Online bidding for an instrument that has been dubbed the “Lost Lennon piano” begins September 15. With direct ties to luminaries of the art and music world, estimates for the sale price run from $2 to $3 million USD.
It’s a lot of cash for a relatively modest 9-foot Baldwin Concert Grand Model D, built in 1929, and with visible marks of the passage of the years.
But, it was also the instrument Lennon used to compose his Double Fantasy album. The piano still bears a custom brass plaque from John and Yoko dedicated to their friend Sam Green, a prominent art auctioneer.
Selden Morgan, Director of Sales and Fine Jewelry at Alex Cooper Auctioneers, talks about the instrument in a company statement about the sale. “The Lennon-Ono-Green-Warhol piano is a legendary musical instrument with a singular and well-documented provenance and direct ties to John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Andy Warhol,” he said.
A remarkable history
The pianos’ multipage provenance is quoted by Artnet news. “I am satisfied that I have traced the ownership of the piano from 1978 when John Lennon bought it to its current owners, the Mercersburg Academy,” writes Piano Finders appraiser Karen E. Lile in her research.
Lennon purchased the piano in 1978. He’d use it constantly, and some of the instrument’s wear and tear has been attributed to him. Damage to the piano includes something that looks like it may have been an ashtray accident, dings in the finish, and some unusual wear on the hammers. It’s still in playable condition, however, and will be freshly tuned when it goes up for sale.
After it left the Lennon household, it went on a long and winding road.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono were close friends of Sam Green, an art dealer, and often socialized at his home. Green was named in Lennon’s will as custodian for his son Sean if he and Yoko had both passed away while Sean was a minor. Lennon gifted the piano to Green in 1979, about a year before he was murdered in 1980, and had the plaque attached: For Sam / Love From Yoko and John / 1979.
Green was also the former director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. He installed the piano at his cottage on Fire Island, New York, where Lennon would play it during his frequent visits.
A disputed sale
The piano got its “Lost Lennon” moniker in 2000, when Sam Green attempted to recover the instrument.
In 2000, Green filed a lawsuit for damages and to reclaim the instrument. The suit claimed that the piano had been on loan to The New York Academy of Art, and that in turn, the Academy had sold it improperly for a mere $3,000.
According to the filing by Green’s lawyer, he’d first lent the piano to Andy Warhol to display at the offices for his famous Interview magazine. It was also Warhol’s fourth Factory location, and site of Warhol Studios, and the piano occupied a space there for several years. Warhol was a co-founder of The New York Academy of Art.
The piano had been lent out a second time to The Academy after Warhol’s death in 1987. Several years later, Green began to voice his objections, in part because he believed the school was misusing the piano by letting students use it for everyday practice.
The Academy in turn insisted the piano had been a gift. By the time the lawsuit was filed, the instrument had been sold for $3,000 to a piano tuner/antique dealer, who flipped it for a cool $100,000 to an auction dealer. To add insult to injury, the provenance reveals that the piano had been sold as part of a bulk removal of “deaccessioned pianos” in the Academy’s basement.
The lawsuit was dismissed in 2001, however, and Green died in 2011.
The auction dealer sold it to the Mansoor Emral Shaool in 2003, and it became part of a family trust. As part of that trust, and to fund a scholarship, it was donated to the Mercersburg Academy in 2018. The sale proceeds will benefit the Mercersburg Academy, a private boarding school in Pennsylvania.
The live auction by Alex Cooper Auctioneers takes place in Towson, Baltimore County on September 30, with bidding opening at $1 million.
It’s the first time the instrument will be available for sale to the public.
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