The Höfner Club 40 was a semi-hollow[1] electric guitar, imported into the United Kingdom by Selmer. Featuring a single cutaway with the neck joining the blonde-finished body at the 14th fret, the Club 40 was constructed with a spruce top, maple back, sides, and neck, and a rosewood finger board. It featured an adjustable floating bridge, trapeze tailpiece, and one neck-position single-coil pickup.[2]
George Harrison played a Club 40 for several months as a member of the Quarrymen before purchasing a Selmer Futurama. However, John Lennon was inspired by Harrison's guitar to buy his own, which he would play for over a year before upgrading to a Rickenbacker 325 during the Beatles' first Hamburg visit. First Lennon and then the other band members would often humourously refer to it as a "Club Footy".[3] For both Harrison and Lennon, it was their first electric guitar.
Harrison's Club 40[]
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George Harrison's Club 40 on display, 2019. Note the dual knob controls, badge on the tailpiece, and extremely faded signatures.
Harrison acquired his Club 40, serial number 244,[4] in the summer of 1959[3] by trading his Hofner President with a member of the Swinging Blue Jeans.[5] Ray Ennis remembers swapping it during one the Blue Jeans' Tuesday night residency shows at the Cavern Club, commenting that "[i]n those early days we used to get fed up with guitars very quickly, so we'd swap and change a lot".[6] Dating to circa 1957, Harrison's Club 40 had a horizontal Hofner logo with vertical dots on the headstock, a badge on the tailpiece, and two oval control knobs for volume and tone.[7] This would be Harrison's primary guitar for the beginning of the Quarrymen's residency at the Casbah Coffee Club, which began 29 August. On 20 November of that year, he purchased his Futurama,[8] which became his primary electric guitar until the summer of 1961, when acquired a Gretsch Duo Jet.[9] He was photographed in 1961, in one picture with his mother Louise, with the Duo Jet, Futurama, Club 40, possibly his original Egmond, and an unidentified and otherwise undocumented acoustic guitar.[10]
In 1965, the owner of the Star-Club in Hamburg, which the Beatles had played extensively in their pre-fame days, asked Brian Epstein for an autographed Beatles guitar to be given away as the prize for the 1966 Best Beat Band competition. This would also promote the Beatles' upcoming three day tour of West Germany in June 1966. In December 1965, Epstein convinced Harrison to donate his Club 40 for the competition. Employees of the Star-Club accompanied by the Rattles, West Germany's most popular beat group, attended a show at the Hammersmith Odeon and brought the guitar back to Hamburg with them.
After the finals on 6 February 1966, the competition was won by the West German band Faces, who were photographed with the guitar. Despite the announcement that the prize would be signed by all four Beatles, later analysis by Frank Caiazzo, an expert on Beatles autographs, revealed that the guitar had in fact been signed by the band's longtime road manager, Neil Aspinall. The Club 40 ultimately wound up in the hands of Faces' singer and guitarist Frank Dostal. After Dostal died in 2017, his widow Mary, formerly of the Liverpool girl group the Liverbirds, placed the guitar up for auction through Julien's, where it sold for a bid of $430,000 in May 2018.[4] It was later displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as part of "Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll" from April to October 2019 before the exhibit moved to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the following month.[11]
Lennon's Club 40[]
Impressed by Harrison's Club 40, Lennon decided to acquire one as well. On 28 August 1959, one day before the Quarrymen's debut at the Casbah Coffee Club, he acquired his at Hessy's on hire purchase for £17, with five shilling payments for fifty-three weeks, totally £30 9s, approximately £605 in 2025 money. Although his aunt Mimi always insisted she paid the £17, Lennon had recently been fired after six weeks of summer work with a wage of about £5 per week and may have had the money himself, although his aunt undoubtedly acted as guarantor.[12] Lennon's later 1959 model Club 40 differed from Harrison's in having a rectangular control panel with a volume knob and three tone switches, a vertical Hofner headstock logo with an additional decal on the body, and the lack of a badge on the tailpiece.[7] When a photograph of the Quarrymen was taken for an article about the Casbah in the West Derby Reporter on 18 September 1959, Lennon was pictured playing the Club 40 next to Paul McCartney with his Zenith 17, singing in front of a smiling Cynthia Powell.[13]
The Club 40 was Lennon's primary guitar for over a year, and it may have been used on a since-lost recording of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison with Ringo Starr backing the Hurricanes' Lu Walters, the band's bass player and second vocalist, on 15 October 1960.[14] Around that same time, Lennon purchased a Rickenbacker 325 in Hamburg, which then became his primary guitar.[15] Thereafter, the Club 40 would briefly be played by Paul McCartney, re-strung left-handed, in lieu of his own malfunctioning Rosetti Solid 7.[16] He can be seen holding it in the famous photograph of the five Beatles taken by Astrid Kirchherr at the Hamburg Dom, likely on 5 November.[17] McCartney, however, never bought the guitar outright and Lennon sold it to someone in Hamburg, supposedly for a profit,[16] while he continued payments on it to Hessy's until 31 July 1961, when the remaining £5 14s was paid.[6] In 2007, Hofner reissued 120 John Lennon Club 40's, authorized by his estate and featuring a reproduction of his signature on the pickguard.[18] As of 2025, the whereabouts of Lennon's original Club 40 are unknown.
- ↑ Harrison once commented that it "looked like a solid guitar but it was actually hollow inside, no sound holes." (Harrison, Olivia. George Harrison: Living in the Material World, New York: Abrams, 2011, pg. 44)
- ↑ Babiuk, Andy. Beatles Gear: All the Fab Four's Instruments from Stage to Studio, The Ultimate Edition, 2015, pp. 34-37.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lewisohn, Mark. All These Years: Tune In, Extended Special Edition. London: Little, Brown, 2013, pg. 513.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "George Harrison's First Electric Guitar, the Hofner Club 40", juliensauctions.com, accessed 21 April 2025.
- ↑ The Beatles. The Beatles Anthology, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000, pg. 81.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Babiuk, Andy. Beatles Gear: All the Fab Four's Instruments from Stage to Studio, The Ultimate Edition, 2015, pg. 35.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Babiuk, Andy. Beatles Gear: All the Fab Four's Instruments from Stage to Studio, The Ultimate Edition, 2015, pg. 37.
- ↑ Babiuk, Andy. Beatles Gear: All the Fab Four's Instruments from Stage to Studio, The Ultimate Edition, 2015, pg. 44.
- ↑ Lewisohn, Mark. All These Years: Tune In, Extended Special Edition. London: Little, Brown, 2013, pg. 938.
- ↑ Harrison, Olivia. George Harrison: Living in the Material World, New York: Abrams, 2011, pp. 45, 49.
- ↑ "Club 40, serial no. 244", metmuseum.org, accessed 21 April 2025.
- ↑ Lewisohn, Mark. All These Years: Tune In, Extended Special Edition. London: Little, Brown, 2013, pp. 533-534.
- ↑ Lewisohn, Mark. All These Years: Tune In, Extended Special Edition. London: Little, Brown, 2013, pp. 535-536.
- ↑ Lewisohn, Mark. All These Years: Tune In, Extended Special Edition. London: Little, Brown, 2013, pp. 714-715.
- ↑ Babiuk, Andy. Beatles Gear: All the Fab Four's Instruments from Stage to Studio, The Ultimate Edition, 2015, pg. 63.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 Lewisohn, Mark. All These Years: Tune In, Extended Special Edition. London: Little, Brown, 2013, pp. 716-717.
- ↑ Lewisohn, Mark. All These Years: Tune In, Extended Special Edition. London: Little, Brown, 2013, pg. 727.
- ↑ "Hofner Club 40 John Lennon Ltd Edition #70 of 120", vintageandmodernguitars.co.uk, accessed 21 April 2025.