Handwritten Beatles lyrics sold at auction for £300,000
George Harrison's handwritten lyrics to the Beatles song While My Guitar Gently Weeps have sold for £300,000. They were expected to fetch up to £400,000.
The lyrics are the earliest version of the song and contains lines not recorded on the 1968 White Album, as well as corrections by Harrison.
The omitted lines read: 'I look from the wings at the play you are staging/While my guitar gently weeps/As I'm sitting here doing nothing but aging/Still my guitar gently weeps'.
The bottom of the page also features the words: "The band leader said he ain't playin' no more", which auctioneer Cooper Auctions said was a reference to the tense atmosphere in the Beatles' studio at the time.
Cooper managing director John Collins said the phrase could be referring to John Lennon or Paul McCartney, "because they both considered themselves leaders of the band".
But the previous owner of the manuscript, who bought it at an auction in 1992, believed it is a reference to McCartney and his desire to leave the band. The Beatles split in 1970.
On the reverse of the page are the lyrics to Hey Jude, in the hand of Beatles road manager Mal Evans.
The sheet of lyrics was the star lot in a rock and roll auction in in Scottsdale, Arizona. The lot went to an unnamed bidder.
Louise Cooper of Cooper Auctions said: "This is a once in 20 or 30 years experience; it is rare for items like this to go on sale."
Also on sale at the auction was a new score for the same song written in 2006 by Beatles producer George Martin for the band's "Love" show performed by Cirque Du Soleil in Las Vegas.
Martin was expected to be at the auction to autograph the score for the winning bidder. It was expected to fetch £50-100,000, and the proceeds will go to the George Martin Music Foundation charity.
Other star lots included a baby grand piano owned by Lennon, the earliest known pair of signatures of Lennon and McCartney and a handwritten letter by Marilyn Monroe.
Beatles memorabilia is big business. Lennon's handwritten lyric sheet for the Beatles' 1967 live satellite broadcast of "All You Need Is Love" sold in July 2005 for £600,000.
