John Lennon’s Scribbled Lyrics Worth $1 Million

John Lennon’s handwritten lyrics have sold for $1.2 million at an auction in New York, purchased by an American private collector over the phone. They were for the Beatles hit A Day in The Life which was the final track of the band’s 1967 album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

It’s a double-sided sheet of paper which starts with “I read the news today oh boy about a lucky man who made the grade.” This apparently refers to Guiness heir Tara Browne‘s car crash. Browne was a friend of Lennon’s and a society figure who crashed his Lotus Elan sports car in London and died in 1966, after failing to notice a red traffic light. Lennon later commented, “I didn’t copy the accident. Tara didn’t blow his mind out, but it was in my mind when I was writing that verse. The details of the accident in the song — not noticing traffic lights and a crowd forming at the scene — were similarly part of the fiction.”

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