John Lennon's white Abbey Road suit goes to auction

Washington - John Lennon's
white suit from the iconic Abbey Road album cover is to go up for auction New Year's Day, along with his Chrysler station wagon and other artefacts, Braswell's Auction House said Monday.

The suit last sold for 120,000 dollars in 2005, the Norwalk, Connecticut, auction house said.

In the 1969 Abbey Road image, a long-haired, bearded Lennon leads The Beatles across a pedestrian zebra-stripe in London wearing the white suit, followed by Ringo Starr in a black suit, Paul McCartney in a grey suit, and George Harrison in blue jeans and blue shirt.

All are wearing shoes except McCartney, who is barefoot, which sparked the urban legend that Paul was dead and Lennon was leading the funeral procession. The album included the songs Come Together and Here Comes the Sun.



The crossing has drawn multi-generational fans who often tie up traffic at the crossing re-enacting the photo-shoot, Braswell's noted. It can be viewed on a webcam at www.abbeyroad.com.

Representing the level of fame and wealth The Beatles had reached by then, Lennon's suit was designed by Ted Lapidus, who also designed for celebrities Brigitte Bardot and Alain Delon.

Over the past weekend, Bob Dylan topped celebrity auctions with the sale of the tattered and hand-scrawled lyrics for his iconic The Times They Are A-Changin, which fetched 422,500 dollars - nearly twice what had been expected.

Dylan scratched in corrections, and wrote and underlined his name at the top of the first page. The title appeared an afterthought, written at the bottom of the second page and encircled with doodles. He first performed the song in 1963 at age 22 at New York's Carnegie Hall.

Sotheby's in New York had only expected the two-page document to fetch 250,000 dollars.

----Monstersandcritics.com