A piano used by John Lennon to write some of The Beatles‘ greatest hits, including ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’, has broken records for the highest priced item of Beatles memorabilia sold at auction.
Lennon used the Broadwood upright piano to write songs such as ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’, ‘A Day In The Life’, and ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!’.
The piano was predicted to fetch between $400,000 and $600,000 at Christie’s auction house in New York, but went under the hammer for $3.3million (£2.5million).
It was sold as part of The Jim Irsay Collection: Hall of Fame, which also included the first Ludwig drum kit Ringo Starr owned. The kit was used in live performances and studio sessions with the band in its early years from May 1963 to February 1964 and sold for nearly $2.4million (£1.8million).
The three-piece set briefly broke the record for the most expensive drum kit sold until a drum head from his second Ludwig kit sold for $2.9million (£2.2million).
In other news, a remastered version of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s concert film Power To The People is coming to cinemas worldwide.
Following on from the extensive NYC-era box set released last year, the film is a document of the ‘One To One’ concerts that the couple held at New York’s Madison Square Garden on August 30, 1972. The two performances, one a matinee show and the other in the evening, were Lennon’s only full-length concerts after leaving The Beatles, and they were also the last gigs John and Yoko played together.
The new version of the film, which was captured at the time by director Steve Gebhardt, has been “physically and digitally cleaned by hand” by Lennon’s regular Grammy-winning team, led by son Sean Ono Lennon.
Tickets will go on sale on March 20, to coincide with John and Yoko’s 57th wedding anniversary, and fans can sign up for more information about screenings here.
The ‘One To One’ shows saw the couple play to over 40,000 people and raised more than $1.5million (2026 equivalent of $11.5million) for disabled children. They played songs including ‘Imagine’, ‘Come Together’, ‘Instant Karma!’ and ‘Hound Dog’, and rounded out the show with a version of ‘Give Peace A Chance’ with Stevie Wonder.
Meanwhile, earlier this year, the first look at The Beatles in Sam Mendes’ upcoming biopics were revealed in a series of postcards in Liverpool.
The four-film series about the Fab Four is currently scheduled for a simultaneous release in April 2028. Paul Mescal stars as Paul McCartney alongside Harris Dickinson (John Lennon), Joseph Quinn (George Harrison) and Barry Keoghan (Ringo Starr).