Lennon and McCartney stopped writing together because Paul McCartney developed a fixation on John Lennon's hair that freaked John out – it's thought that She's Leaving Home was first called I Want To Stroke John Lennon's Lovely Hair.
And he wasn't the only one with a slightly unnatural obsession for John Lennon's hair – because this week an auction sold John Lennon's hair for $48,000. Not all of John Lennon's hair, you understand – that would be creepy – but just a lock of John Lennon's hair. A lock of John Lennon's hair in a bag that you can occasionally open and sniff, pretending that you and John Lennon are such close friends that he can put his hair in a bag and let you smell it. And that's what the mystery hair-buyer will probably do – either that or blast it into the sun, thereby creating an evil nuclear-powered John Lennon to brutally enslave the world with, like in Superman IV.
It was the anniversary of John Lennon's tragic death last Saturday, and nobody really seemed to notice. We blame Yoko Ono, obviously – not only did Yoko bugger things up by opening her John Lennon Light Tower two months early but she also failed to mark the anniversary in the traditional way, by letting a mental Turkish employee inject her with poison in her sleep. Shame on you, Yoko.
But fortunately not everyone forgot to mark John Lennon's death this week. Fans from around the world paid their respect to John Lennon by listening to his music, soaking in his peaceful Utopian worldview and selling clumps of his hair for enough money to buy a couple of good quality horses.
A lock of John Lennon's hair sold at auction by Gorringes this week for $48,000, smashing the original estimate of $6,000. Now, it might sound a lot, but is it something that you can put a price on? Really? John Lennon's hair? After all, mix the hair with some mosquito blood and you'll be able to start your own tropical John Lennon safari park where people can pay to see all sorts of John Lennons in the wild, like the angry beclawed carnivore John Lennons, the docile giant herbivore John Lennons and the John Lennons that look cute but then suddenly turn vicious and blind you with hawked-up globs of sticky acid. It's an investment, if anything.
Gorringes spokeswoman Francesca Collin is certainly pleased that a manky wodge of dead man's hair was capable of making so much money:
"It is astonishing that there is still so much interest in the Beatles and the sale goes to prove that John Lennon is still an icon. To have some of Lennon's hair along with a signed note from him really does give it fantastic provenance and authenticity."
However, John Lennon's hair wasn't the only piece of Beatle hair memorabilia to sell at the auction. A photo of the group that George Harrison had signed "George "Dandruff" Harrison" went for $13,000. And 18 giant potato sacks full of every single public hair that Ringo Starr has ever grown, from the first flush of puberty to the present day, was also snapped up by a mystery bidder for 12p and half a packet of Polos.
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