They hurriedly recruited drummer Pete Best from another Liverpool group, The Blackjacks, to complete the band. In late August 1960, through Williams, the band had been hired by Bruno Koschmider to play a residency at his club in Hamburg, Germany. He started to book them gigs under various names, including Long John and The Silver Beetles, The Silver Beetles, and then The Silver Beatles. The band played a few gigs around the local area, and in May 1960, they caught the attention of local venue owner Larry Williams. George Harrison was later to comment that, “It was better to have a bass guitarist who couldn’t play than not to have a bass guitarist at all”. Sutcliffe wasn’t a natural musician and struggled to learn the instrument. In January 1960, Lennon persuaded him to use the £65 he’d raised to buy a Hofner President bass at Hessey’s music shop in Liverpool and the band expanded to become a quartet. He was a talented artist, and in November 1959, Stuart sold one of his paintings at an art exhibition.
Stuart Sutcliffe had become a friend of John Lennon’s when they were both studying at The Liverpool College of Art.
Unable to find a permanent drummer, they settled for the next best thing a bass player.
Watch Paul McCartney play the 1961 Hofner bass at the Cavern Club in 1962 down below.Tim Fletcher looks at how Paul McCartney became the bass player in The Beatles, a role he didn’t really want…īy 1959, the three remaining members of The Quarrymen, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison were gelling as a live band, but their three-guitar lineup needed some extra drive to enable them to sound like the US rock n roll bands they aspired to emulate. To this day the guitars remain missing, and the location of McCartney’s original 1961 Hofner bass may never be known.
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A closet that contained McCartney’s ’61 Hofner, plus George Harrison’s Gretsch Tennesseean and his second Rickenbacker 360-12, was raided by an unknown assailant who walked out the front door with the priceless guitars. Soon after the Get Back/Let It Be sessions, a theft occurred at EMI Studios. Still, McCartney busted out the original Hofner for the promotional video of the ‘Revolution’ single in 1968, and footage of McCartney using the bass can be seen in both Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s documentary Let It Be and Peter Jackson’s docu-series The Beatles: Get Back. In 1965, McCartney largely switched to using a Rickenbacker 4001S in the studio, further negating the need for the ’61 Hofner. The ’61 Hofner was relegated to backup duty, and McCartney soon had the bass repainted with a sunburst finish. In gratitude for the publicity that McCartney had generated for the company, Hofner presented McCartney with an updated model in 1963, McCartney would use the ’63 model for the remainder of The Beatles’ live career and still uses the model today. McCartney used this specific model, identifiable through its closely positioned pickups that were later separated on McCartney’s second model, throughout the band’s earliest recordings and tours, including on the album Please Please Me and With the Beatles.
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