THE BEATLES Guitar By Guitar
John Lennon wrote a typically oddball piece for Mersey Beat magazine in 1961 titled ‘Being A Short Diversion On The Dubious Origins Of Beatles’. He said that three boys called John, George and Paul got together. “When they were together,” he wrote, “they wondered what for after all, what for? So all of a sudden they grew guitars and fashioned a noise.”
In fact, the fledgling Beatles were like most young bands starting out. They had no money to buy good instruments and managed with anything they could get their hands on. John had a Gallotone Champion flat-top, then an electric Hofner Club 40. George Harrison moved from an Egmond/Rosetti acoustic to a Hofner President, then his own Club 40, followed by a Futurama. Paul McCartney played a Zenith Model 17 acoustic, then a Rosetti Solid 7 electric.
John Lennon was the first Beatle to get a real American guitar, at a time when a restriction on imports of US instruments to Britain had only just been lifted
For their first gigs in Hamburg, Paul (still a guitarist) took the Solid 7, John his Club 40, George the Futurama, and Stu Sutcliffe a Hofner 500/5 bass. None of these were great guitars –those came later. And, fortunately, the Hamburg audience required nothing much more than a noise to drink to.
George was later asked about his early guitar days. “I started to learn to play when I was 13 on an old Spanish
