Sometimes it feels that with artists like The Beatles and by extension, the likes of John Lennon or Paul McCartney, we’ve heard and seen everything when it comes to existing recorded material.
And still, recordings like this will pop up and surprise us. In Denmark, a rare recording of John Lennon playing unreleased music has sold for a whopping £43,000 at auction. The auction of the 33-minute cassette recording sold above expected auction price, originally expecting to net between €27,000-€40,000.
The recording itself was captured during the winter of 1969-1970, when Lennon and Yoko Ono was visiting a Danish town to spend time with Yoko’s daughter, who lived in Denmark at the time.
The audio features a conversation between Lennon and local journalists, as well as four Danish teenagers; Lennon is also recorded performing a number of songs for the group, including an unreleased song he called ‘Radio Peace’. In what would have been an amazing feat at the time, the teenagers managed to land an interview with Lennon and Yoko Ono for their school magazine.
It provides an interesting look at this time in Lennon’s life, as it’s reported that the conversation saw the songwriter discuss – amongst other things – his and Yoko’s peace campaign, and the issues he had with The Beatles’ image. The band would go on to break up only months later.
As per the BBC, Lennon was asked on the tape, “But how do you think that people like me can help you with making peace around the world?”
“Imitate what we do,” he replied. “Think, ‘What can I do locally?'”
The buyer of this rare recording, as well as a copy of the school magazine, has remained nameless.
