INTRO| FROM THE EDITOR
I’M SURE I’VEtold you this before, but with more than five years of Guitar Playerunder my belt, I can’t be completely certain. Besides, this issue’s cover story is a good reason to tell it again.
Roughly 10 years ago, Guitar Aficionadoran a story about George Harrison’s guitar collection. I was the publication’s managing editor at the time. For the page showing George’s Gibson J-160E — the acoustic-electric he played on many of the group’s early songs — we included a photo of George and John Lennon holding their Gibsons. As the story goes, Harrison and Lennon bought their matching Jumbos at the same time and eventually, perhaps accidentally, swapped them. Lennon’s was stolen in late 1963 and presumed lost forever by the time our issue came out. That changed after a reader saw our story and thought one of the guitars in that photo of George and John looked a lot like a second-hand early ’60s J-160E owned by his friend. Long story short, the guitars were a match. Lennon’s missing guitar had been found.
Ever since, it hasn’t been lost on me that the media can play a passive, but very important role to help solve mysteries around historic instruments simply by reporting on them and, where possible, providing photographs and descriptions. So when news broke last September that a trio of sleuths behind the Lost Bass Project were trying to find Paul McCartney’s stolen 1961 Höfner 500/1 bass, it seemed obvious we should do our part as soon as our publishing schedule allowed. That time is now.
As Beatles gear goes, McCartney’s ’61 Höfner violin bass is legendary. It’s the one heard on nearly all the group’s 1962–1963 recordings, when Beatlemania was being birthed across the U.K. and Europe. For years, no one has known exactly how or when it disappeared. But as you’ll read in this month’s cover story, the Lost Bass Project has quickly learned several key aspects about the theft — including the news that McCartney himself
