Unreleased John Lennon song sells for £43,000 at auction in Denmark

A recording of John Lennon playing an unreleased song in Denmark in 1970 has sold for £43,000 at auction in Copenhagen.

It was announced earlier this month that a 33-minute cassette recording was being sold by four Danish men who met Lennon when they were teenagers.

The Beatles star was spending the winter of 1969-1970 in a small Danish town on the west coast, spending time with his wife Yoko Ono’s daughter Kyoko, who was living with her father in Jutland.

The audio, which was recorded after a press conference, includes a conversation between the four teenagers, Lennon and some local journalists. After their chat, Lennon played a number of songs for them, including a track called ‘Radio Peace’, which remains unreleased.

The artefact went under the hammer in Copenhagen yesterday (September 28), and while it was expected to fetch between €27,000-€40,000 (£23,000-£34,000), the final figure it sold for was £43,000 (370,000 Danish kroner).

Recorded on January 5, 1970, the half-an-hour conversation came after the four Danish boys managed to secure an interview with Lennon and Yoko Ono for a school magazine.

During the conversation, they discussed the couple’s ongoing peace campaign, Lennon’s problems with the image of The Beatles – who broke up just a few months after the conversation – and more.

Elsewhere, a John Lennon tribute show called ‘Dear John’ is set to be livestreamed next month. The online event will follow on from the release earlier this year of the ‘Dear John’ tribute album, which featured Lennon covers by a range of artists and raised money for War Child.

It was also claimed this month by legendary music presenter and DJ ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris that Elvis Presley was once tasked with spying on John Lennon by then-US president Richard Nixon.