By Thorsten Knublauch

Aside from a band-signed Beatles “Sgt. Pepper’s” album gatefold, or a fully-signed “White Album,” the Holy Grail for many Beatles autograph collectors would be a guitar signed by John, Paul, George and Ringo.

But do any genuine, band-signed Beatles guitars exist?

The only one known was destroyed in a mudslide in Malibu, Calif., during the middle of the last decade. But then….

While working on my books “Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand” or “Bravo-Beatles-Blitztournee” over the last few years, the story of a fully-signed Hofner Club 40 guitar was often told to me. The Star Club in Hamburg had a “Beat Band Battle” in February 1966. The winning band got a record deal with the Star Club label and, as a special prize, a signed “Beatles guitar” that was once owned by George Harrison. That’s the story.

Wanting to find out more, I came across an article in the German tabloid “Bild-Zeitung” from mid-December 1965. It stated that a delegation of fans and Star Club officials—including the German Number 1 beat band, The Rattles— brought the guitar back from a Beatles concert they attended at Hammersmith Odeon on December 8, 1965. The article includes a photo of the guitar, but unfortunately it is not clear enough to get a good look at the autographs on it.

It also hasn’t been proven that the guitar awarded was really George Harrison’s. George once owned a Club 40 Hofner—–it was recently shown in a 1960-61 photo in Olivia Harrison’s 2011 book, “George Harrison: Living in the Material World”—but stories vary significantly regarding what happened to the guitar over the years. What is agreed upon is that George did not own the guitar during the 1970s or later, based on his own words and that it hasn’t appeared in photos of his guitar collection since then.

The German band The Faces won the Beat Band Battle, and they were photographed with the guitar. Again, though, those photos were all too small to see the signatures clearly. Finally, I was able to find one magazine photo that showed three of the autographs well enough, and I contacted several advanced Beatles autograph collectors and experts and they confirmed my opinion:

The guitar was not signed by the Beatles. It was probably signed by Neil Aspinall.

How sad that the Beatles had no time to sign the guitar themselves!

So there we have it: There are no band-signed Beatles guitars known.

But that doesn’t mean the guitar isn’t valuable. Since Harrison’s Hofner Club 40 hasn’t been in his collection since the 1970s, this could have been his—it would be worth a fortune if it is. That could possibly be proven if the production number is documented, and perhaps by other means.

The guitar is still in the possession of the lead singer of The Faces, Frank Dostal, and stored away in a bank safe. Dostal visited the Beatles backstage during their Hamburg concert on June 26, 1966 to thank them personally for the guitar, and brought them as a gift a now extremely rare Tubon keyboard; shown in photos and personally confirmed by Dostal in an email to me.

I told him recently about the faked signatures - he wasn`t happy....