beatles

Angry Lennon Letter Sells at Auction

Filed under: Auctions

An angry letter written by John Lennon sold for more than $22,000 at a Bonham's auction yesterday. The note was dashed off on a piece of American Airlines notepaper, clearly in a hurry. It was written to a journalist who accused him and the Beatles of ripping off "black" songs, but John defended the band by saying that they "drank, ate and slept the music" and "it wasn't a rip off. It was a love in." The band started off covering hit songs in dance halls, like "Money" and "Twist n' Shout," before their own songs were "good enough." Included with the letter was a photocopy of the article that prompted it and a copy of the replying letter from the same journalist.

Though some other Lennon pieces have done very well at auction this year, a black felt hat worn by Lennon in the last official Beatles photo shoot failed to sell, despite projections that it could fetch as much as $37,000.

[Image Bonhams]

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Tags: auction, beatles, bonhams, john lennon, lennon, letter

John Lennon's Schoolbook Auctioned

by Nicole Weston (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions

One of John Lennon's schoolbooks was sold for $226,150 in a London auction of rock memorabilia. The auction house, Cooper Owen, had set a reserve price of more than $175,000 for the book, which was a copybook titled "My Anthology" and contained 10 pages of full color drawings done by the 12-year old Lennon to illustrate the lyrics of poems that were part of his literature curriculum, including The Walrus and the Carpenter and Agincourt.

If only I had known that used schoolbooks could go for so much, I wouldn't have spent so much time trying to unload my old textbooks at the end of every semester at university. Needless to say, the illustration quality in a calculus textbook would have to be fairly high to compete with Lennon's sketches, even as a child.

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Tags: anthology, auction, beatles, book, copybook, drawings, john lennon, lennon, music, school, schoolbook, textbook

Michael Jackson Refinances by Selling Songs

by Nicole Weston (RSS feed) —

Michael Jackson, struggling to pay off the approximately $300 million that he owes to the New York hedge fund, Fortress Investment Group, has announced that he has reached a deal with the group. Though the exact details were not released, a part of the deal has Jackson selling half of his shares in the Sony/ATV music library - 25% of the total collection - to Sony. After the sale, Sony will own 75% of the library. Jackson's portion, which he purchased in 1985, is currently valued at half a billion dollars and includes the rights to 251 Beatles songs as well as music by Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks.

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Tags: beatles, bob dylan, catalogue, debt, hedge fund, jacko, jackson, michael jackson, music, pets, sony, sony/atv