A love letter from John Lennon to his first girlfriend goes up for auction.
The letter from a twenty-something John Lennon to his then-love, Cynthia Powell , at the time when the Beatles were just beginning to make their way onto the international music scene, goes up for auction next Wednesday at Christie's in London.
Intimate and personal is the letter that Lennon wrote to Powell in a space of four days, during a Beatles residency at the Star-Club in Hamburg in 1962, when they were still not really known and months before she became his first wife.
"It reflects a particular moment in their relationship . They are two young people who are in love . He is not famous (yet), and she is a beautiful and talented young art student," Thomas Venning, head of Christie's Books and Manuscripts Department, told EFE.
"You can see it, you can tell there's that spark ," as well as that " he misses his girlfriend a lot ," the expert observes.
The young Lennon , aged 21 , was dealing with the homesickness of the distance between him and Cynthia: "I love love love you and I'm missing you like mad..." he paraphrased from his later hit 'Love Me Do', from the album 'Please Please Me', which would be released a year later, in 1963.
" Where are you my...? " continues the Liverpudlian, where the ellipsis corresponds to a part censored by Cynthia before selling the text in the early 90s.
- One can only speculate as to what they would have said, but from the context "one can guess" the reason why he cut it off.
What you can see or perceive, he points out, is "the John Lennon you hear in the songs ." "You can hear his voice, that freshness ," Venning adds.
Before fameThe letter speaks about everything and nothing, it's universal: differences with friends, roommates, work... "We can all see ourselves reflected in this 21-year-old John Lennon . At that time, his life was very normal ," says the expert.
Lennon , for example, did not want Cynthia to share a flat with McCartney's girlfriend, Dot: "We'd never really be alone (...), imagine being with her all the time, and Paul coming over constantly", of whom he also complains of his snoring.
During that residency in Hamburg , the Beatles began to make a name for themselves and learned to be themselves.
"That's where they learned their musicality , that's where their appearance comes from. Their haircut is a 1960s Hamburg haircut," says Venning.
The young Lennon is unaware of what would happen years later and "is happy (...), he has no idea what awaits him around the corner, and that is one of the most exciting things" about this letter , he maintains.
"This letter was in Hamburg in 1962, in front of John Lennon , and it started out blank, and when it was finished, it was covered in his handwriting. There's something magical about that," he says.
The expert expressed confidence that at Christie 's, the manuscript will be purchased by someone who "loves the Beatles and truly appreciates the story a letter like this has to tell."
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