,900
I just wanted to see that rock and roll
music.

64
00:06:42,280 --> 00:06:45,820
The next band came on and that was The
Beatles.

65
00:06:48,560 --> 00:06:53,000
Paul came up, and I think he was the one
who talked to the audience first,

66
00:06:53,180 --> 00:06:56,700
because he could speak German. Hello,
wie geht es?

67
00:06:57,520 --> 00:06:59,280
Guten Tag, sir.

68
00:06:59,980 --> 00:07:01,420
It was really sweet.

69
00:07:04,140 --> 00:07:05,760
I mean, they were young kids.

70
00:07:06,040 --> 00:07:07,780
George was 17, you know.

71
00:07:08,240 --> 00:07:10,600
And I was a little older then, you know.

72
00:07:11,100 --> 00:07:17,440
We became friends, and they came to the
house. They got great food.

73
00:07:18,920 --> 00:07:20,280
Put them in a bathtub.

74
00:07:21,240 --> 00:07:25,780
Because they didn't have any mother or
father to look after them.

75
00:07:26,420 --> 00:07:29,900
It was a friendship. A friendship grew
up, you know.

76
00:07:38,160 --> 00:07:39,160
Oh,

77
00:07:41,320 --> 00:07:42,299
danke schön.

78
00:07:42,300 --> 00:07:44,180
Hey, Klaus. Paul here.

79
00:07:44,560 --> 00:07:48,440
And trying to reach you so we can have a
nice...

80
00:07:56,120 --> 00:08:02,420
He is still that same little Paul he was
when he was 19 years old, you know.

81
00:08:02,660 --> 00:08:03,720
It's the same guy.

82
00:08:06,240 --> 00:08:07,600
I'm a graphic designer.

83
00:08:08,460 --> 00:08:13,140
I had the job to do the cover on
Revolver and the bass player.

84
00:08:13,680 --> 00:08:19,200
But now I can't play any guitar chords
without this cramp in the hand. I can't

85
00:08:19,200 --> 00:08:20,079
do a fist.

86
00:08:20,080 --> 00:08:22,940
I can't do a fist, you know. It doesn't
work.

87
00:08:23,440 --> 00:08:24,480
It doesn't work.

88
00:08:26,580 --> 00:08:29,040
Luckily enough, I can still hold my
pencil.

89
00:08:30,440 --> 00:08:34,179
I'm going to do drawings of the story of
the bass.

90
00:08:36,880 --> 00:08:40,280
I decided to start with the top ten.

91
00:08:40,640 --> 00:08:43,620
That's the first time I actually saw the
bass.

92
00:08:51,000 --> 00:08:55,960
So what do you want to talk about? We
want to talk about you as a bass player,

93
00:08:55,980 --> 00:08:56,980
really.

94
00:08:57,140 --> 00:09:03,980
So you've got Paul's guitar, and next to
it, Stuart Sutcliffe's guitar.

95
00:09:05,930 --> 00:09:10,830
My bass guitar days go back to when
Stuart was the bass player.

96
00:09:11,050 --> 00:09:14,050
Stuart had fallen in love with this girl
called Astrid.

97
00:09:14,790 --> 00:09:19,670
Stuart decided he was going to stay in
Hamburg, and so that meant we didn't

98
00:09:19,670 --> 00:09:20,670
have a bass player.

99
00:09:21,070 --> 00:09:24,350
And John and George told him, I'm not
doing it.

100
00:09:24,930 --> 00:09:26,370
So that left me.

101
00:09:27,990 --> 00:09:34,630
Eventually then, I found a nice little
shop in the centre of Hamburg.

102
00:09:35,500 --> 00:09:40,680
And I saw this bass in the window, the
violin-shaped bass, the Hoffner.

103
00:09:41,680 --> 00:09:44,940
I don't think it was very expensive,
something like about 30 quid.

104
00:09:46,340 --> 00:09:49,460
Then once I got my own bass, then I was
a bass player.

105
00:10:04,910 --> 00:10:11,650
I remember it was the last day the band
played in the Top Ten Club,

106
00:10:11,850 --> 00:10:15,670
and Stuart, it was his last night of
playing.

107
00:10:17,430 --> 00:10:23,470
And we were sitting outside, the sun was
shining, I think it was Sunday morning.

108
00:10:24,270 --> 00:10:30,330
And we were all sitting there, being all
pretty stoned, stoned meaning failure in

109
00:10:30,330 --> 00:10:33,530
pills and stuff, talking, talking,
talking.

110
00:10:35,470 --> 00:10:41,110
John was sitting next to me and I said,
well, Stuart isn't playing. I could play

111
00:10:41,110 --> 00:10:42,110
the bass.

112
00:10:42,270 --> 00:10:46,390
And he said, oh, sorry, Klaus, Paul
already bought the bass. He's going to

113
00:10:46,390 --> 00:10:47,490
be the next bass player.

114
00:10:48,990 --> 00:10:52,190
Could be in your moment, Klaus. You
could have become Beatle No. 5.

115
00:10:52,570 --> 00:10:53,590
Yeah, all right.

116
00:10:58,710 --> 00:11:01,690
I don't know. Anyway, I don't even want
to think about it.

117
00:11:14,320 --> 00:11:17,860
I lived in Hamburg through my brother's
letters.

118
00:11:19,560 --> 00:11:24,700
Then suddenly he came back one day and
he had that Hofner.

119
00:11:26,280 --> 00:11:27,780
It's so unique.

120
00:11:32,540 --> 00:11:34,560
We were the roadies.

121
00:11:35,340 --> 00:11:37,760
I probably held that bloody thing.

122
00:11:39,860 --> 00:11:43,060
And then our kid got a Ford Classic.

123
00:11:44,970 --> 00:11:45,970
Look cool.

124
00:11:51,130 --> 00:11:57,050
And their music then, you know, going to
the cabin.

125
00:11:58,610 --> 00:12:05,210
The difference was unbelievable. It was
like, whoa, wow,

126
00:12:05,470 --> 00:12:06,470
what happened?

127
00:12:07,790 --> 00:12:13,150
We knew we were going somewhere. We
always felt that we had something.

128
00:12:16,400 --> 00:12:18,920
They did with John Lennon.

129
00:12:19,460 --> 00:12:21,520
You know, he's a very witty cat.

130
00:12:23,200 --> 00:12:25,720
With me, who could hold his own.

131
00:12:26,940 --> 00:12:30,100
With George, who was, like, spectacular.

132
00:12:31,420 --> 00:12:34,040
And then finish it all up with Ringo.

133
00:12:34,780 --> 00:12:36,700
So we had a kind of magic.

134
00:12:59,530 --> 00:13:01,710
I'm the least technical person you'll
meet.

135
00:13:02,190 --> 00:13:04,610
So I don't know what I do.

136
00:13:05,470 --> 00:13:07,030
I just play with it.

137
00:13:07,670 --> 00:13:11,790
It's a lovely instrument to play and
it's kind of easy to play.

138
00:13:13,010 --> 00:13:16,850
And so I got very used to it and loved
it.

139
00:13:44,540 --> 00:13:50,220
This Hofner bass really suited Paul's
style of play. It's very rhythmical, but

140
00:13:50,220 --> 00:13:52,780
at the same time it's very, very
melodic.

141
00:14:02,830 --> 00:14:08,570
You can hear lots of songs that the
songs are very very simple and the bass

142
00:14:08,570 --> 00:14:11,610
does more movement than any other
instrument

143
00:14:11,610 --> 00:14:20,810
I'm

144
00:14:20,810 --> 00:14:25,550
a big fan of James Jamison who was the
Motown bass player because normally bass

145
00:14:25,550 --> 00:14:26,550
is

146
00:14:29,460 --> 00:14:36,280
But he was going... I was going, wow,
that's a great way to use the bass.

147
00:14:37,840 --> 00:14:39,480
That set me free.

148
00:14:39,700 --> 00:14:43,040
I was like, great, OK, I can make up
melodies.

149
00:14:43,320 --> 00:14:48,520
So as the guys were doing the main song,
I would just try and put something

150
00:14:48,520 --> 00:14:50,840
imaginative behind it.

151
00:14:52,080 --> 00:14:55,820
It was a great feeling. I mean, I still
remember it, the moment.

152
00:14:56,340 --> 00:14:57,340
Bingo!

153
00:15:28,459 --> 00:15:32,560
First time I was aware of the Beatles,
I'd have been about nine years old.

154
00:15:33,380 --> 00:15:37,000
My clear memory of that is seeing them
on the six o'clock television news.

155
00:15:37,660 --> 00:15:41,620
And all the girls were screaming outside
the cinemas and that kind of thing.

156
00:15:42,280 --> 00:15:44,080
They were playing electric guitars.

157
00:15:44,420 --> 00:15:47,540
And let's face it, you know, electric
guitars are so sexy.

158
00:15:48,300 --> 00:15:52,240
My mother would have thought it not the
right thing to have an electric guitar.

159
00:15:52,340 --> 00:15:53,740
That was for bad boys, you know.

160
00:15:58,220 --> 00:16:04,640
Years later, I was the electric guitar
manager with Hofner, a small German

161
00:16:04,640 --> 00:16:05,680
guitar company.

162
00:16:07,620 --> 00:16:12,540
Subsequently, I'd met Paul McCartney. It
was at his studio down south in England.

163
00:16:13,540 --> 00:16:17,900
He just walked in and said, oh, hello,
you're Mr Hofner. Do you know where my

164
00:16:17,900 --> 00:16:19,040
old Hofner's gone?

165
00:16:19,640 --> 00:16:23,380
And I knew what he meant, Australia
White, my old Hofner. He meant the 61

166
00:16:23,380 --> 00:16:24,380
bass.

167
00:16:27,630 --> 00:16:31,230
We'd been looking for my old bass for
years.

168
00:16:32,110 --> 00:16:36,350
But that's what happened with Nick. I
started talking about it and just

169
00:16:36,350 --> 00:16:40,150
saying, yeah, we're looking for it. I
don't know if we'll ever find it.

170
00:16:42,490 --> 00:16:46,190
Of course, I had to say, you know, I've
got no idea where it's gone.

171
00:16:47,030 --> 00:16:48,370
It's all a bit of a mystery.

172
00:16:49,570 --> 00:16:53,410
It's the most important bass of any bass
ever, anywhere.

173
00:16:54,640 --> 00:16:59,580
In terms of anybody actually totally
associated with an instrument, yeah,

174
00:16:59,620 --> 00:17:00,880
McCartney and the Hofner bass.

175
00:17:02,200 --> 00:17:04,540
There's just something in the soul of
the two of them.

176
00:17:09,140 --> 00:17:12,900
Here's the old Hofner factory down in
Bavaria.

177
00:17:14,440 --> 00:17:15,780
Well, it's still standing.

178
00:17:16,599 --> 00:17:17,660
Poor old place.

179
00:17:21,099 --> 00:17:22,420
And it was here...

180
00:17:22,859 --> 00:17:27,260
in these premises that they built the
base all those years ago.

181
00:17:28,600 --> 00:17:35,320
That moment, that turn in history, you
almost had to be there,

182
00:17:35,400 --> 00:17:37,880
really, to feel the electricity in the
air.

183
00:17:42,380 --> 00:17:45,740
I was probably bored on a wet Wednesday.

184
00:17:45,940 --> 00:17:50,060
I designed and put up the web page on
the Hofner website.

185
00:17:51,219 --> 00:17:56,180
The usual sort of things, if you've got
any information, email us. And I think

186
00:17:56,180 --> 00:18:01,160
Cathy came up with the name Trace the
Base with the hashtag on the front.

187
00:18:01,900 --> 00:18:05,340
Yes. I think it was you, was it? It was
me, yes. Well, there you are. Genius.

188
00:18:05,860 --> 00:18:06,860
Very catchy.

189
00:18:07,220 --> 00:18:09,300
Genius, you see. Trace the Base.

190
00:18:09,760 --> 00:18:13,700
The whole of our marriage, you know, for
the last 20-odd years.

191
00:18:14,280 --> 00:18:18,180
Kathy's just supported me with one
lunatic scheme after another, you know,

192
00:18:18,220 --> 00:18:22,100
and she used to be a bank manager. She's
good at filing stuff.

193
00:18:22,540 --> 00:18:23,980
We talked about it endlessly.

194
00:18:24,180 --> 00:18:25,180
Endlessly, yeah.

195
00:18:27,660 --> 00:18:31,780
I don't think there was one purpose in
searching for the base.

196
00:18:32,180 --> 00:18:38,380
There was 100 million fans out there who
I knew would be thrilled to bits to know

197
00:18:38,380 --> 00:18:39,620
that this thing had come back.

198
00:18:40,640 --> 00:18:43,520
So it was for everybody, not just Paul.

199
00:18:53,770 --> 00:18:57,910
I was in Liverpool, so I could go every
game that I could afford to go to.

200
00:18:58,810 --> 00:19:00,810
27,000 people used to be on the call.

201
00:19:01,970 --> 00:19:04,070
And very emotional sound.

202
00:19:08,030 --> 00:19:11,910
Among the many things I memorized before
I picked up an instrument were the

203
00:19:11,910 --> 00:19:12,910
harmony parts.

204
00:19:13,070 --> 00:19:17,070
I can't sing in Paul's register now, but
I could then when I was a kid.

205
00:19:22,120 --> 00:19:28,100
And we would cut out cardboard
likenesses of the guitars we liked and

206
00:19:28,100 --> 00:19:32,840
draw the controls on them and then mime
along with records.

207
00:19:34,100 --> 00:19:38,340
It was a perfect apprenticeship for
being on top of the pops, you know,

208
00:19:38,340 --> 00:19:39,960
pretending to play.

209
00:19:41,780 --> 00:19:46,660
The hardest thing was to make a Hofner
bass because you needed a longer piece

210
00:19:46,660 --> 00:19:50,120
of cardboard for the neck. This is like
when I'm nine or something, you know.

211
00:20:00,110 --> 00:20:04,310
Well, the thing about the Hofner is it's
very lightweight, which is great.

212
00:20:05,550 --> 00:20:07,290
It makes it easier to play.

213
00:20:08,330 --> 00:20:11,750
So that was the one on all the early
Beatles records.

214
00:20:12,570 --> 00:20:18,030
So it was a very rich period for music,
for us, particularly for making records.

215
00:20:24,450 --> 00:20:28,270
That bass was used an enormous amount.

216
00:20:28,670 --> 00:20:31,070
And it started to fall to bits.

217
00:20:32,110 --> 00:20:35,350
And we don't know when, again, because
all the records are long gone.

218
00:20:36,630 --> 00:20:38,630
They ordered another Hofner bass.

219
00:20:39,530 --> 00:20:44,650
We think it gets delivered into his hand
on October 4th, 1963.

220
00:20:46,350 --> 00:20:50,950
They did a gig on an old TV programme
called Ready Steady Go.

221
00:20:51,810 --> 00:20:54,710
And there's pictures of him at
rehearsal.

222
00:20:56,080 --> 00:21:01,460
And pictures of him actually doing the
performance to camera, and both bases

223
00:21:01,460 --> 00:21:02,460
are there.

224
00:21:03,500 --> 00:21:05,620
He's got the 61 from Hamburg.

225
00:21:06,440 --> 00:21:08,460
It has two pickups close together.

226
00:21:09,860 --> 00:21:11,280
And he's got this new one.

227
00:21:12,220 --> 00:21:14,960
They've moved this pickup down to near
the bridge.

228
00:21:15,640 --> 00:21:19,080
And in some of the shots, he's got the
new one, and he's holding it out, but it

229
00:21:19,080 --> 00:21:20,300
hasn't even got a strap on it.

230
00:21:20,740 --> 00:21:25,400
So we're kind of concluding that it
arrived that very day.

231
00:21:25,950 --> 00:21:30,330
And the 61 gets put on backup duties,
poor thing.

232
00:21:33,730 --> 00:21:38,770
Within a couple of months of that, the
February, they're playing in front of 70

233
00:21:38,770 --> 00:21:40,410
million people in the USA.

234
00:21:55,530 --> 00:21:58,550
Meanwhile, the 61 base was away being
repaired.

235
00:22:03,070 --> 00:22:08,790
Our roadie, Mal, took it off and brought
it back like

236
00:22:08,790 --> 00:22:14,990
new, but with a completely different
paint job on it.

237
00:22:16,610 --> 00:22:19,930
When it returned, it had been completely
re-sprayed.

238
00:22:20,810 --> 00:22:25,050
And it came back with what's now called
a three-part sunburst, which is more or

239
00:22:25,050 --> 00:22:26,850
less black, red, yellow.

240
00:22:28,150 --> 00:22:30,950
It's very distinctive when you look at
this bass now.

241
00:22:35,130 --> 00:22:38,710
For me, the whole charm of that
instrument was gone.

242
00:22:40,590 --> 00:22:44,870
I don't know how Paul feels about it. I
think he was a bit pissed off too.

243
00:22:50,480 --> 00:22:55,700
Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb
across my head.

244
00:22:57,620 --> 00:23:03,520
Found my way downstairs and drank a
cock. And looking up, I noticed I was

245
00:23:03,520 --> 00:23:04,520
late.

246
00:23:04,860 --> 00:23:07,340
Found my coat and grabbed my hat.

247
00:23:07,760 --> 00:23:10,080
Made the bus in seconds flat.

248
00:23:12,180 --> 00:23:15,220
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke.

249
00:23:15,500 --> 00:23:18,120
And somebody spoke and I went into a
dream.

250
00:23:19,070 --> 00:23:25,650
i mean from a look point of view i think
the 63 is nicer maybe even better

251
00:23:25,650 --> 00:23:29,570
better pickups better sound louder
whatever

252
00:23:29,570 --> 00:23:36,450
he's very singularly played that 63 bass
then continuously and

253
00:23:36,450 --> 00:23:40,810
you never see him playing the 61 you
know he didn't swap and change between

254
00:23:40,810 --> 00:23:46,210
the two or anything they went back to
america in 1965.

255
00:23:47,630 --> 00:23:51,570
The 61 is being used as a backup, but
not played.

256
00:23:53,450 --> 00:23:58,990
If you look really carefully, you see
Ringo up on the jump riser, and just

257
00:23:58,990 --> 00:24:01,350
down below Ringo on the back of the amp,
there's the bass.

258
00:24:02,170 --> 00:24:04,610
You have to look very eagle-eyed that
it's there.

259
00:24:09,470 --> 00:24:12,450
What happened to it after that is a
mystery.

260
00:24:14,250 --> 00:24:18,190
It's just luck and a lot of sort of
peering at grainy old black-and-white

261
00:24:18,190 --> 00:24:19,190
pictures.

262
00:24:22,730 --> 00:24:26,190
The only time you see it again, you have
to wait till a quick shot of it by the

263
00:24:26,190 --> 00:24:30,110
coffee table and the Let It Be sessions,
and then we don't see it any more.

264
00:24:31,410 --> 00:24:32,450
It's just not around.

265
00:24:33,270 --> 00:24:34,330
Get back!

266
00:24:35,090 --> 00:24:36,090
Get back!

267
00:24:36,950 --> 00:24:38,930
Get back to where you want.

268
00:24:42,330 --> 00:24:43,330
Get back.

269
00:24:51,310 --> 00:24:56,230
The event is so momentous that
historians may one day view it as a

270
00:24:56,230 --> 00:24:58,650
landmark in the decline of the British
Empire.

271
00:24:59,210 --> 00:25:01,410
The Beatles are breaking up.

272
00:25:21,480 --> 00:25:25,040
And when they split up, I mean, all the
rancour starts, you know, the lawyers

273
00:25:25,040 --> 00:25:26,940
are in, and it was chaotic.

274
00:25:29,060 --> 00:25:32,800
There were guitars here, there were
guitars there, and nobody was really

275
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:34,020
taking care of stuff.

276
00:25:35,700 --> 00:25:41,480
This is the remarkable thing, is from
the end of the Beatles, nobody had ever

277
00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:42,480
seen this bass.

278
00:25:42,540 --> 00:25:44,200
It just wasn't there anymore.

279
00:25:46,700 --> 00:25:50,300
I was never able to establish any firm
basis.

280
00:25:50,750 --> 00:25:51,790
as to when it disappeared.

281
00:25:52,710 --> 00:25:59,050
I put my hand up absolutely and say, I
started this from nowhere, not knowing

282
00:25:59,050 --> 00:26:00,050
how to do it.

283
00:26:00,090 --> 00:26:06,050
So I was kind of a bit handicapped, I
suppose, and as green as a cabbage as

284
00:26:06,050 --> 00:26:07,050
well.

285
00:26:07,690 --> 00:26:12,390
It had got to the point where it needed
somebody better than me to start poking

286
00:26:12,390 --> 00:26:13,390
about.

287
00:26:20,110 --> 00:26:25,750
It was June 2022, and I was watching
Paul McCartney headline at Glastonbury.

288
00:26:26,990 --> 00:26:32,170
But there was one moment in the show
where the stage just went black, apart

289
00:26:32,170 --> 00:26:35,910
from one light just picking out Paul's
Hofner bass.

290
00:26:37,510 --> 00:26:40,890
And it just caught the varnish and the
wood and everything. It was almost like

291
00:26:40,890 --> 00:26:46,870
shining like gold for this split second.
And I thought, is that the original

292
00:26:46,870 --> 00:26:47,910
Hofner bass?

293
00:26:49,390 --> 00:26:51,190
So I Googled it and saw that it wasn't.

294
00:26:51,790 --> 00:26:56,050
The original bass that he'd got in 1961
was lost.

295
00:26:56,470 --> 00:27:02,250
And I instantly started Googling to see
and find out more about that story.

296
00:27:05,770 --> 00:27:09,870
But in terms of an investigation and
then thinking, I want to find this

297
00:27:09,870 --> 00:27:14,130
thing, I thought, well, if no one else
is doing that, and that guitar is so

298
00:27:14,130 --> 00:27:16,830
important, we need to do it.

299
00:27:17,210 --> 00:27:18,290
Who do you mean by we?

300
00:27:18,970 --> 00:27:20,970
Me and my wife, we worked together.

301
00:27:21,910 --> 00:27:28,650
And we convinced ourselves that we may
not find the base, but we'd find stories

302
00:27:28,650 --> 00:27:31,930
about the base. We'd find what the base
meant to people.

303
00:27:32,130 --> 00:27:35,270
You know, that sort of Beatlemania fan
thing.

304
00:27:36,950 --> 00:27:43,210
By July 2023, I'd seen that Hofner over
in Bavaria

305
00:27:43,210 --> 00:27:45,090
had ran a search.

306
00:27:46,030 --> 00:27:48,970
And I was really curious to find out
what they know.

307
00:27:49,290 --> 00:27:54,250
So I wrote this very polite email, sort
of introduced myself, thinking he was

308
00:27:54,250 --> 00:27:58,610
German and being conscious of the
English language that I was using.

309
00:27:58,850 --> 00:28:04,290
And then within 24 hours, I realised
that Nick was from London and he was on

310
00:28:04,290 --> 00:28:06,610
the end of the phone and we were talking
like old mates.

311
00:28:06,870 --> 00:28:09,850
And I thought, oh my God, these are
exactly the people I've been looking for

312
00:28:09,850 --> 00:28:10,850
for a long time.

313
00:28:11,310 --> 00:28:14,850
We got together and I said to Scott,
well, look, I've got a lot of emails and

314
00:28:14,850 --> 00:28:20,250
I passed him a lot over for him to read
and get a sense of what we were dealing

315
00:28:20,250 --> 00:28:21,250
with there.

316
00:28:21,630 --> 00:28:25,630
All of these leads that came in, you
knew it was people that had lived with

317
00:28:25,630 --> 00:28:27,270
this story for a long, long time.

318
00:28:27,730 --> 00:28:29,790
It's just that it was wrong.

319
00:28:31,670 --> 00:28:35,810
A man claiming he had one of Paul's
guitars walked into a pawn shop in Las

320
00:28:35,810 --> 00:28:39,830
Vegas called the Gold and Silver Pawn
Shop to sell it.

321
00:28:40,350 --> 00:28:43,190
There's a television program called The
Pawn Stars where it was aired.

322
00:28:43,410 --> 00:28:44,410
Hope it helps.

323
00:28:44,590 --> 00:28:48,590
I definitely saw the bass in an auction
of music equipment in the mid-80s in

324
00:28:48,590 --> 00:28:53,310
London. It sold for £100 to a music
rental studio company.

325
00:28:53,830 --> 00:28:57,550
I've heard that the bass is in Japan in
the possession of a Japanese banker.

326
00:28:58,910 --> 00:29:02,510
This information was given me to a guy
that knows the Beatles and the Beatles

327
00:29:02,510 --> 00:29:03,710
gear website well.

328
00:29:04,350 --> 00:29:10,290
I had this vision of, I used to say to
people, i know what's happened some

329
00:29:10,290 --> 00:29:16,390
german guy rich german guy has nicked it
and he's got a big castle in the

330
00:29:16,390 --> 00:29:21,570
bavarian mountains and he invites you up
and then after a few drinks he says come

331
00:29:21,570 --> 00:29:27,630
i show you something special and there
over the mantelpiece is hanging my base

332
00:29:27,630 --> 00:29:34,600
so it's a treasure hunt but also people
loved

333
00:29:34,600 --> 00:29:38,040
The Beatles and loved Paul McCartney and
wanted to help.

334
00:29:58,460 --> 00:30:01,040
I've always admired Paul McCartney as a
bass player.

335
00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:03,800
He made the bass guitar call.

336
00:30:05,780 --> 00:30:10,320
Beatle fans know that the bass has
disappeared, and no one knows where it's

337
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:16,000
gone, so it'd be amazing if somebody
ever did find it, because that's

338
00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:18,240
history, isn't it? It's history.

339
00:30:29,050 --> 00:30:31,630
Yeah, ever since I can remember I've
been a Beatles fan. It's only ever been

340
00:30:31,630 --> 00:30:32,630
one band for me, I think.

341
00:30:33,790 --> 00:30:36,850
First time I ever opened the Sgt.
Pepper's, and you opened it up and

342
00:30:36,850 --> 00:30:37,850
they've all got moustaches.

343
00:30:39,310 --> 00:30:42,150
And I thought, when I get older, I'm
gonna have a moustache, you know?

344
00:30:42,790 --> 00:30:44,970
So... I bought it secondhand.

345
00:30:45,390 --> 00:30:48,610
Only paid £80 for it, which is not much
more than Paul paid for his, probably.

346
00:30:49,150 --> 00:30:50,150
Are you playing a thing on it?

347
00:30:50,510 --> 00:30:57,370
A little bit day-tripper, but... Yeah,
only a little bit.

348
00:30:57,940 --> 00:30:58,940
I did a pletrum.

349
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:04,100
I've always wanted to play the guitar.
I've tried for years and I thought it

350
00:31:04,100 --> 00:31:06,460
might be easier to play bass because
there's only four strings.

351
00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:10,080
And it's a Vox.

352
00:31:12,220 --> 00:31:15,020
Vox. You have to have a Vox, don't you,
if you have a Beatles bass.

353
00:31:17,600 --> 00:31:18,600
Oh no.

354
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:19,840
After all that, mate, it's broken.

355
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:21,880
Cut.

356
00:31:57,940 --> 00:32:00,460
Got there in the end. Yeah, practice
makes perfect, doesn't it?

357
00:32:17,940 --> 00:32:24,920
I work for the ambulance service. I've
been doing it 23 years

358
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:29,240
now. So I'm on the patient transport
side, so it's all non-emergency.

359
00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:33,200
There's a guy, Steve, I work with. He's
a lovely guy.

360
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:37,620
I've known him for two, three years. We
always have a good laugh when we crewed

361
00:32:37,620 --> 00:32:38,379
up together.

362
00:32:38,380 --> 00:32:40,600
We bounce off each other quite nicely.

363
00:32:45,060 --> 00:32:50,360
I'm always looking online for guitars
and things, and I think I just might

364
00:32:50,360 --> 00:32:54,880
have been by accident, went onto the
Hofner website, saw that Nick Waz was

365
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:57,320
looking for it.

366
00:32:58,580 --> 00:33:01,760
And that was like, yeah, the Holy Grail
for me.

367
00:33:02,580 --> 00:33:06,100
It's like finding the Bible, trying to
find Paul McCartney's bass.

368
00:33:06,320 --> 00:33:08,100
If you're a fan, that's like, wow.

369
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:14,700
Well, I was with Steve one day.

370
00:33:16,160 --> 00:33:19,360
I said, well, I've still got a bass
that's a bit like Paul McCartney's. And

371
00:33:19,360 --> 00:33:21,280
he just sort of said, I think I know
where that is.

372
00:33:22,560 --> 00:33:24,500
And I said, you're joking, aren't you?

373
00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:32,700
So I just said to him, I said, I've got
an idea where that might be, you know.

374
00:33:35,180 --> 00:33:40,720
And he sort of looked at me and I went,
right, I'm going to tell you something.

375
00:33:41,100 --> 00:33:43,580
I don't know if it's right or proper,
but I'm going to tell you something.

376
00:33:43,820 --> 00:33:44,940
It's only a story I've heard.

377
00:33:46,340 --> 00:33:50,480
He said, where? So I said, we don't know
where. I said, but I think it was nicked

378
00:33:50,480 --> 00:33:52,040
from a house in London.

379
00:33:54,060 --> 00:33:55,900
So I said, Steve, can I?

380
00:33:56,330 --> 00:34:00,830
Tell the story. Can I tell Nick what
little bit you've told me?

381
00:34:02,490 --> 00:34:04,110
I said, don't put my name on it.

382
00:34:05,050 --> 00:34:08,870
No, he said, what we'll do, he said,
I'll email it in and say it's a story

383
00:34:08,870 --> 00:34:10,630
that someone told us on the back of the
ambulance.

384
00:34:11,489 --> 00:34:12,489
A patient.

385
00:34:13,929 --> 00:34:17,310
I mean, the emails were quite mixed, if
I'm honest.

386
00:34:17,850 --> 00:34:22,750
One of them in particular was from these
two guys who are a crew on an ambulance.

387
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:29,080
And they tell me this bullshit story
about having a client in the back of the

388
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:31,380
ambulance, as they described him. What,
a patient?

389
00:34:31,620 --> 00:34:34,320
Yeah, but I think they call it client
now, don't they?

390
00:34:35,100 --> 00:34:39,699
Who'd given them some story about the
fact that the base had been stolen

391
00:34:39,699 --> 00:34:45,820
and that it had been given to a guy in a
pub

392
00:34:45,820 --> 00:34:48,659
up at Labyrinth Grove, London.

393
00:34:50,380 --> 00:34:56,510
And I thought... yeah a bit more but i
wrote a polite reply

394
00:34:56,510 --> 00:35:02,950
that sounds like a really good book
tales from the back of an ambulance and

395
00:35:02,950 --> 00:35:03,890
i left it there

396
00:35:03,890 --> 00:35:13,010
i

397
00:35:13,010 --> 00:35:17,430
had a call from the news editor at the
telegraph looking for stories and i said

398
00:35:17,430 --> 00:35:20,730
well look we're looking for paul
mccartney's lost base

399
00:35:21,590 --> 00:35:25,470
And the minute I said it, Ben
commissioned the story on the spot.

400
00:35:26,450 --> 00:35:30,530
The story in The Telegraph went live on
the 2nd of September.

401
00:35:30,750 --> 00:35:31,609
It was a Saturday.

402
00:35:31,610 --> 00:35:33,450
It was around about 4 o'clock online.

403
00:35:34,890 --> 00:35:37,670
Within minutes, the BBC were in touch.

404
00:35:38,190 --> 00:35:40,610
So they wanted us on BBC Breakfast.

405
00:35:41,670 --> 00:35:46,110
Well, delighted to say we're joined now
by Nick Wass, who is a Hofner and lost

406
00:35:46,110 --> 00:35:50,110
bass expert, and he's provided Paul
McCartney with many of his iconic

407
00:35:50,110 --> 00:35:56,690
instruments. Lots of interviews and
radio station interviews, day and night.

408
00:35:57,270 --> 00:36:00,590
I realised why being famous must be
absolutely awful.

409
00:36:02,590 --> 00:36:06,530
The difference with the Lost Base is
Paul McCartney had it refinished in

410
00:36:06,530 --> 00:36:12,870
1964. And the two pickups are now
mounted in a big black piece of wood

411
00:36:12,870 --> 00:36:17,390
here. But I think you've shown your
audience some pictures of what we're

412
00:36:17,390 --> 00:36:23,410
after. Yeah. This is it. Yeah. And the
thing is, so it is distinctive and it

413
00:36:23,410 --> 00:36:24,410
should be identifiable.

414
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:29,100
But, of course, it may have been
destroyed somewhere along the line. It

415
00:36:29,100 --> 00:36:31,600
may have been tucked away. It could have
been taken by someone at the Apple

416
00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:33,700
offices. We just don't know, do we?

417
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:36,700
No, we don't know. This is the problem.

418
00:36:37,460 --> 00:36:42,280
It was put away, presumably, after they
finished filming it. And after that,

419
00:36:42,460 --> 00:36:45,360
nobody has any clear idea of what
happened.

420
00:36:46,200 --> 00:36:50,640
Where it was actually stored, it might
have been there.

421
00:36:50,880 --> 00:36:52,320
We're just not clear about it.

422
00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:04,760
In the first 24 hours, we must have had
more than a dozen major newspapers and

423
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:10,460
radio and TV stations on NBC in America
and the New York Times and Le Monde.

424
00:37:10,460 --> 00:37:11,460
Yeah, Le Monde.

425
00:37:11,700 --> 00:37:16,300
The Spiegel in Germany. It just went on
and on. And then TV channels that we'd

426
00:37:16,300 --> 00:37:17,940
never, ever heard of were getting...

427
00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:25,360
in touch from brazil and other places we
thought that we'd

428
00:37:25,360 --> 00:37:32,180
almost plugged into that spirit of the
Beatles you know we thought

429
00:37:32,180 --> 00:37:38,980
that we had connected with that positive
vibe around peace and love and the

430
00:37:38,980 --> 00:37:45,900
band and what the music meant to people
we got 600 emails in the

431
00:37:45,900 --> 00:37:50,220
first 48 hours And the emails were just
landing and landing and landing.

432
00:37:50,740 --> 00:37:56,100
That's when the journalists in us took
over and we started to pick out what

433
00:37:56,100 --> 00:37:57,680
could be really important.

434
00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:12,380
I heard the news today, old boy.

435
00:38:19,100 --> 00:38:25,860
When we read Ian Horne's email, we knew
instantly that we had to speak

436
00:38:25,860 --> 00:38:26,860
to Ian.

437
00:38:28,520 --> 00:38:34,400
And Ian's lead was the only lead that
said, I know Paul McCartney.

438
00:38:35,140 --> 00:38:39,280
And it was the only lead that said, I
worked for Paul McCartney.

439
00:38:52,490 --> 00:38:56,250
After he broke up with the Beatles, we
met up.

440
00:38:57,830 --> 00:39:03,330
I think Paul was definitely getting back
in the saddle, I call it, which was a

441
00:39:03,330 --> 00:39:05,510
big step, because I think he hid away
for a while.

442
00:39:08,330 --> 00:39:13,470
Yeah, you know, it was very depressing,
you know, because you were breaking from

443
00:39:13,470 --> 00:39:14,650
your lifelong friends.

444
00:39:16,050 --> 00:39:17,450
You weren't going to see him again.

445
00:39:18,950 --> 00:39:19,950
It was depressing.

446
00:39:22,319 --> 00:39:25,820
I'm not knowing whether I was going to
continue in music.

447
00:39:26,520 --> 00:39:29,320
Suddenly I wasn't having a good time. It
wasn't working.

448
00:39:31,220 --> 00:39:35,160
It was Linda who sort of said, you know,
you just, you've got to get it together

449
00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:36,420
and we've got to do something.

450
00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:39,760
So we ended up forming Wings.

451
00:39:42,380 --> 00:39:45,700
I knew that if I...

452
00:39:46,270 --> 00:39:51,450
kept playing Beatles songs, which I knew
people wanted, then I would become a

453
00:39:51,450 --> 00:39:52,550
Beatles tribute band.

454
00:39:52,890 --> 00:39:56,270
And I thought, maybe that's not the
greatest look.

455
00:39:59,490 --> 00:40:02,790
He was experimenting with things he
hadn't done before.

456
00:40:03,010 --> 00:40:08,070
And a Yamaha bass, a Fender bass, so he
went through the basses he saw people

457
00:40:08,070 --> 00:40:09,070
playing, you know.

458
00:40:28,520 --> 00:40:29,680
We went on the road.

459
00:40:29,940 --> 00:40:33,780
Boy, did we go on the road. Tell us
about it. I mean... Well, because the

460
00:40:33,780 --> 00:40:36,040
thing is, you know, normally you go on
the road, at least you book hotels.

461
00:40:37,700 --> 00:40:39,180
You know, anyone books hotels.

462
00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:42,360
But we decided to really just bust the
whole thing.

463
00:40:42,860 --> 00:40:46,340
So we had a tranny and we just headed
off up the motorway.

464
00:40:46,780 --> 00:40:49,860
We had the kids, a couple of dogs, the
whole group.

465
00:40:50,410 --> 00:40:55,170
All our instruments... There was a
U-Haul following behind with the... The

466
00:40:55,170 --> 00:40:56,190
roadies. The roadies.

467
00:40:56,550 --> 00:40:59,810
And we literally turned up at
universities and stuff. We turned up at

468
00:40:59,810 --> 00:41:01,510
Nottingham University was the first one.

469
00:41:01,750 --> 00:41:05,470
And we said... In fact, we didn't. I
didn't say anything. I stayed in the

470
00:41:05,470 --> 00:41:09,490
van. One of the lads, Ian Horne,
actually, went in. Well, you know, I've

471
00:41:09,490 --> 00:41:12,870
got Paul McCartney out in the van. Do
you want him on lunchtime tomorrow?

472
00:41:14,190 --> 00:41:16,910
Really? I need to come out in the van to
sort of check.

473
00:41:17,490 --> 00:41:18,368
Oh, yeah.

474
00:41:18,370 --> 00:41:19,370
Yeah, we'll have him.

475
00:41:29,610 --> 00:41:31,750
He was loving it, being back in the
saddle.

476
00:41:33,870 --> 00:41:37,750
He never played the Hofner, as far as I
know. It was around.

477
00:41:41,750 --> 00:41:43,870
So lugging it around from place to
place?

478
00:41:44,210 --> 00:41:46,030
Yeah, maybe that's more me than him.

479
00:41:49,370 --> 00:41:51,650
I mean, if he asks for it, I've got it.

480
00:42:06,990 --> 00:42:10,710
We'd just finished the university tour
and we were recording an album called

481
00:42:10,710 --> 00:42:11,710
Red Rose Speedway.

482
00:42:18,610 --> 00:42:23,230
Well, on this particular day, we'd been
in the studio and we didn't leave until

483
00:42:23,230 --> 00:42:25,710
quite late, so we drove back to
Trevor's.

484
00:42:25,970 --> 00:42:27,490
Yeah, Trevor's my brother-in-law.

485
00:42:28,270 --> 00:42:29,470
He was my assistant.

486
00:42:30,230 --> 00:42:34,630
So we had a truck full of gear, which we
had the Hoffnett bass, acoustic guitars.

487
00:42:35,490 --> 00:42:36,490
Some amplifiers.

488
00:42:42,690 --> 00:42:47,410
I couldn't park at Trevor's because
obviously Trevor's house was a school,

489
00:42:47,610 --> 00:42:49,410
so it was restricted parking.

490
00:42:51,130 --> 00:42:55,870
Just went up the road a bit to the right
and there's a tea junction there, which

491
00:42:55,870 --> 00:42:57,050
is Cambridge Gardens.

492
00:42:58,450 --> 00:43:02,230
There's a parking place right on the
edge, so I thought I'd put it there with

493
00:43:02,230 --> 00:43:04,730
the back of the truck visible to
everybody.

494
00:43:08,210 --> 00:43:11,290
Basically, I had a big heavy-duty
padlock on the back. It was a roller

495
00:43:11,290 --> 00:43:12,390
shutter on the back.

496
00:43:14,030 --> 00:43:15,350
So I felt fairly secure.

497
00:43:17,810 --> 00:43:20,270
I walked back to Trevor's and we went to
sleep.

498
00:43:21,850 --> 00:43:25,030
And then, of course, in the morning, the
nightmare began.

499
00:43:27,390 --> 00:43:29,610
You could see that the padlock was off.

500
00:43:30,850 --> 00:43:32,130
And I went, oh, God.

501
00:43:32,710 --> 00:43:34,510
It was cold sweat.

502
00:43:35,340 --> 00:43:40,180
So I throw the roller door up and
immediately notice there's stuff

503
00:43:40,180 --> 00:43:41,180
missing, you know.

504
00:43:42,960 --> 00:43:46,800
There's a couple of amplifiers, two
guitars, including the Hofner bass.

505
00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:55,040
I was beside myself with worry and anger
and pain.

506
00:43:56,580 --> 00:44:00,680
Right opposite where the truck is, so
the back of the truck there is 100.

507
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:02,400
Cambridge Gardens.

508
00:44:02,780 --> 00:44:04,800
At the time, it seemed kosher.

509
00:44:06,020 --> 00:44:10,140
But all these hippies and people that
lived around Lancaster Road and

510
00:44:10,140 --> 00:44:14,220
Cambridge Gardens and these squat houses
and a lot of musicians.

511
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:18,860
You know, obviously thieves amongst
them.

512
00:44:20,460 --> 00:44:24,100
Trevor thought this guy Dick Mick was a
bit iffy, you know. Why?

513
00:44:24,380 --> 00:44:25,680
I don't know why, really.

514
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:27,960
He flagged him up. I didn't flag anyone.

515
00:44:28,940 --> 00:44:33,220
I did feel it was one of that mob
because they all knew we weren't for

516
00:44:33,220 --> 00:44:34,220
Paul.

517
00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:39,880
And so, you know, we sort of got tooled
up in case it got nasty.

518
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:42,160
So wait, hang on, in case what got
nasty?

519
00:44:42,460 --> 00:44:46,800
I decided we'd go and check this guy out
so we could end the thing there.

520
00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:49,980
So we went in there, kind of threatening
the baby.

521
00:44:50,780 --> 00:44:53,320
Dick Mick was still in bed, he was
shitting himself.

522
00:44:53,900 --> 00:44:55,400
We looked round, no stuff.

523
00:44:58,720 --> 00:45:01,560
And eventually, you know, we had to go
to Paul and tell him the news.

524
00:45:04,100 --> 00:45:05,960
Knock on the door and he comes to the
door.

525
00:45:06,780 --> 00:45:08,480
The truck's been broken into.

526
00:45:10,200 --> 00:45:12,900
The Hofner base has been stolen and a
few other things.

527
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:17,820
And I sort of took a deep breath and
stood there thinking, right, what's

528
00:45:17,820 --> 00:45:18,820
going to come back at me?

529
00:45:19,580 --> 00:45:22,580
And he was absolutely amazing. He just
turned around and he says, right, Ian,

530
00:45:22,580 --> 00:45:23,580
I've got another one.

531
00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:28,220
I had a feeling in me, did he think I've
done it?

532
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:31,340
So I rang the police.

533
00:45:33,780 --> 00:45:35,480
And the police didn't seem that
bothered.

534
00:45:38,360 --> 00:45:43,360
I think all the papers used to have
contacts in the police, their friends on

535
00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:46,660
the news desk. Maybe they'd get a small
payment. That's the way it used to work.

536
00:45:47,020 --> 00:45:50,360
So in this particular case, the standard
had got a tip off that this had

537
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:54,100
happened, but they didn't know very much
about it, or even if it was true.

538
00:45:57,049 --> 00:46:01,350
Obviously, the best person to confirm
whether a guitar of his had been stolen

539
00:46:01,350 --> 00:46:02,350
would be him.

540
00:46:03,890 --> 00:46:08,750
I set off for his house, and I didn't
feel very comfortable about doing this.

541
00:46:08,810 --> 00:46:12,750
I didn't think that this was the kind of
journalism I really wanted to do.

542
00:46:13,410 --> 00:46:16,550
And I thought that if he did come out,
he was going to tell us to fuck off.

543
00:46:20,630 --> 00:46:24,550
Probably an hour passed, standing around
on the road, chatting to the

544
00:46:24,550 --> 00:46:25,550
photographer.

545
00:46:26,100 --> 00:46:31,600
Suddenly, without any warning, a wooden
gate swung open and there was Paul.

546
00:46:34,040 --> 00:46:39,000
I can clearly remember his first words
were, ''What do you want, boys?''

547
00:46:39,860 --> 00:46:43,660
And the first question I think I asked
him, first of all, to confirm that the

548
00:46:43,660 --> 00:46:48,500
guitar had been taken, and he said it
had, so that confirmed the story and he

549
00:46:48,500 --> 00:46:52,520
confirmed that it was the original one
that he'd bought back in Hamburg.

550
00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:55,920
which I knew about because I'd followed
the Beatles.

551
00:46:56,380 --> 00:47:01,020
So then I suddenly realised that I was
actually in the middle of a very big

552
00:47:01,020 --> 00:47:07,720
story. The most famous or iconic
instrument of that era had been

553
00:47:07,720 --> 00:47:09,880
stolen and I was talking to the guy who
owned it.

554
00:47:11,860 --> 00:47:16,760
And he was quite happy to chat about it.
He posed for pictures for the

555
00:47:16,760 --> 00:47:21,100
photographer, and I think we probably
spoke for maybe four or five minutes.

556
00:47:21,880 --> 00:47:27,380
And at that stage, our presence had
started to get noticed. A small crowd of

557
00:47:27,380 --> 00:47:28,500
people had started to gather.

558
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:32,860
So he politely thanked us and closed the
gate and went back into the house.

559
00:47:38,780 --> 00:47:40,900
This was the first time I had met a
Beatle.

560
00:47:41,520 --> 00:47:43,920
The Beatles music has enriched my life
enormously.

561
00:47:44,360 --> 00:47:48,780
And I just kind of felt, maybe this
sounds a little bit sycophantic, but I

562
00:47:48,780 --> 00:47:52,800
just really felt that I would like to
have said, can I just thank you for

563
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:54,940
everything you've done? I think your
music's great.

564
00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:57,560
It's something which will stay with me
forever.

565
00:47:57,860 --> 00:47:58,960
Just something like that.

566
00:47:59,560 --> 00:48:02,960
Just a thank you. I think that would
have been nice. But I was in a rush and

567
00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:03,960
I never got to do that.

568
00:48:11,280 --> 00:48:17,960
Paul had given a quote to a newspaper at
the time, and so we thought

569
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:21,300
that you would remember that, or you'd
remember, you know, it was his favourite

570
00:48:21,300 --> 00:48:22,480
base, it had been stolen.

571
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:28,680
Nick was scratching his head as to why
he hadn't been told that that

572
00:48:28,680 --> 00:48:30,200
information hadn't been passed on.

573
00:48:31,040 --> 00:48:34,240
I have to presume that he'd forgotten.

574
00:48:35,100 --> 00:48:39,190
I mean, this is a guy who's... actually
done quite a lot isn't he you know he's

575
00:48:39,190 --> 00:48:44,810
been a few places and around so he might
well have just not registered with him i

576
00:48:44,810 --> 00:48:48,450
don't know there has been a report
recently that you have said that you

577
00:48:48,450 --> 00:48:52,430
might get back with the beatles is this
true no i wouldn't think so i don't

578
00:48:52,430 --> 00:48:54,350
think any of us fancy tell you the truth

579
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:06,200
Perhaps the bass wasn't as important to
Paul in 1972 as it was to him when he

580
00:49:06,200 --> 00:49:08,420
asked Nick to start the search.

581
00:49:08,860 --> 00:49:11,360
I think in a way the Beatles have done
it, you know?

582
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:14,500
The Beatles started from nothing and got
everywhere.

583
00:49:15,020 --> 00:49:18,620
The thing is, you know, I don't know
whether anyone really would even like to

584
00:49:18,620 --> 00:49:20,380
even try and push it any further, you
know?

585
00:49:22,740 --> 00:49:27,160
The Hoffner was a Beatle bass and he
wasn't a Beatle anymore.

586
00:49:31,530 --> 00:49:33,310
I don't blame him, you know.

587
00:49:33,650 --> 00:49:35,810
Those guys had had a hell of a life.

588
00:49:36,070 --> 00:49:39,110
For all their fame and their money,
they'd had a hell of a time.

589
00:49:41,990 --> 00:49:44,750
I think the Hofner was part of that
time.

590
00:49:46,490 --> 00:49:47,930
And they just wanted it gone.

591
00:49:54,750 --> 00:49:58,890
Ian thought that the base had gone into
100 Cambridge Gardens.

592
00:49:59,370 --> 00:50:04,570
So we were interested to find out more
about this character, Dick Mick, that at

593
00:50:04,570 --> 00:50:08,190
that time certainly Trevor suspected and
Ian did as well.

594
00:50:09,110 --> 00:50:13,410
Dick Mick was a roadie and he'd been a
weed dealer.

595
00:50:14,190 --> 00:50:19,790
We were able to find that in the
basement flat of 100 Cambridge Gardens,

596
00:50:19,950 --> 00:50:24,970
a band called Hawkwind and a lot of
members of the band called the Pink

597
00:50:24,970 --> 00:50:25,970
Fairies lived.

598
00:50:43,690 --> 00:50:46,610
Trevor and Ian, they were both very good
friends of mine.

599
00:50:47,510 --> 00:50:54,370
There was the next day when I saw Trevor
and he just said, fuck, he says Paul's

600
00:50:54,370 --> 00:50:58,390
bass got stolen out of the van last
night outside Cambridge Garden. I said,

601
00:50:58,450 --> 00:50:59,450
what?

602
00:51:00,250 --> 00:51:05,450
They said, keep your ears peeled and,
you know, see if there's any word coming

603
00:51:05,450 --> 00:51:09,630
out or any word on the street or...
Dick, Mick, who was Dick?

604
00:51:10,580 --> 00:51:15,240
Dick Mick was one of the people in the
original Hawkwind.

605
00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:21,300
Dick Mick was unfortunately most of the
time out of his head on mandrax.

606
00:51:21,520 --> 00:51:25,800
But he could have been outside blagging
away or leaning against the van or

607
00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:27,080
whatever, having a smoke.

608
00:51:27,540 --> 00:51:31,280
You know, somebody could have said, oh,
whose van's that? Oh, it's Wing's van,

609
00:51:31,460 --> 00:51:32,460
you know.

610
00:51:33,900 --> 00:51:37,240
I heard reports of Hawkwing's gear going
missing.

611
00:51:38,060 --> 00:51:44,160
But that's only the tip of the iceberg.
The whole dynamic around Hawkwind is,

612
00:51:44,160 --> 00:51:45,520
you know, somewhat troubled.

613
00:51:52,220 --> 00:51:58,980
In May 1972, Hawkwind had had £10,000
worth of kit

614
00:51:58,980 --> 00:52:00,540
stolen from their van.

615
00:52:01,360 --> 00:52:06,440
In old newspaper searches, we found out
that they'd been banned from the BBC.

616
00:52:07,310 --> 00:52:09,470
because they'd stolen a microphone.

617
00:52:09,870 --> 00:52:14,050
I think, didn't they write a song that
was sort of anti the Beatles? They were

618
00:52:14,050 --> 00:52:17,710
anti the Beatles. They were anti the
Beatles, so they felt quite anarchic.

619
00:52:19,010 --> 00:52:22,910
It felt like Hawkwind had a motive, and
it also felt like they had the

620
00:52:22,910 --> 00:52:24,550
personality to go and do it.

621
00:52:26,810 --> 00:52:29,830
Ladbroke Grove was pretty funky.

622
00:52:31,430 --> 00:52:34,310
You know, there was the hippies, there
was the...

623
00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:36,540
All the people who had the fruit and
vegetables.

624
00:52:39,080 --> 00:52:43,620
A lot of thugs showed up on Portobello
Road and that's when things started to

625
00:52:43,620 --> 00:52:44,620
go downhill.

626
00:52:45,300 --> 00:52:46,820
You know, rougher.

627
00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:49,880
People started injecting.

628
00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:52,700
People started getting stuff stolen.

629
00:52:59,180 --> 00:53:03,360
Paul Rudolph described a place with a
lot of poverty.

630
00:53:04,040 --> 00:53:10,240
a lot of people really clinging on that
it wasn't a big deal for something to be

631
00:53:10,240 --> 00:53:13,440
stolen out of the back of a van. It
happened all the time.

632
00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:21,880
The base did feel like that's the last
place on earth it should really be.

633
00:53:24,380 --> 00:53:30,440
Which is a long, long way from these
dark, poorly lit streets.

634
00:53:33,200 --> 00:53:37,200
You know, lots of political banners
written on bed sheets sort of hanging

635
00:53:37,200 --> 00:53:38,200
out the windows.

636
00:53:40,100 --> 00:53:41,620
Anarchists and theft.

637
00:53:47,340 --> 00:53:52,460
To picture the bass in the middle of all
of that makes you feel like this little

638
00:53:52,460 --> 00:53:54,820
thing is out there that desperately
needs saving.

639
00:54:05,130 --> 00:54:06,370
But then a penny dropped.

640
00:54:06,590 --> 00:54:12,970
I thought, ah, I got an email about six
months before this from a guy

641
00:54:12,970 --> 00:54:17,790
talking about the base being stolen in
Labrador Grove.

642
00:54:18,390 --> 00:54:24,030
So I naturally went and dug back through
the pile of emails and found it. It was

643
00:54:24,030 --> 00:54:26,090
from a guy called Andrew, Andrew
Dickinson.

644
00:54:27,730 --> 00:54:32,570
And so, yeah, I contacted them and said,
look, you know, something's occurred. We

645
00:54:32,570 --> 00:54:33,570
didn't tell them what.

646
00:54:36,000 --> 00:54:37,200
Further information's arisen.

647
00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:39,020
Can they tell me more?

648
00:54:41,940 --> 00:54:45,920
I didn't think we were going to hear any
more, to be honest.

649
00:54:46,140 --> 00:54:49,460
You know, it was a very small story to
tell.

650
00:54:51,220 --> 00:54:52,220
Whereabouts are you struggling?

651
00:54:52,360 --> 00:54:53,360
Oh, just my neck.

652
00:54:53,440 --> 00:54:56,000
He's, like, really digging in hard, you
know? Yeah.

653
00:54:56,480 --> 00:54:58,620
I think he was using his elbow or
something.

654
00:54:58,860 --> 00:55:00,980
I think they do a lot with their elbow.
Yeah.

655
00:55:01,260 --> 00:55:02,360
Dig in, you know.

656
00:55:03,100 --> 00:55:04,160
Did you get a happy ending?

657
00:55:04,560 --> 00:55:06,560
No, no, I didn't fancy it.

658
00:55:08,180 --> 00:55:12,740
I got back to Steve and said, this Nick,
he's emailed me again.

659
00:55:13,040 --> 00:55:13,899
Next time.

660
00:55:13,900 --> 00:55:19,280
I think, you know, it's your story to
tell. Do you want to get involved and

661
00:55:19,280 --> 00:55:20,280
say a little bit more?

662
00:55:21,420 --> 00:55:22,420
Oh, God.

663
00:55:22,600 --> 00:55:25,800
Straight away I thought, I've opened my
mouth here and he's not going to let

664
00:55:25,800 --> 00:55:26,800
this go now.

665
00:55:29,200 --> 00:55:31,180
What I didn't want to come out was...

666
00:55:31,560 --> 00:55:36,720
Our first house was just off of Ladbroke
Grove, not far from Grenfell Tower.

667
00:55:37,860 --> 00:55:41,440
It was quite a carousel of people coming
and going, really.

668
00:55:42,500 --> 00:55:48,140
I think I was made aware of who you
could talk to and where you could go.

669
00:55:49,520 --> 00:55:52,500
You had boundaries of where you could go
and where you couldn't go.

670
00:55:53,500 --> 00:55:56,820
So there was only so many people you
were likely to get to meet or likely to

671
00:55:56,820 --> 00:55:57,820
get to see.

672
00:55:59,200 --> 00:56:00,360
Dad had a couple of jobs.

673
00:56:02,390 --> 00:56:04,830
He played a lot of football, Saturdays
and Sunday mornings.

674
00:56:07,110 --> 00:56:11,130
Dad's mates, they would always tell me
how good my dad was as a semi-pro

675
00:56:11,130 --> 00:56:13,150
footballer. Because he was good, Dad.

676
00:56:15,770 --> 00:56:16,770
There was a pub.

677
00:56:17,790 --> 00:56:18,890
It's called the Admiral Blake.

678
00:56:20,130 --> 00:56:23,590
And that's where they all used to
congregate, my dad and his mates.

679
00:56:24,750 --> 00:56:26,570
So occasionally I'd get taken across.

680
00:56:28,279 --> 00:56:30,880
It was a good source of information, it
was a good source of recreation.

681
00:56:31,300 --> 00:56:34,860
It was just a good way of socialising
and getting around and getting to know

682
00:56:34,860 --> 00:56:38,420
what was going on and doing what around
the area and stuff like that.

683
00:56:39,580 --> 00:56:42,480
There was racketeering going on and
people going round and if you want a

684
00:56:42,480 --> 00:56:46,680
garden fork or a spade, there's a couple
in the back of that lorry that no one

685
00:56:46,680 --> 00:56:47,800
knows are there if you want that.

686
00:56:49,140 --> 00:56:51,860
If you couldn't get rid of it or you
hadn't sold it, take it out to the pub,

687
00:56:51,920 --> 00:56:52,919
someone will have it off you.

688
00:56:52,920 --> 00:56:54,180
Someone will buy it off you.

689
00:56:58,299 --> 00:57:00,900
Because obviously I wasn't always crewed
up with him, so I was getting little

690
00:57:00,900 --> 00:57:03,140
bits of information here, there,
everywhere, you know.

691
00:57:07,160 --> 00:57:10,360
So he got to a stage where when I was
looking at the road signs, I thought,

692
00:57:10,560 --> 00:57:12,480
oh, I'm working with him again, I know
what's coming here.

693
00:57:17,020 --> 00:57:19,160
I'm just going to have to try and muddy
the waters a little bit here because

694
00:57:19,160 --> 00:57:20,260
he's not going to let it go.

695
00:57:23,260 --> 00:57:25,160
He'd heard that it had been stolen.

696
00:57:25,810 --> 00:57:28,330
from the road that they were in.

697
00:57:30,150 --> 00:57:34,110
They sold it to the barman in the pub
and then they sort of dumped it in the

698
00:57:34,110 --> 00:57:37,910
canal just because they knew it was Paul
McCartney's and they'd never be able to

699
00:57:37,910 --> 00:57:38,910
get rid of it.

700
00:57:40,010 --> 00:57:42,270
We got an A to Z out of the van.

701
00:57:43,130 --> 00:57:46,350
I said, that was the pub, so there's the
canal there, so I'm assuming there. So

702
00:57:46,350 --> 00:57:49,930
he said, so whereabouts do you think? I
said, I don't know, I wasn't there, so I

703
00:57:49,930 --> 00:57:50,928
had no idea.

704
00:57:50,930 --> 00:57:53,600
I said, but that's the canal. I said, if
I lived in that pub... I would have

705
00:57:53,600 --> 00:57:57,740
walked over that bridge and just lobbed
it there. And then he said, do you

706
00:57:57,740 --> 00:57:59,300
reckon we could get a boat and go and
fight? I said, no.

707
00:57:59,640 --> 00:58:01,460
No, I said, I don't think we can go and
get a boat and go and fight.

708
00:58:01,720 --> 00:58:08,020
I think Andrew replied to me saying he
would ask his partner.

709
00:58:08,620 --> 00:58:10,920
And then I get an email from Steve.

710
00:58:11,500 --> 00:58:17,120
Now we had a strong lead. It's been
stolen and it went on to this pub.

711
00:58:17,420 --> 00:58:20,920
The email had said that it had been
thrown into the canal.

712
00:58:22,090 --> 00:58:23,950
That was quite a low point, really.

713
00:58:24,290 --> 00:58:29,370
It was almost like, you know, the body
of the guitar had been dumped into the

714
00:58:29,370 --> 00:58:30,370
water there.

715
00:58:32,790 --> 00:58:39,190
And I remember feeling that the result
isn't what we wanted, but we might

716
00:58:39,190 --> 00:58:42,690
actually have a story now that we know
where Paul McCartney's base is, but

717
00:58:42,690 --> 00:58:46,670
sadly it's at the bottom of that canal
and probably gone forever.

718
00:58:59,930 --> 00:59:00,930
Three, four.

719
00:59:02,310 --> 00:59:03,350
My boss.

720
00:59:07,550 --> 00:59:10,670
My manager at the time got a call from
Paul's manager at the time.

721
00:59:11,370 --> 00:59:14,830
Richard wants you to go down to work
with Paul. I said, kid, no. He was like,

722
00:59:14,990 --> 00:59:18,070
you know, I was 33, I think, when we
started doing that.

723
00:59:18,630 --> 00:59:21,290
He wasn't calling up an eight-year-old
kid who was in the fan club.

724
00:59:21,530 --> 00:59:22,810
One, two, three, four.

725
00:59:29,160 --> 00:59:31,840
We got off to a flying start, you know.

726
00:59:36,080 --> 00:59:41,140
And we'd just recorded with two guitars
and vocals, and it was good fun.

727
00:59:47,380 --> 00:59:51,520
There's a version of me singing My Brave
Face where I'm singing lead, so Paul

728
00:59:51,520 --> 00:59:55,640
could fly around on the bass, and he's
doing all these moves, but I never felt

729
00:59:55,640 --> 00:59:57,060
like he could hear the voice.

730
00:59:59,880 --> 01:00:04,040
Because this bass was just too, it was
too big sounding.

731
01:00:06,500 --> 01:00:10,760
At some point I asked whether the
whereabouts of the Hofner, and it

732
01:00:10,760 --> 01:00:12,160
suddenly appeared.

733
01:00:13,820 --> 01:00:17,360
Elvis Costello said, what about your
Hofner bass, you know, your violin bass,

734
01:00:17,560 --> 01:00:18,459
the Beatle bass?

735
01:00:18,460 --> 01:00:22,760
And I was saying, well, I can try it,
but it's not very good at keeping in

736
01:00:22,760 --> 01:00:26,660
tune, which it isn't, because they're
not very expensive instruments.

737
01:00:27,740 --> 01:00:31,700
So I had given up recording with it,
really, in favour of more modern

738
01:00:31,700 --> 01:00:35,400
instruments. But he said, I love the
sound of it, you know, go on.

739
01:00:37,640 --> 01:00:41,100
But it wasn't the lost bass, the 61
bass.

740
01:00:41,540 --> 01:00:43,160
This was his 63.

741
01:00:43,720 --> 01:00:48,580
But I think at that point, things
changed for Paul.

742
01:00:57,450 --> 01:01:01,970
And it recorded great. It's got a lovely
tone for a little bass.

743
01:01:06,130 --> 01:01:10,790
Honestly, I felt vindicated when I heard
the part. You could hear his personality

744
01:01:10,790 --> 01:01:12,210
really clearly.

745
01:01:12,790 --> 01:01:17,270
And it had the tone. It had the tone. It
was like somebody singing, you know?

746
01:01:24,030 --> 01:01:26,110
Elvis Costello suggested bringing that.

747
01:01:26,330 --> 01:01:31,130
63, maybe that kind of like, you might
have thought, yeah, what happened? Maybe

748
01:01:31,130 --> 01:01:34,190
that's when the whole conversation sort
of started up again about where is the

749
01:01:34,190 --> 01:01:35,190
original one?

750
01:01:36,730 --> 01:01:41,350
By the time we got 89, 90, when we were
about to embark on a big, massive world

751
01:01:41,350 --> 01:01:45,410
tour, and Paul said, what are people
going to want to, you know, they're

752
01:01:45,410 --> 01:01:47,290
going to come to a gig, what are they
going to want?

753
01:01:48,430 --> 01:01:53,210
They're going to want people's, they're
going to want some big, big moments.

754
01:01:54,190 --> 01:01:57,230
Close your eyes and I'll kiss you.

755
01:01:57,450 --> 01:02:00,430
Tomorrow I'll miss you.

756
01:02:00,770 --> 01:02:04,870
Remember I'll always be true.

757
01:02:06,270 --> 01:02:09,510
And meanwhile I'm awake.

758
01:02:09,950 --> 01:02:12,770
I'll write home every day.

759
01:02:13,170 --> 01:02:17,450
And I'll send all my loving to you.

760
01:02:26,820 --> 01:02:29,020
Paul's quite nostalgic about things.

761
01:02:31,040 --> 01:02:36,100
They're important to him, not maybe in a
collectible way, but just emotionally,

762
01:02:36,320 --> 01:02:39,840
and they're part of his history and
they're part of his life, and he, yeah,

763
01:02:40,440 --> 01:02:41,560
he probably missed the bass.

764
01:02:42,820 --> 01:02:44,120
He just wanted it back.

765
01:02:46,680 --> 01:02:50,880
Yeah, well, I think anything that's
nicked, you want back, you know,

766
01:02:50,900 --> 01:02:53,720
especially if it has a sentimental
attachment.

767
01:02:54,350 --> 01:02:56,330
Plus, I was annoyed that someone nicked
it.

768
01:02:56,550 --> 01:02:59,570
You know, it's just like, how dare you?
Give me it back, you know.

769
01:03:01,830 --> 01:03:06,550
Very often in investigations, there's a
breakthrough moment where you're

770
01:03:06,550 --> 01:03:08,210
effectively given something on a plate.

771
01:03:11,050 --> 01:03:12,050
Who's Stephen?

772
01:03:12,650 --> 01:03:17,250
Who's this person? And how does he know
so much about the theft of this guitar?

773
01:03:19,090 --> 01:03:21,170
I made an inquiry about...

774
01:03:21,440 --> 01:03:25,940
the residents of 100 Cambridge Gardens,
so who was on the electoral register.

775
01:03:27,960 --> 01:03:32,800
And I just remember reading through the
list of names, and we got to the name

776
01:03:32,800 --> 01:03:33,800
Glenister.

777
01:03:35,200 --> 01:03:36,200
Oh, my God.

778
01:03:36,780 --> 01:03:40,680
His parents are on the electoral
register in 100 Cambridge Gardens.

779
01:03:56,010 --> 01:03:59,030
He was on holiday in Spain and my phone
went.

780
01:04:00,290 --> 01:04:01,370
Is that Steve Clements? Yeah.

781
01:04:02,750 --> 01:04:04,590
It's Nick Bass here from The Lost Base.

782
01:04:05,850 --> 01:04:07,890
I said, oh, right. Hi, you all right?

783
01:04:08,470 --> 01:04:13,270
He said, I think you know a little bit
more than you're letting on.

784
01:04:14,390 --> 01:04:19,530
Are you prepared to say anything? I
said, not really. I don't know anything

785
01:04:19,530 --> 01:04:21,070
other than I told you. And he said,
well, I think you do.

786
01:04:21,350 --> 01:04:23,230
I knew I had to ask him the question.

787
01:04:24,160 --> 01:04:29,360
And say to him, look, Steve, just tell
me what happened.

788
01:04:29,840 --> 01:04:33,500
You know, I know you know, because you
wouldn't have sent me all this stuff.

789
01:04:33,900 --> 01:04:35,520
And I know you were in the house.

790
01:04:35,880 --> 01:04:37,100
Just tell me what happened.

791
01:04:39,100 --> 01:04:40,680
My dad used to come and watch me play
football a lot.

792
01:04:42,600 --> 01:04:45,600
He was never complimentary about the way
I played. There was always something I

793
01:04:45,600 --> 01:04:50,520
could have done better than that. So he
was coming home one day and I had the

794
01:04:50,520 --> 01:04:51,520
radio on in the car.

795
01:04:53,480 --> 01:04:54,700
How old do you think you were at this
point?

796
01:04:55,000 --> 01:04:58,480
I may have just had the kids, so
mid-20s, something like that.

797
01:05:00,500 --> 01:05:01,500
This song come on.

798
01:05:02,060 --> 01:05:03,780
And I just said, oh, it's the Beatles.

799
01:05:04,340 --> 01:05:05,198
I like these.

800
01:05:05,200 --> 01:05:09,940
And I'd done it more if the louder the
radio was, the less he could talk.

801
01:05:10,700 --> 01:05:13,860
And I was getting a bit fed up with it
all now. So I just sort of turned the

802
01:05:13,860 --> 01:05:14,860
radio up.

803
01:05:19,060 --> 01:05:20,200
And he said...

804
01:05:23,359 --> 01:05:25,240
He said, did I ever tell you about that
guitar then?

805
01:05:29,060 --> 01:05:30,060
I said, what guitar?

806
01:05:31,540 --> 01:05:33,460
He said, the one, Paul McCartney's
guitar.

807
01:05:35,440 --> 01:05:37,900
So I said, no, and he started to laugh.
So I turned the radio down.

808
01:05:38,960 --> 01:05:42,320
He said, um, well, he said, I nicked it.

809
01:05:43,920 --> 01:05:45,340
I said, what do you mean you nicked it?

810
01:05:47,620 --> 01:05:52,240
He said, I didn't even know it was a
guitar. He said, I just opened this fan

811
01:05:52,240 --> 01:05:53,240
up.

812
01:05:53,840 --> 01:05:58,480
He said, when I realised what it was, I
thought, oh, you know, Paul McCartney,

813
01:05:58,500 --> 01:06:00,560
it's the obvious shape of that, proper
shape guitar.

814
01:06:03,720 --> 01:06:05,360
I can just imagine blessing his face.

815
01:06:06,900 --> 01:06:09,740
Nick, the Mona Lisa, what are you going
to do with that? You can't sell it. You

816
01:06:09,740 --> 01:06:10,740
know, it's just one of those things.

817
01:06:12,000 --> 01:06:13,800
It was that family up on the top floor.

818
01:06:14,740 --> 01:06:17,440
They were ignored by Ian and Trevor on
the day.

819
01:06:17,860 --> 01:06:19,060
Nobody went with a wrench.

820
01:06:19,630 --> 01:06:21,110
to those people up on the top floor.

821
01:06:21,410 --> 01:06:24,710
And to be honest, they were ignored by
us in the early days of the search.

822
01:06:24,950 --> 01:06:28,850
And that is perhaps one of the most
extraordinary things about this whole

823
01:06:28,850 --> 01:06:29,850
story.

824
01:06:30,970 --> 01:06:35,750
It got given to a pub landlord who run
the Admiral Blake.

825
01:06:37,490 --> 01:06:39,850
The landlord at the time was a chap
called Ron.

826
01:06:40,910 --> 01:06:44,170
He said, I just said to Ron, yeah, I'll
tell you what, give this to one of your

827
01:06:44,170 --> 01:06:46,390
kids, they can learn it. He said, just
give us a couple of drinks.

828
01:06:46,870 --> 01:06:47,709
I said, what?

829
01:06:47,710 --> 01:06:52,030
He said, well, I just had a cut. He said
he bought me a days worth of light out.

830
01:06:52,950 --> 01:06:58,250
So this guitar ended up with Ron and I
think one of his kids, Graham, ended up

831
01:06:58,250 --> 01:06:59,250
with it.

832
01:07:01,010 --> 01:07:05,910
It had gone to a pub landlord called Ron
Guest.

833
01:07:07,190 --> 01:07:12,350
We knew that it had then been passed on
to his son, Graham, who unfortunately

834
01:07:12,350 --> 01:07:14,050
had died in this terrible car crash.

835
01:07:15,030 --> 01:07:19,940
But then we decided to look at... the
other children, and I was able to

836
01:07:19,940 --> 01:07:24,700
contact Elaine Guest, who was the
youngest of the children, and talk to

837
01:07:24,700 --> 01:07:25,700
her.

838
01:07:28,180 --> 01:07:32,880
That's me on the roof of the two dogs,
because the roof was our garden.

839
01:07:33,320 --> 01:07:36,240
I mean, I grew up with Graham always
having a bass.

840
01:07:36,580 --> 01:07:39,200
I can't remember a time when it suddenly
appeared.

841
01:07:40,280 --> 01:07:41,820
It was always Graham's bass.

842
01:07:42,120 --> 01:07:44,300
It was just always playing, you know.

843
01:07:45,120 --> 01:07:48,680
And he didn't mind if I plopped myself
down and listened to it.

844
01:07:49,880 --> 01:07:51,060
And where was it kept here?

845
01:07:52,180 --> 01:07:54,020
In the little bedroom.

846
01:07:57,040 --> 01:07:59,860
You don't think he would have known it
was Paul McCartney's?

847
01:08:00,820 --> 01:08:01,820
Definitely not.

848
01:08:02,420 --> 01:08:03,420
Definitely not.

849
01:08:04,100 --> 01:08:08,540
I mean, when you think about it, who in
their right minds would buy a bass and

850
01:08:08,540 --> 01:08:10,660
know it was Paul McCartney's and then
give it to his son?

851
01:08:11,310 --> 01:08:14,450
Who's going to take God knows where and
somebody's going to say, but that's Paul

852
01:08:14,450 --> 01:08:15,450
McCartney's bass.

853
01:08:16,430 --> 01:08:17,430
But no.

854
01:08:18,510 --> 01:08:19,910
Do you wish you'd played it a bit now?

855
01:08:20,430 --> 01:08:22,990
Now I know who it is, yes.

856
01:08:26,029 --> 01:08:27,170
Were you into the Beatles?

857
01:08:27,490 --> 01:08:32,470
No. No, no. I always thought the Beatles
were like a girly band.

858
01:08:35,630 --> 01:08:39,710
After Graham had died, her brother
Hayden...

859
01:08:40,140 --> 01:08:43,000
took the base from their family home.

860
01:08:43,760 --> 01:08:49,000
Hayden got divorced in the 1990s and
then married someone else and it ended

861
01:08:49,000 --> 01:08:50,520
up in Hastings.

862
01:08:52,779 --> 01:08:57,560
He left his wife and kids and then got
involved with somebody and that's hence

863
01:08:57,560 --> 01:09:00,040
why there's been no communication at
all.

864
01:09:04,120 --> 01:09:08,160
From what I can gather, the base was
just in the loft in the house at

865
01:09:08,160 --> 01:09:09,160
Hastings.

866
01:09:18,510 --> 01:09:21,029
We were in Los Angeles, we were
rehearsing, I think.

867
01:09:23,410 --> 01:09:30,069
And I got a phone call from a colleague,
said, somebody's turned up at the farm

868
01:09:30,069 --> 01:09:35,350
with a bass, and they think it might be
Paul's, this lost bass that everybody's

869
01:09:35,350 --> 01:09:38,050
talking about all of a sudden, because
it had been in the press by then.

870
01:09:39,010 --> 01:09:43,529
And she'd left some photos and then took
the bass back.

871
01:09:44,490 --> 01:09:46,170
So I was emailed the photos.

872
01:09:46,760 --> 01:09:51,479
And I just had a feeling. I could feel
it. I just thought, ooh, this is really

873
01:09:51,479 --> 01:09:57,180
interesting. And the next day, I was
with Paul in the morning, and I had my

874
01:09:57,180 --> 01:10:00,420
laptop, and we were about to leave for
the studio. And I said, I've got

875
01:10:00,420 --> 01:10:03,220
something I need to talk to you about.
And he thought a second, but he said,

876
01:10:03,280 --> 01:10:05,080
oh, is it bad? I said, no, it's not bad.

877
01:10:05,580 --> 01:10:09,260
And I opened up my laptop, and I was
shaking. I was literally shaking.

878
01:10:09,560 --> 01:10:11,820
The minute I saw the case, it was in.

879
01:10:12,080 --> 01:10:13,080
Whoa.

880
01:10:13,760 --> 01:10:14,760
I've got it back.

881
01:10:15,480 --> 01:10:16,480
Oh, my God.

882
01:10:17,240 --> 01:10:21,480
And I'm checking it, and I'm thinking,
well, yeah, that's it. And, you know,

883
01:10:21,520 --> 01:10:23,820
that's how it looked, and this is
definitely the case.

884
01:10:24,160 --> 01:10:26,460
I remember carrying it in that case.

885
01:10:27,220 --> 01:10:29,820
So I organised for somebody to go and
pick it up.

886
01:10:31,820 --> 01:10:34,720
And then I said, have you got it?

887
01:10:34,940 --> 01:10:41,340
And he said, yep, it's here. I said,
keep it. Don't let anybody... Just put

888
01:10:41,340 --> 01:10:42,340
it away.

889
01:10:50,060 --> 01:10:53,580
We've hardly let it out of us I'm

890
01:10:53,580 --> 01:11:09,620
sitting

891
01:11:09,620 --> 01:11:16,220
at home on my sofa Kathy's sitting over
there and my mobile phone goes and this

892
01:11:16,220 --> 01:11:21,520
voice comes on and say hey We've got the
bass back. We've got the bass.

893
01:11:22,280 --> 01:11:26,680
And I think, who's that? Who's this? Who
are you? Then Penny dropped the accent,

894
01:11:26,820 --> 01:11:29,260
the Liverpool accent, and I realised it
was Paul McCartney.

895
01:11:29,820 --> 01:11:32,820
We didn't quite know who to tell.

896
01:11:34,540 --> 01:11:40,140
There were factors that meant we should
keep it a secret for a bit longer till

897
01:11:40,140 --> 01:11:45,080
we got our act together, till we
absolutely had everyone verify that it

898
01:11:45,080 --> 01:11:46,660
was mine, people like Nick.

899
01:11:48,820 --> 01:11:53,700
So it was sweet to be able to ring him
up and say, guess what?

900
01:11:54,600 --> 01:11:59,080
It was stunning. You know, it was like,
wow, what, really?

901
01:11:59,500 --> 01:12:03,460
And I think I said to Paul, I think I'm
going to go and get a beer out of the

902
01:12:03,460 --> 01:12:04,460
fridge for this.

903
01:12:04,480 --> 01:12:08,760
And he said, I would. He said, yeah. Is
it a German beer like I used to drink in

904
01:12:08,760 --> 01:12:14,440
Hamburg? It was just amazing because I
could hear Paul on the phone to Nick and

905
01:12:14,440 --> 01:12:15,680
it was just amazing.

906
01:12:16,490 --> 01:12:20,650
That was incredible for us to just sit
here thinking that Nick was in Germany,

907
01:12:20,790 --> 01:12:26,090
Paul was in L.A., the bass was in
Sussex, and we'd done it.

908
01:12:29,910 --> 01:12:35,990
What happened for me over the last year,
I've had two strokes, which has

909
01:12:35,990 --> 01:12:38,910
certainly changed things for our life.

910
01:12:39,610 --> 01:12:44,210
And the bass has certainly lightened
that situation.

911
01:12:45,130 --> 01:12:48,670
For us, I would say. Yeah, sure. Focus
is the mind.

912
01:13:00,770 --> 01:13:05,730
Paul McCartney's most treasured bass
guitar that he had played throughout the

913
01:13:05,730 --> 01:13:08,570
early days of the Beatles vanished
without trace.

914
01:13:08,770 --> 01:13:12,050
Now, 51 years later, it has been found.

915
01:13:12,959 --> 01:13:16,980
James Dunham went to meet the mother of
two who was unaware she was holding on

916
01:13:16,980 --> 01:13:18,500
to an iconic instrument.

917
01:13:18,900 --> 01:13:25,000
I was actually cataloguing lots of
guitars that I've got and when I googled

918
01:13:25,000 --> 01:13:26,240
it, it immediately came up.

919
01:13:26,560 --> 01:13:32,680
I panicked and then went straight to his
house because I knew he lived nearby and

920
01:13:32,680 --> 01:13:35,880
I eventually found it after going
through a lot of fields.

921
01:13:36,540 --> 01:13:40,080
It had broken in the press that we were
looking for this lost base, and that

922
01:13:40,080 --> 01:13:44,300
might have been one of the reasons Kathy
thought, I better give it back.

923
01:13:45,000 --> 01:13:50,840
There's this little side life it's gone
off and living with all these people I

924
01:13:50,840 --> 01:13:51,840
don't know.

925
01:13:52,880 --> 01:13:55,700
And it ends up with Kathy.

926
01:14:01,160 --> 01:14:05,360
Just remember, this is Paul's bass. This
is something he really, truly cares and

927
01:14:05,360 --> 01:14:09,240
loves. And if you leave a guitar in a
loft, it will destroy a guitar, you

928
01:14:09,240 --> 01:14:10,240
know.

929
01:14:10,960 --> 01:14:12,260
You've got to put it all together.

930
01:14:14,020 --> 01:14:17,400
Put the strings on and then just play
that first chord and just hope that you

931
01:14:17,400 --> 01:14:18,400
got it right.

932
01:14:19,020 --> 01:14:22,740
That's where the craftsmanship is, and
Martin obviously is. An old-school

933
01:14:22,740 --> 01:14:25,940
craftsman in the way he works, the way
he does things.

934
01:14:27,360 --> 01:14:30,160
These poor people, it means a lot to
you, but it doesn't...

935
01:14:30,410 --> 01:14:32,350
really sort of, I'm not that fussed
about it.

936
01:14:32,750 --> 01:14:37,090
I just think, obviously, it's just a
guitar. And I, you know, now I get it. I

937
01:14:37,090 --> 01:14:41,970
get it now, but I still don't get it,
get it, really. You know, just thieve

938
01:14:41,970 --> 01:14:42,970
it.

939
01:14:43,870 --> 01:14:45,730
Thieving's nothing to be proud of, full
stop.

940
01:14:46,210 --> 01:14:48,030
But that said, we've all done it.

941
01:14:48,830 --> 01:14:55,430
We've all done it. So, but it's the
iconic guitar

942
01:14:55,430 --> 01:14:58,730
that he had in his hands.

943
01:15:01,780 --> 01:15:08,500
The implication, the size of it, its

944
01:15:08,500 --> 01:15:14,960
meaning to obviously Paul McCartney and
other people, the enormity of it all is

945
01:15:14,960 --> 01:15:17,700
just a bit sort of blimey. Yeah,
overwhelming.

946
01:15:17,940 --> 01:15:18,980
Yeah, a little bit, yeah.

947
01:15:19,480 --> 01:15:26,340
I don't want anyone to think of Dad
anything but a nice

948
01:15:26,340 --> 01:15:29,740
lad because that's what he was. He was a
lovely, lovely lad.

949
01:15:31,950 --> 01:15:34,470
But there wasn't always a receipt in the
house for what we had.

950
01:15:35,970 --> 01:15:39,250
It was just to make ends meet a little
bit.

951
01:15:42,810 --> 01:15:44,570
I don't blame him too much.

952
01:15:45,330 --> 01:15:48,050
You know, I think it's just petty
thievery.

953
01:15:49,850 --> 01:15:53,210
It's the kind of thing we would have
done a little bit of in Liverpool.

954
01:15:53,670 --> 01:15:59,750
Just, you know, just it's there and I
could nick it, so I will.

955
01:16:01,340 --> 01:16:07,600
We got out of that pretty quickly
Because luckily the Beatles took over

956
01:16:07,600 --> 01:16:13,760
and we found an honest profession But I
can sympathize with people who don't

957
01:16:13,760 --> 01:16:17,840
have that kind of look So I don't blame
him too much

958
01:16:17,840 --> 01:16:25,740
I'm

959
01:16:25,740 --> 01:16:26,519
not comfortable.

960
01:16:26,520 --> 01:16:29,660
I'm not all right with it

961
01:16:32,220 --> 01:16:38,420
You're taking the name Ormadad through
muddy waters and that's not what you do.

962
01:16:41,800 --> 01:16:44,300
Growing up anyway, I don't remember my
dad ever telling me he loved me.

963
01:16:45,420 --> 01:16:49,140
Not that that was a problem for me, it
was just how it was.

964
01:16:51,720 --> 01:16:58,440
When we had a little boy and I rang
home,

965
01:16:58,580 --> 01:16:59,580
he...

966
01:17:09,320 --> 01:17:10,320
He never told me.

967
01:17:10,580 --> 01:17:11,580
Mum told me.

968
01:17:12,140 --> 01:17:16,260
But I later found out that he cried.

969
01:17:18,660 --> 01:17:20,380
Which, Dad never did that.

970
01:17:20,760 --> 01:17:24,340
Dad never cried. I never saw a tear out
of my Dad's eye.

971
01:17:26,300 --> 01:17:28,300
God, I can't remember, I think.

972
01:17:28,940 --> 01:17:32,540
But apparently he cried, because to Dad
it meant the name would never go.

973
01:17:44,650 --> 01:17:46,270
Did you just see the one I sent you?

974
01:17:46,590 --> 01:17:47,830
The one with the glue?

975
01:17:48,070 --> 01:17:49,190
Have you seen that one yet?

976
01:17:49,990 --> 01:17:52,570
No. Oh, I've just sent... Oh,

977
01:17:53,350 --> 01:17:56,930
I've just sent you another one with
Martin actually gluing the neck back on.

978
01:17:58,090 --> 01:17:59,370
Oh, lovely. Is that Martin?

979
01:17:59,790 --> 01:18:00,769
Yeah, say hi.

980
01:18:00,770 --> 01:18:01,770
Hello, Paul.

981
01:18:01,910 --> 01:18:02,749
Hi, Martin.

982
01:18:02,750 --> 01:18:04,490
Your bass is saved.

983
01:18:05,710 --> 01:18:08,650
I know. Thanks for doing this, man. It's
great.

984
01:18:08,950 --> 01:18:09,809
You're welcome.

985
01:18:09,810 --> 01:18:10,810
I like his workshop.

986
01:18:11,470 --> 01:18:14,350
Oh, yeah, lovely workshop. Well, look at
his garden.

987
01:18:15,290 --> 01:18:17,010
Oh, yeah, there you go.

988
01:18:17,230 --> 01:18:18,330
How beautiful is that?

989
01:18:19,050 --> 01:18:20,050
A little pond.

990
01:18:20,690 --> 01:18:23,950
Beautiful. I can't wait to play it.

991
01:18:24,170 --> 01:18:25,170
Yeah, it won't be long.

992
01:18:25,750 --> 01:18:27,890
Have a good one, Paul. Thank you. Bye.

993
01:18:33,470 --> 01:18:36,490
I feel that over the last 20 years or
so...

994
01:18:36,750 --> 01:18:41,250
Paul, to me, seems to appreciate more
and more how good they were and how good

995
01:18:41,250 --> 01:18:42,250
the songs were.

996
01:18:42,730 --> 01:18:46,770
When he plays them, he really enjoys
them. He thinks, this was a great song.

997
01:18:46,810 --> 01:18:50,390
We really, really did well. And he's so
proud of what they achieved.

998
01:18:50,710 --> 01:18:54,830
So I think now him playing them on stage
is big for him. I think he loves it.

999
01:18:56,150 --> 01:18:57,710
He's come that full circle.

1000
01:18:58,990 --> 01:19:03,690
We can have a little break now.

1001
01:19:05,100 --> 01:19:08,180
Okay, cool. I've actually got something
you might want to see. You've got

1002
01:19:08,180 --> 01:19:11,260
something for me. A little something you
might want to see. Does the lead belong

1003
01:19:11,260 --> 01:19:12,260
to you?

1004
01:19:12,320 --> 01:19:13,600
Do you want to come this way?

1005
01:19:18,700 --> 01:19:19,900
Oh, here it is.

1006
01:19:21,420 --> 01:19:22,420
Look at that.

1007
01:19:22,840 --> 01:19:23,840
Look at that.

1008
01:19:24,800 --> 01:19:26,640
He's done a brilliant job as well,
hasn't he?

1009
01:19:32,720 --> 01:19:34,320
Oh, yeah, I wanted to show you that.

1010
01:19:34,800 --> 01:19:35,840
That's a little note from Martin.

1011
01:19:36,680 --> 01:19:37,700
From Martin.

1012
01:19:38,080 --> 01:19:42,480
Many times I've had the pleasure of
putting music back into old, broken

1013
01:19:42,480 --> 01:19:43,480
instruments.

1014
01:19:43,700 --> 01:19:46,540
It's been an absolute joy to do that
with your bass.

1015
01:19:46,880 --> 01:19:48,940
So thanks, and I hope you like it.

1016
01:19:49,780 --> 01:19:52,400
Keep on trucking. Well, thank you,
Martin.

1017
01:19:53,200 --> 01:19:56,860
You've done a great job. I love those
kind of guys.

1018
01:20:11,010 --> 01:20:13,290
50 years ago since you last played that.

1019
01:20:15,130 --> 01:20:17,070
It's crazy. It's true, isn't it? Yeah.

1020
01:20:17,430 --> 01:20:19,670
It's over 50 years, yeah. That's crazy.

1021
01:20:20,230 --> 01:20:22,510
But I'd love to know what you were
doing.

1022
01:20:23,010 --> 01:20:26,970
Maybe rehearsing for something. Yeah,
and if the van had been parked. I don't

1023
01:20:26,970 --> 01:20:30,390
know, yeah. I know, it's a long time
ago. Well, the van's parked and the guys

1024
01:20:30,390 --> 01:20:36,350
go in for a couple of pints and they
decide they should leave the van and go

1025
01:20:36,350 --> 01:20:38,890
home and come back in tomorrow morning.

1026
01:20:39,130 --> 01:20:45,130
Oops. slight mistake big mistake so it
gets nicked yeah and then ends up with

1027
01:20:45,130 --> 01:20:52,130
the local uh is that a bit short strap
yeah it's kind of a

1028
01:20:52,130 --> 01:20:54,730
bigger rounder sound the solid i feel

1029
01:20:54,730 --> 01:21:00,550
yeah

1030
01:21:00,550 --> 01:21:04,190
wow

1031
01:21:04,190 --> 01:21:08,910
there she is yeah

1032
01:21:10,380 --> 01:21:11,780
Welcome home, honey.

1033
01:21:12,660 --> 01:21:13,660
Look at that.

1034
01:21:13,800 --> 01:21:14,800
Wow.

1035
01:21:15,500 --> 01:21:16,720
Crazy story.

1036
01:21:17,100 --> 01:21:18,400
Yeah. Yeah.

1037
01:21:20,140 --> 01:21:24,620
You've got to go a long way to find
somebody that's grown up without the

1038
01:21:24,620 --> 01:21:25,620
Beatles.

1039
01:21:26,280 --> 01:21:30,920
And I think there's something about the
relationship between us all, you know,

1040
01:21:30,960 --> 01:21:35,700
normal people and the Beatles, and you
sort of think you know them because you

1041
01:21:35,700 --> 01:21:36,700
know the music.

1042
01:21:38,160 --> 01:21:39,940
Good to see force chasing as well.

1043
01:21:40,160 --> 01:21:42,080
The music went global.

1044
01:21:42,480 --> 01:21:48,340
But the bass, by going off on that weird
route, the minute it went from that van

1045
01:21:48,340 --> 01:21:54,040
in Cambridge Gardens, it's gone into
that ordinary British world.

1046
01:21:54,880 --> 01:22:00,960
It's gone missing here. It's ended up
here, in ordinary streets, ordinary

1047
01:22:00,960 --> 01:22:02,900
pubs, ordinary families.

1048
01:22:03,540 --> 01:22:06,340
And there's something incredible about
that in its own right.

1049
01:22:20,860 --> 01:22:26,700
I'm trying to be humble but you know I
think I was an important jigsaw puzzle

1050
01:22:26,700 --> 01:22:31,980
piece because you know I guess if I
hadn't been a beetle fan if I hadn't

1051
01:22:31,980 --> 01:22:37,500
have met Steve if I hadn't played the
guitar these little things that fall

1052
01:22:37,500 --> 01:22:40,420
into place it might just been a
different story we might never have

1053
01:22:40,420 --> 01:22:44,100
found it cheers to the old man absolute
friends

1054
01:22:47,400 --> 01:22:51,580
We didn't get it back just for Paul. We
got it back for everybody who was a

1055
01:22:51,580 --> 01:22:52,539
Beatles fan.

1056
01:22:52,540 --> 01:22:55,880
All the kids like me were little kids
back then.

1057
01:22:56,420 --> 01:22:58,120
We're old farts now, you know.

1058
01:22:59,000 --> 01:23:02,140
They could see that face once more, you
know.

1059
01:23:21,100 --> 01:23:22,100
I did take it.

1060
01:23:22,380 --> 01:23:23,380
Yeah.

1061
01:23:24,320 --> 01:23:27,540
It's much better. The logo is totally
different. Yeah, but that's the old

1062
01:23:27,540 --> 01:23:30,280
logo. Oh, yeah, early logo.

1063
01:23:30,640 --> 01:23:31,640
Oh, yeah, right.

1064
01:23:32,240 --> 01:23:33,179
How's it feel?

1065
01:23:33,180 --> 01:23:33,999
It feels great.

1066
01:23:34,000 --> 01:23:34,539
Does it?

1067
01:23:34,540 --> 01:23:37,040
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, we've got to
open the doors.

1068
01:23:42,500 --> 01:23:45,760
Hello. Oh, good to see you there.

1069
01:23:46,100 --> 01:23:49,620
My love, fantastic to see you. First
time ever. Hello.

1070
01:23:50,190 --> 01:23:51,190
We meet at last.

1071
01:23:51,370 --> 01:23:53,870
Maybe he's going to play the bass. Who
can tell?

1072
01:24:06,650 --> 01:24:09,630
So, a little tale to tell you here.

1073
01:24:10,210 --> 01:24:16,910
A while ago, I had a bass besides

1074
01:24:16,910 --> 01:24:17,910
this one.

1075
01:24:17,990 --> 01:24:19,310
My original bass.

1076
01:24:20,000 --> 01:24:23,460
And it got nicked, to tell you the
truth.

1077
01:24:23,820 --> 01:24:26,400
And we've been looking for it for 50
years.

1078
01:24:27,000 --> 01:24:30,180
Well, I got it back.

1079
01:24:32,860 --> 01:24:38,900
And here to make its first stage
appearance in 50 years is my original

1080
01:24:38,900 --> 01:24:39,900
bass.

1081
01:24:56,200 --> 01:24:57,200
Come on now.

1082
01:25:21,120 --> 01:25:25,720
Well, we'd love to see it in your hands
if you're happy to grab it. I have it

1083
01:25:25,720 --> 01:25:26,720
right here.

1084
01:25:28,580 --> 01:25:29,580
There she is.

1085
01:25:30,580 --> 01:25:31,700
That's my old baby.

1086
01:25:32,740 --> 01:25:36,680
Do you find yourself getting a bit more
reflective as you get older? Yeah, yeah,

1087
01:25:36,720 --> 01:25:38,280
I think so, yeah, definitely.

1088
01:25:40,180 --> 01:25:42,660
Because it's so special.

1089
01:25:43,620 --> 01:25:44,840
Now, I don't have an amp.

1090
01:25:51,560 --> 01:25:55,640
These are just four guys in Liverpool
who didn't know each other.

1091
01:25:56,320 --> 01:26:00,020
I got introduced to John via a
schoolmate of mine.

1092
01:26:00,780 --> 01:26:04,540
And yeah, I really liked him. It's
lovely to play.

1093
01:26:05,700 --> 01:26:09,280
And then George I knew off the school
bus.

1094
01:26:10,140 --> 01:26:14,240
Then John was looking for someone else
to play guitar.

1095
01:26:15,520 --> 01:26:20,100
And I said, I've got this mate, you
know, he's pretty good.

1096
01:26:21,540 --> 01:26:25,160
Yeah, you can get right up there and you
wouldn't normally use that. I said to

1097
01:26:25,160 --> 01:26:27,180
George, go on, play it. He's looking at
it.

1098
01:26:27,500 --> 01:26:31,220
So I encouraged George, so George got it
out of the case and he plays a thing

1099
01:26:31,220 --> 01:26:35,180
called Raunchy, which is good and he did
it great.

1100
01:26:35,960 --> 01:26:41,600
Then suddenly we had three of the
Beatles then and it only needed Ringo to

1101
01:26:41,600 --> 01:26:44,780
show up for us to be complete.

1102
01:26:50,800 --> 01:26:57,040
JoJo was a man who thought he was a
loner, but he knew it couldn't last.

1103
01:26:58,340 --> 01:27:04,680
JoJo left his home in Tucson, Arizona
for some California grass.

1104
01:27:05,360 --> 01:27:12,300
Get back, get back, get back to where
you once belonged.

1105
01:27:20,160 --> 01:27:21,740
Get back, JoJo.