NEW YORK (US) – The album signed by Beatles fame John Lennon for his assassin four decades ago is going under the hammer in New York. This comes as his widow and former band mates paid tribute to him on Tuesday.
A private collector is selling the copy of “Double Fantasy” signed by the singer for Mark David Chapman a few hours before his death on Dec. 8, 1980 through Goldin Auctions in New Jersey.
On Tuesday, the bidding stood at $450,000 but a spokesman said the auction house expected it to sell for about $1.5 million at the close of the online auction on Saturday.
Chapman, a borderline psychotic from Hawaii, shot Lennon four times at close range for what he called “self-glory.” The musician was returning home to the Dakota Apartments by Central Park with his wife, Yoko Ono. Lennon, 40, died on the way to hospital.
Goldin Auctions said Chapman had got Lennon to sign the album earlier in the day and then threw it in a planter outside the Dakota Apartments after the shooting. It bears police markings from when it was taken into evidence.
Goldin Auctions called it “arguably the most important Rock N Roll relic ever for sale.”
In tributes on Tuesday to the late Beatle, Paul McCartney tweeted; “A sad sad day, but remembering my friend John with the great joy he brought to the world.”
Ringo Starr, the other surviving Beatle, said: “I’m asking Every music radio station in the world sometime today play Strawberry Fields Forever. Peace and love.”
Ono called for peace and gun law reform and tweeted the photograph she took of Lennon’s blood-splattered eyeglasses, with the message: “Over 1,436,000 people have been killed by guns in the US since John Lennon was shot and killed on Dec. 8, 1980.”
