The tinted, circular glasses John Lennon wore during his storied “lost weekend” in Los Angeles have found their way back to an auction house.
As part of of Propstore’s Music Memorabilia Live Auction, the spectacles — estimated to go for $400,000 — will be among various other rare and collectible items spanning decades and genres of music including Jimi Hendrix’s handwritten working lyrics for “Straight Ahead” and the white fedora worn by Michael Jackson in the music video for his 1988 hit “Smooth Criminal.”
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According to the auction’s website, Lennon wore the glasses on March 12, 1974, when he and Harry Nilsson, both “heavily drunk,” heckled the Smothers Brothers while they were performing at the Troubadour Club. The boozy night soon led to a fight and Lennon and Nilsson were escorted out of the venue, and per the original Sotheby’s catalog listing, Lennon lost the pair in the melee and Tommy Smothers’ wife grabbed them.
“The heckling got so bad that our show was going downhill rapidly. No one cared because it was just happening anyway, but there was a scuffle going on and we stopped the show,” Smothers recalled in the book Ticket to Ride by Denny Somach. “My wife ended up with Lennon’s glasses because of the punches that were thrown”.
Lennon’s “lost weekend” took place during his separation from Yoko Ono, his second wife, from 1973 to 1975. During the 18-month period, Lennon began a relationship with the couple’s assistant, May Pang, at Ono’s encouragement.
“I really needed some space because I was used to being an artist and free and all that. And when I got together with John, because we’re always in the public eye, I lost the freedom,” said Ono in a 1980 interview with David Sheff. “Both of us were together all the time, twenty-four hours a day. The pressure was particularly strong on me because of being the one who stole John Lennon from the public. I was under very strong pressure and my artwork suffered too as a result of that. I suffered a lot and so I thought I that I wanted to be free from all that. I needed the space to think.”
In a 1975 interview with Rolling Stone soon after their hiatus, writer Pete Hamill asked Lennon who broke up the relationship and why they decided to come back together. “Well, it’s not a matter of who broke it up. It broke up. And why did we end up back together?” Lennon replied. “We ended up together again because it was diplomatically viable … come on. We got back together because we love each other.”
Lennon and Ono remained married until his assassination outside the Dakota Apartments in New York.
The Music Memorabilia Auction will open to the public on Oct. 23 at 7:00 a.m. PT.
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