Unheard Lennon song goes under the hammer
COPENHAGEN: A 1970 tape of John Lennon singing an unheard song called Radio Peace and expressing frustration at his Beatles image to a group of Danish schoolboys was slated to go under the hammer on Tuesday in Copenhagen.
The 33-minute tape was recorded on January 5, 1970 when the former Beatle spent winter in a remote corner of Jutland in western Denmark with his wife Yoko Ono.
Back then four eager boys, writing for their high school newspaper, braved a snowstorm in the hope of interviewing their idol. They clinched the interview. The topics ranged from the couple’s peace campaign, the Beatles, Lennon’s hair and his frustration with his image as part of the “Fab Four”.
“We went into the living room and saw John and Yoko sitting on the sofa. It was fantaswith tic. We sat down with them and were quite close to each other,” Karsten Hojen, one of the tape’s owners, told AFP.
“I was sitting next to Yoko Ono and John Lennon was sitting next to Yoko and we talked, we had a good time,” said Hojen, who is now 68.
Lennon and his wife arrived in Denmark in December 1969 to sort out the future of Ono’s five-year-old daughter Kyoko, who was living with her father in northern Jutland. By then, the Beatles had recorded their last album, Abbey Road, and even though it was not official, the group had parted ways.
Although Lennon and Ono spent their first week in Denmark incognito, the press found out and the singer organised a press conference that coincided the first day of the school term. Hojen and his friends convinced the headmaster to let them skip class to talk peace and music with the singer, a few months before the Beatles officially disbanded.
Hojen and his friends said they decided to part with the audio cassette because they could not imagine sharing it among their numerous children.
“We would be happy if a museum was interested, or why not Yoko Ono herself?” the cultural consultant said.
“You have to sit back and take some time to listen to it and hope for the best,” said Alexa Bruun Rasmussen, director of branding at Bruun Rasmussen Auction House, which is handling the sale.
“They actually play Give Peace a Chance, but with different words,” she said.
Bruun Rasmussen said the tape and photos could fetch up to 40,000 euros ($46,000).