Lennon interview, songs, up for auction in Denmark

Pictures and a cassette tape containing a 51 year-old interview of John Lennon are being auctioned this month in Denmark for up to €30.000 ($35,181).

The materials were made over half a century ago by four Danish teenagers for their school paper during a trip Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono took to the region of Thy.

A cassette tape with a 33-minute audio recording of the chat, which also includes an apparently unpublished song by the late Beatle, will be auctioned in Denmark later this month.

The 16-year-olds were not star-struck when they did the interview in northern Denmark on Jan. 5, 1970.

At the height of the Vietnam War and the Cold War, Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono had "a message of peace, and that was what was important to us," recalled Karsten Hoejen, who made the recording on a tape recorder borrowed from the local hi-fi shop.

The tape chiefly consists of Lennon and Ono speaking about being in Denmark and world peace, Hoejen said.

Alternative societies mushroomed in Denmark from the late 1960s, attracting people from abroad, and music festivals were organised inspired by those on the Isle of Wight and Woodstock.

Lennon and Ono were in the Danish region of Thy where Ono's ex-husband had moved to and brought Kyoko, the couple's then five-year-old daughter with him.

They stayed for about a month and tried to lie low — which worked for about a week.

Then a local newspaper reported their presence and the press rushed to interview them.

The four 16-year-olds wanted to interview Lennon for their school magazine but turned up late for the official press conference.

The items  — the tape, 23 still photos and a copy of the school paper — have been estimated to be worth at least 200,000 kroner (nearly $31,800).

It was recorded on an old-fashioned tape recorder," said Alexa Bruun Rasmussen of Denmark's main auction house Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneer that will auction the items on Sept. 28.

IMAGE: AP