{"id":558453,"date":"2026-04-30T09:21:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T09:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/558453\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T09:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T09:21:10","slug":"dave-brock-denies-hawkwind-stole-paul-mccartneys-bass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/558453\/","title":{"rendered":"Dave Brock denies Hawkwind stole Paul McCartney’s bass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hawkwind<\/a> founder and bandleader Dave Brock has responded to the negative portrayal of his band in the recent BBC documentary Paul McCartney: The Hunt For The Lost Bass with anger and dismay, saying, \u201cI was pissed off. This disrespects the band.\u201d<\/p>\n

First aired on BBC Two on April 11, the documentary looked into how McCartney\u2019s first bass guitar \u2013 a H\u00f6fner 500\/1 violin bass, which he\u2019d bought in Hamburg during the Beatles<\/a>\u2019 residency there in 1961 \u2013 went missing.<\/p>\n

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The bass was used on the albums Please Please Me and With The Beatles, then replaced in 1963 by a newer model gifted by H\u00f6fner. McCartney\u2019s original became a battered backup instrument until the Beatles split and was still in his possession when he went solo and formed his next group, Wings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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In October 1972, when Wings were recording their second LP Red Rose Speedway, the bass was part of a haul stolen from the back of their van, which had been parked overnight in Cambridge Gardens, Ladbroke Grove. In an unexpected plot twist, The Hunt For The Lost Bass names local residents Hawkwind as potential culprits, particularly Michael “DikMik” Davies, their late roadie-turned-electronics pioneer.<\/p>\n

Dave Brock had settled in for a night in front of the TV to watch the doc. He was shocked to see Hawkwind dragged into the story. \u201cI\u2019d read about the film in the Radio Times,” he tells Classic Rock, \u201cIt mentioned the counterculture scene in west London but I didn\u2019t realise we were going to be in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass (2026) | Official Trailer – YouTube
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In the documentary, Wings roadie Ian Horne explains how, while transferring their gear to Basing Street Studios in Notting Hill, he decided not to unpack the backline at the end of a day but instead parked the van in a spot suggested by his friend Trevor. The next morning the lock was broken on the back shutter, and the gear gone.<\/p>\n

The area back then was a post-war slum populated by squat-dwellers, working-class families, hippie creatives \u2013 and bands such as Hawkwind. DikMik\u2019s basement flat was beside where the van was parked. Horne says, \u201cTrevor thought DikMik was a bit iffy,\u201d but is unable to back this up before elaborating, \u201cI did feel it was one of that mob because they all knew we worked for Paul.\u201d Horne then recounts that he and Trevor, armed with wrenches, forced entry to the flat where they found an alarmed DikMik but saw no sign of the bass, or any of Wings\u2019 other gear.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBut did they?\u201d Brock says. \u201cThat sounds to me like a tall story. We toured a hell of a lot in 1972 and might not have been in London at that time. And if two guys with wrenches had burst into DikMik\u2019s flat accusing him of stealing Paul McCartney\u2019s bass then we \u2013 the band and our manager Doug Smith \u2013 would certainly have heard about it from him. But we didn\u2019t. I don\u2019t believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lost bass project was initiated in 2018 by H\u00f6fner UK boss Nick Wass who, in 2023, enlisted the sleuthing skills of journalists Scott and Naomi Jones, dubbed The Bass Detectives in the film. The duo eventually unearth the light-fingered miscreant, but during the documentary they claim that Hawkwind were \u201cfamously anti-Beatles\u201d and wrote anti-Beatles songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a load of rubbish that is,\u201d Brock says. \u201cI think every band member had a copy of Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt Pepper. Lemmy<\/a> loved The Beatles, they were his rock’n’roll heroes. As for anti-Beatles songs\u2026 I have no idea what they\u2019re going on about.”<\/p>\n

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\"Dave\n<\/p>\n

Dave Brock in September 1972, a month before Paul McCartney’s bass went missing (Image credit: Michael Putland\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Another idea posited as a motive for the theft was that Hawkwind had recently had around \u00a310k\u2019s worth of their own gear stolen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was Bickershaw festival [in May \u201872]. The gear was stolen, and the van. But we wouldn\u2019t turn around and do that to other bands,\u201d Brock says. \u201cAnyone who knows anything about Hawkwind knows our story. We did loads of free gigs, constantly, we raised lots of money for communities and causes\u2026 one of our roadies stole a mic from the BBC at Maida Vale studios in 1971, but we gave it back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brock says the filmmakers, Passion Pictures, never approached him to contribute to The Hunt For The Lost Bass. Instead, bafflingly, they went to Canada to interview Deviants\/Pink Fairies guitarist Paul Rudolph. Rudolph became Hawkwind\u2019s bassist in 1975 after Lemmy had been sacked, and he had absolutely no insider intel on the H\u00f6fner episode.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat interview had nothing to do with the story,\u201d Brock says. \u201cI thought, \u2018Why have they done that when we\u2019re so easy to contact?\u2019 I reckon it\u2019s because we\u2019d tell \u2018em to f*ck off [laughs].\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re easy targets,\u201d Brock says. \u201cWe\u2019re anti-establishment and were friends with Hells Angels. They wouldn\u2019t do this to someone like Pink Floyd.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the end of the film, when the mystery is solved and McCartney is reunited with the instrument, Hawkwind are fully in the clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a boring story that could have been done in half an hour and they needed something to spice it up,\u201d says Brock. \u201cI don\u2019t think Paul had much to do with this. They dragged him into an empty room that looked like an old squat, and then they gave him his bass back.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d tell the filmmakers that there\u2019s a lot of pissed off fans out there, and if DikMik was still alive I think he\u2019d sue \u2018em,\u201d Brock states.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was pissed off after watching it: it disrespects DikMik, and it disrespects the band, and that wasn\u2019t even necessary in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul McCartney: The Hunt For The Lost Bass is available via the BBC iPlayer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Watch BBC iPlayer from anywhere with NordVPN<\/a> (try risk-free)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hawkwind founder and bandleader Dave Brock has responded to the negative portrayal of his band in the recent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-558453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}