A cassette tape featuring a 1969 interview with John Lennon and an unreleased song is going up for auction at the end of the month in Copenhagen.
Remarkably, the interview was conducted by four 16-year-old Danish teens for their school magazine in January of 1970. Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono were staying in the small town of Ty on the west coast of Denmark and spending time with Ono’s daughter Kyoko, who was then living with her father in Jutland, according to NME. The four students had actually missed a press conference, so their talk was more of an informal chat.
As the auction house Bruun Rasmussen notes: “The 33-minute recording is surprisingly informal and relaxed, and everything from hair length and friendships to visions of peace and generational divides is discussed. The small exclusive party also dances around a Christmas tree during the interview session, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono hum along to Danish Christmas songs. At one point, John Lennon plays the guitar and sings ‘Give Peace a Chance’ as well as the unknown and unreleased song ‘Radio Peace.’”
The tape will be auctioned off along with photographs of the encounter, taken by one of the students.
“The experience had a great impact on our lives,” as Karsten Højen, one of the students, says. “Back then, we were not as preoccupied with famous people as young people are today. Instead, we saw John Lennon and Yoko Ono as some kind of political prophets and symbols of peace. We shared a common destiny with them in relation to music and the progressive ideology of peace. The two celebrities shaped our generation and the entire counter-culture movement.”
The auction lot, featuring the cassette, photos and a copy of the school’s magazine with the interview, will take place Sept. 28 and is expected to fetch around $23,000 to $47,000.
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