By Susan Sliwicki

Unpublished photos of Elvis, rare concert posters and a variety of Beatles collectibles are all up for grabs at the Hake’s Americana & Collectibles’ auction that closes Thursday, Feb. 3, 2010.

More than 220 music-related lots are offered in the event, which also features lots ranging from action figures to watches.

Topping the lineup is one of Michael Jackson’s signed, stage-worn shirts from his days in the Jackson 5 is expected to bring $10,000 to $20,000. Designed by Boyd Clopton, the psychedelic print polyester shirt has a wide collar and zippered back.

Elvis Presley

An 80-photo collection of unpublished candid photos of Elvis Presley and his family taken between 1966 and 1972 also is on the block. The amateur photos were shot at Graceland and other locations where Elvis made appearances, and many show Elvis interacting with fans, as well as with his family ($1,000 to $5,000).

A Near Mint 3-EP Elvis Presley promotional record set in a triple gatefold cover from RCA (SPD 23) also is featured. The record set were a bonus for buyers of an Elvis Presley Victrola record player ($2,000 to $5,000).

Also offered:

• A pair of records featuring “Mystery Train” b/w/ “I Forgot To Remember to Forget” — one is a VG 45 on the Sun label, while the other is a 78 on the RCA Victor label in Good condition ($200 to $400).

• A pair of RCA Victor 45s — “Love Me Tender” / “Any Way You Want Me” (47-6643) in Excellent condition and “Love Me Tender/Let Me/Poor Boy/We’re Gonna Move” (EPA-4006) in NM condition.

• Movie posters from “Blue Hawaii” ($400 to $700), “Viva Las Vegas” ($400 to $700) and “G.I. Blues” ($200 to $400).

• An Near Mint vinyl Elvis Presley wallet from 1956 ($200 to $400)

• A full bottle of Elvis’ “Teddy Bear” perfume ($100 to $200).

The Beatles

The lads from Liverpool are well represented in this auction with 62 lots. At the top of the list is a three-dimensional, 58-inch-tall store display, which was used to hold copies of the Fab Four’s 1969 soundtrack album from “Yellow Submarine.” ($2,000 to $5,000).

Additional “Yellow Submarine”-related collectibles include:

• A full Beatles figural bank set features all four band members’ banks in excellent condition, and each complete with a stopper and copyright and company stickers. ($1,000 to $2,000).

• A lunch box and Thermos set, complete with the original store price sticker on the lucn box ($700 to $1,000).

• A sealed yellow submarine model kit ($200 to $400).

• A boxed Corgi submarine toy ($400 to $700)

• A set of six “Yellow Submarine”-themed puzzles ($400 to $700).

• A framed and matted animation cel featuring a Blue Meanie chasing John Lennon ($400 to $700).

A few other Beatles rarities are featured, including:

• A Beatles schoolbag ($1,000 to $2,000).

• An illustrated black and white polka-dot “The Beatles” dress with hang tag ($200 to $400).

• Ticket stubs from The Beatles’ concert at Cleveland Stadium in 1966 ($200 to $400) and a 1966 press stub for Busch Memorial Stadium in 1966 ($400 to $1,000).

• Five uncut sheets of images that were to be used for Beatles flicker rings ($200 to $400).

• A set of Royal Doulton toby mugs featuring a Sgt. Pepper theme ($400 to $700).

Concert Posters

A variety of posters also are on the block, including a Woodstock poster made for the initially proposed venue site at Wallkill, N.Y. ($200 to $400); a red Arnold Skolnik design featuring a dove and a guitar neck that was selected for the actual event ($700 to $2,000); a poster for the “Open Air Love & Peace” featival held at Isle of Fehmarn, Germany in 1970 ($2,000 to $5,000); first printing posters for The Grateful Dead at Family Dog  ($400 to $700 and The Yardbirds and The Doors at Fillmore Auditorium ($700 to $1,000); and a first printing poster showing Dr. Strange art for July 21-22, 1967, concerts at California Hall in San Francisco featuringThe Youngbloods ($1,000 to $2,000).

Other Lots of Interest

Pinback and button collectors will find items for artists ranging from The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Monkees and The Village People to Elvis, Roy Orbison, Gene Pitney, Bing Crosby and Bruce Springsteen ($50 to $200).

And, for true old-school music fans —— and we do mean old school — there are a few early equivalents to tour merch. A ferrotype badge of P.S. Gilmore, which was made and sold as a souvenir at Gilmore’s landmark concerts in the 1870s features a portrait of Gilmore ribbon from the eagle pin at top ($700 to $2,000). A traditional button for Wolfram Triumph Guitar & Mandolin Co. of Columbus, Ohio, circa 1896-98, also is featured ($75 to $200.) A button promoting the group Roney’s Boys, believed to be circa 1903, also is featured ($75 to $200).

KISS fans will be sure to enjoy a pair of original graphite pencil concept drawings and an orginal typewritten storyline synopsis for the Marvel Super Special featuring the band’s characters (2,000 to $5,000).

By Goldmine Staff and
The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — John Lennon’s handwritten lyrics to the final song on the classic Beatles album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” were purchased June 18 by an American collector for $1.2 million.

The winning bid for “A Day in the Life” was placed by phone at Sotheby’s auction house, which declined to identify the collector further. The price exceeded the pre-sale estimate of between $500,000 and $800,000. The double-sided sheet of paper features Lennon’s edits and corrections in his own handwriting — in black felt marker and blue ballpoint pen, with a few annotations in red ink.

Rolling Stone magazine listed “A Day in the Life” at No. 26 in its compilation of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and “Sgt. Pepper” won four Grammy awards in 1968.

The lyrics, which begin with “I read the news today, oh boy,” stirred controversy when the Beatles released the album in 1967. The song was banned by the BBC because it twice features the line, “I’d love to turn you on,” which was interpreted as supporting illegal drug use. The song also was left off copies of “Sgt. Pepper’s” sold in several Asian countries for the same reason.

The album’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was alleged to have glorified the use of the hallucinogenic LSD, a claim that band members denied. In addition, “A Day in the Life” features the lyric “he blew his mind out in a car,” which Beatles aficionados claim is a reference to the accidental death of Tara Browne, the Guinness heir and close friend of both Lennon and Paul McCartney.

The lyrics appear on both sides of the single sheet. One side has Lennon’s original first draft, written in a hurried cursive script. The other side is written almost entirely in capital letters and incorporates the corrections from the first draft and adds the words, “I’d love to turn you on.”

Sotheby’s said the lyrics were consigned by a private collector. The price came close to the $1.25 million paid in 2005 for The Beatles’ lyrics “All You Need is Love,” which sold to an anonymous bidder at the British auction house CooperOwen.
•••••
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — The combination of cultural icons Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger satisfied bidders at Brunk Auctions.
Warhol’s 43-7/8-inch by 27-7/8-inch screen print of Jagger, full face overlaid with gray and green, signed by both the artist and the subject, opened at $18,000, and bidding worked up to $26,450, including a 15 percent buyer’s premium.
•••••
LOS ANGELES — A Jim Morrison-signed copy of “The New Creatures” together with “The Lords/Notes on Vision,” sold for more than double its pre-auction estimate of $2,000 to $2,500 at Bonhams & Butterfields Entertainment Memorabilia Auction held June 13. The final price, including buyer’s premium, was $5,795.

A stage-used Grateful Dead mandala that was made for an appearance at the Winterland Ballroom in 1974 sold for $5,490. Other lots of interest (and sale prices, including buyer’s premium) were:
• A Michael Jackson black wool fedora from the 1990s signed “All My Love Michael Jackson,” in silver ink, on the underside of the brim. ($1,830)
• A Jerry Garcia-signed artist’s proof limited-edition print of “Carousel” ($1,586)
• A Roux eyebrow-tinting kit used on Elvis Presley’s eyebrows during the filming of his 1977 TV special “Elvis in Concert” ($1,200)
• A blue corduroy autograph album featuring signatures of entertainers acquired from 1970 to 1976, including George Harrison, Ricky Nelson and Sammy Davis Jr. ($1,098)
• A never-before-seen reel of Super 8 film footage of Elvis from 1962 ($610)
• A third-state mono Beatles Butcher Cover album (no vinyl grade) ($580)
• An Elvis Presley signed color snapshot from 1968 ($366)
• A Michael Jackson original master test proof recording of the “Thriller” single ($732)
• A collection of autographs from 1983, including Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Bill Wyman ($275)
• A set of over-sized 33-1/3 RPM records (16 inches in diameter) Judy Garland “air trailers” used for radio advertising purposes in 1940-1941 ($580)

Click here to check out the latest price guides from Goldmine

“I Hate New Music – The Classic Rock Manifesto” by Dave Thompson: Now there’s a title to grab one’s attention and get up a lot of people’s noses — and it’s something that author (and Goldmine stalwart) Dave Thompson has been doing effortlessly for years. 

In classic pundit style, he tauntingly waves the red flag at the contemporary music scene and counter-intuitively stabs some of rock’s greatest icons in the back, before delivering an exquisitely executed coup de grace to the music industry as a whole.

The greatest of toreadors always have a large ax to grind with the bull, but a deep love of the sport itself, a love-hate relationship that also fuels “I Hate New Music — The Classic Rock Manifesto.” 

The book’s subtitle is telling, for this is not a history of classic rock, although it partially works as a potted one, nor a critical analysis of the movement, even though there’s a great deal of analysis and criticism found within. 

Instead, Thompson provides a critique of all that made a specific period of rock classic, explains its eventual destruction, and explores the reasons why rock is unlikely to reach such heady heights again. 

What makes the book impossible to put down, however, is the author’s gonzo approach to the subject — laugh-out-loud funny, peppered with jokes and awash in wry amusement, irony and a touch of biting sarcasm. There’s whimsy as well, including the homage to Rocky & Bullwinkle chapter titles (e.g “Fat and Forty-plus, or Had Your Phil of Collins Yet?”) and brief chapter summaries pulled straight from the paws of Winnie the Pooh. 

“New Music” is also totally subjective, delightfully idiosyncratic, tumbling so agilely from band to band and topic to topic, that every chapter’s end leaves readers asking, Wait a minute, how did we get from there to here? Or they would, if they had time, but they don’t, because the book’s flow is so fast, they’re already being dragged off in another direction entirely. 

Thompson swaggers across the decades, tying together myriad disparate musical threads into a coherent, cogent discourse on rock’s greatest era and the barren wasteland that passes for the music scene today.

“I Hate New Music” is the literary equivalent of classic rock itself — daring, adventurous, witty, weird, wild, wonderful and extremely entertaining. It’s the kind of book you’ll be pushing at your friends to read, if only to have someone else to argue it over with. 

Those arguments will fly from all sides, too, for Thompson doesn’t stop at excoriating the ’80s and beyond, but butchers numerous sacred classic cows as well; fans of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, beware. You name it, he dissects it: double sets, charity extravaganzas, stadium rock, concept albums, synthesizers, later musical movements, band reformations, and just about every classic rock group that mattered. That’s the text; there’s also a variety of opinionated and annotated Top 10/100 lists provided to get heated discussions under way.

Wildly dogmatic as “I Hate New Music,” but extremely well argued, Thompson has written a manifesto for the ages. A reminder that it may only have been rock ’n’ roll, but that rock once rocked our world, and even three decades on, we like it, like it, yes we do.