The ex-Beatle and his wife Yoko Ono were interviewed by four Danish schoolboys more than 50 years ago. The recording also includes an unreleased song.
The old fashioned white cassette labeled with Lennon's misspelled nameImage: Ida Marie Odgaard/Ritzau Scanpix/picture alliance
Advertisement
More than 50 years ago, John Lennon and Yoko Ono granted four Danish students an interview for their local school magazine.
Now, the four Danes are auctioning off the old-fashioned white cassette tape with "Lenon" misspelled on it, 23 photographs of that meeting and a copy of the school magazine in which their interview was eventually published.
Estimated to command between €27,000 and 43,000 ($32,000-$50,000), the lot fetched the sum of nearly €50.000 on Tuesday at the Copenhagen-based auction house Bruun Rasmussen.
Advertisement
An unreleased song for peace
In the 33-minute recording, Lennon touches on everything from the couple's peace campaign to his frustration with The Beatles' image to the length of his hair.
Lennon and Ono can also be heard humming along to Danish Christmas songs while dancing around a Christmas tree, and Lennon plays the guitar and sings "Give Peace a Chance" as well as an unreleased song, "Radio Peace."
He had written "Radio Peace" as part of the couple's peace campaign. Lennon and Ono wanted to open a radio station in Amsterdam under the same name, but those plans fell through.
Skipping class for an unofficial interview
Lennon and his wife had gone to Denmark to visit Ono's then five-year-old daughter Kyoko, who had moved there with her father Anthony Cox, Ono's ex-husband.
This was at the height of the Vietnam War and the Cold War, both of which the couple famously opposed.
Word eventually spread about their presence, and so they held an impromptu press conference in Thy, Northwest Jutland in January 1970.
Ardent fans of the couple, the four teenagers convinced their headteacher to let them skip class to attend the event, and write about it in the school paper. A local record store loaned them the recording equipment.
The couple famously protested the Vietnam War with their week-long bed-ins for Peace, this one in Amsterdam in 1969 Image: Getty Images/Central Press
Karsten Hoejen, who made the recording, told press agency AP that Lennon and Ono had "a message of peace, and that was what was important to us."
In fact, the schoolmates ended up being late and missing the entire press conference but tried their luck by knocking on the door anyway. And the rest has now become history.
'Sitting on a treasure'
While Hoejen conducted the interview, his friend Jesper Jungersen snapped the pictures. Months after this encounter, The Beatles split up. Lennon was shot and killed in New York a decade later in 1980 at the age of 40.
John Lennon's life in pictures
A look back at the life of the boy from Liverpool who went on to become one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century before his tragic death in 1980.
Image: AP Images/picture-alliance
A lot of Buddy Holly, too little school
Lennon was born on October 9, 1940 in Liverpool. Already as a child (pictured here with his mother Julia), Lennon was more interested in various musical instruments than in school. Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley were his idols. In 1956, Lennon founded the Black Jacks, renamed the band as The Quarrymen and recruited Paul McCartney and George Harrison. In 1960 they became The Beatles.
Image: RKA/MPI/Captital Pictures/picture-alliance
The Beatles
The success of the band was unprecedented. At concerts worldwide, their music was at times not even audible due to screaming fans. Lennon and McCartney were the band's main songwriters and fought their battles early on to impose their own ideas. It's only on the band's second album, "With the Beatles" (1963), that Harrison was first allowed to contribute a composition.
Image: PA Wire/picture-alliance
Dreams of a hippie commune
In 1967, at the height of their drug consumption, the band returned from a trip to Greece. Lennon had persuaded his band mates to purchase an island there to build a hippie commune. The band had always been good at coming up with big ideas while on the road, drummer Ringo Starr later said. But little came from it and the commune remained just a dream.
Image: Solo Syndication/Daily Mail/picture-alliance
All You Need Is Love
In the same year, the BBC commissioned The Beatles to compose a song for "Our World" which was broadcast worldwide. Soon after, the band found themselves in Abbey Road Studios with an orchestra ensemble alongside Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton and Marianne Faithfull and recorded "All You Need Is Love." For many, this was the peak of the band's musical career.
Image: United Archives/picture-alliance
Tensions flare
In 1966, Lennon met Japanese avant-garde artist Yoko Ono. In 1968, their joint experimental album "Two Virgins" was released. Lennon went on to play at concerts without his band. In 1969, the couple released "Wedding Album" and celebrated their union. The pair founded the Plastic Ono Band, and The Beatles fell even further apart. Their last album was "Abbey Road": Lennon later said he disliked it.
Image: Getty Images/Keystone/M. Webb
An ex-Beatle
Taken in 1971, this picture shows Lennon one year after the separation of The Beatles.
McCartney announced the dissolution of the band and preceded Lennon, who had informed the members of his decision. Although he described the feud with Lennon as "pretty hurtful," McCartney said that the band members never despised one another. Lennon went on to release his first solo hit, "Instant Karma."
Image: AP Images/picture-alliance
New York
In 1971, after The Beatles split, Lennon and Ono moved to New York. In the mid-1970s, John retired into private life and became a stay-at-home father, taking care of his second son. Lennon and Ono are shown here in August 1980 on their way to The Hit Factory recording studio, where they worked on "Double Fantasy," Lennon's first album after five years – and also his last.
Image: Steve Sands/AP/picture alliance
The last album
"Double Fantasy" was released on November 17, 1980. Lennon and Ono are seen kissing tenderly on the cover. Following Lennon's assassination outside his home three weeks later, the album climbed to number one on music charts, as did the single "Starting Over" and Lennon's earlier songs, including "Imagine."
Image: dpa/picture-alliance
8 images1 | 8
Over time, the schoolmates realized that they "were sitting on a treasure," Hoejen told AP. After some discussion, they had everything stored in a safe deposit box in 2002.
"A collector or a museum would likely get more of it than us having it in a bank, so we decided to sell it," Hoejen said.
