A statue of John Lennon stands at the facade of the Hard Days Night Hotel in Liverpool, England.
John Lennon�s handwritten lyrics to �A Day in the Life� sold for US$1.2 million (RM3.96 million) in New York yesterday, almost doubling the estimated price, Sotheby�s auction house said.
Considered one of the Beatles� greatest songs and the final track on �Sgt Pepper�s Lonely Hearts Club Band�, the lyrics were sold to a private American collector on the telephone after an intense six-minute bidding battle, Sotheby�s said.
�The outstanding price achieved for these handwritten lyrics is testament to the iconic status of the Beatles, John Lennon and especially this song,� said David Redden, Sotheby�s Books and Manuscripts Department international chairman.
According to Sotheby�s, the record for Beatles lyrics at auction is US$1.25 million paid for �All You Need Is Love� in 2005.
Sotheby�s described �A Day in the Life� as �the revolutionary song that marked the Beatles� transformation from pop icons to artists.�
The single sheet of paper features a rough draft of the lyrics, including crossings out and a spelling error where �film� is written as �flim�.
On the reverse side is a neater version written in capital letters and with fewer corrections.
Apparently added later is the line: �I love to turn you on�, for which the song was banned by the BBC when it first came out in 1967 because the words were deemed to be a reference to taking drugs.
�Sgt Pepper�s Lonely Hearts Club Band� topped the US and British charts, won four Grammy awards in 1968 and is ranked number 26 in Rolling Stone magazine�s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
The lyrics once belonged to Mal Evans, the Beatles� road manager.
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