What was Paul McCartney’s first bass guitar?

Posted On August 24, 2024August 24, 2024

Little more than a year after first picking up a bass guitar, Paul McCartney was playing the instrument on the first Beatles single ‘Love Me Do’. For someone still relatively new to the instrument, he’d already made it his own.

His ability with the bass really shines on the band’s follow-up third single and first official UK number one ‘From Me to You’. His swinging bass line for the song displays considerable dexterity, as well as an ear for harmony, which is the real secret behind his mastery of the instrument. Six months later, he recorded the iconic wandering bass line for the track that would open The Beatles’ first live performance in the United States, ‘All My Loving’.

McCartney played each of these parts on his instantly recognisable violin-shaped Höfner 500/1 bass, as he did for the majority of bass lines he contributed to Beatles recordings. The musician was recently reunited with this legendary instrument, 51 years on from when it was stolen from his roadie’s van.

Yet his famous Höfner wasn’t the guitar McCartney initially used to play his bass parts. When original Beatles bassist Stuart Sutcliffe dropped out of the group’s planned performances in January 1961 to stay in Hamburg with his new girlfriend, Astrid Kirchherr, his successor had to fill in on the instrument at short notice.

So, what bass guitar did he use?

After borrowing Sutcliffe’s right-handed Höfner 500/5 and playing it upside down for a few gigs, McCartney decided he needed something more amenable to playing left-handed. But with little money at his disposal and the band’s gruelling schedule of non-stop live performances, he wasn’t in a position to buy a new bass guitar immediately. He had to get creative.

That meant restringing the left-handed Rosetti Solid 7 guitar he’d bought from Hessy’s music shop in Liverpool back in June 1960. The problem was that he couldn’t get hold of the thicker strings needed to turn it into a bass. He improvised, moving the lowest guitar string to the highest position on the fretboard, and adding three lower-pitched piano strings above it.

The instrument lasted less than six months in its new configuration as a bass guitar, although McCartney got more than 100 shows out of it while filling in as his group’s bassist. Still, its lean body was buckling under the strains of heavier strings and refitted bass pickup, and the young musician finished it off when he accidentally dropped it during The Beatles’ second trip to Hamburg.

“It was a complete write-off, but I didn’t think it was worth repairing,” he said in a 1964 interview. “So all of us, George, Stu, Pete and John – especially John – had a great time smashing it to bits by jumping up and down on it.”

Once Sutcliffe confirmed he was leaving the band for good in July 1961, McCartney became its full-time bassist. It was then that he had no choice but to invest in a bespoke bass guitar. He bought his most celebrated instrument from the Steinway shop in central Hamburg and made it his instrument of choice for the duration of The Beatles’ recording career.

Nevertheless, it was on his makeshift Rosetti Solid 7 bass that he learned to play the instrument. By the time he bought his Höfner 500/1, he was more than ready to make the role of Beatles bassist his own.