John Lennon's Handwritten Lyrics Expected to Make $700,000
Sotheby's is expecting that the handwritten lyrics to The Beatles' masterpiece "A Day in the Life" will be sold off for quite a bit of money when it auctions them off on June 18 in New York.
The auction house estimates that the John Lennon-penned lyrics will be sold for $700,000 (£460,000). While this is an amazingly high price, Sotheby's pointed out that the highest amount paid for Beatles lyrics was for "All You Need Is Love," which went for $1 million (£655,450) in 2005.
"A Day in the Life" was the final track on The Beatles' experimental 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
At the time, the BBC had banned the song from airplay due to one of its lyrics, "I'd love to turn you on," being interpreted as a drug reference. Several Asian countries subsequently released the album without the track (apparently leaving the title track's penultimate reprisal on a bit of a cliffhanger).
However, the track has since gone on to become recognized as a masterpiece. It was ranked at 26 in Rolling Stone magazine's greatest 500 songs countdown, and the album itself went on to win four Grammys, as well.
The lyrics going up for auction are a double sided sheet of paper handwritten in felt marker and blue pen by John Lennon, with corrections and other notes written in red pen.
Sotheby's described "A Day in the Life" as "the revolutionary song that marked the Beatles' transformation from pop icons to artists."