Paul McCartney's 'Lovely Rita' Rough Draft on Sale for $650,000
Paul McCartney’s handwritten, work-in-progress manuscript for the cheeky Beatles song “Lovely Rita” will be on view and up for grabs for US$650,000 next month at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan.
McCartney’s rough draft of the song, which John Lennon was also credited for, is from the much-acclaimed 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It’s among the treasures for sale at the ABAA New York International Antiquarian Book Fair from April 1-4.
Torn from a spiral notebook, the 7½-by-5-inch lined page with lyrics and edits, “is a cool piece of ephemera,” says Alex Hime, director of Biblioctopus, the Los Angeles-based rare books dealer presenting the item for sale.
“It represents the most important category of popular culture in the second half of the 20th century,” he says, “which is pop music.”
“Lovely Rita” depicts a humorous encounter with a traffic warden. The rough draft reveals the inner workings of an ace songwriter’s mind. “From this working manuscript you get to see the process,” Hime says.
On the page, seven lines in black are McCartney’s first concept, according to Biblioctopus. Three lines of changes are in blue. The lyric “writing all the numbers in her little black book” led to “filling in a ticket with her little blue pen.” More changes followed. The recorded lyric is “filling in a ticket in her little white book.”
McCartney’s rare rough draft has been archivally framed and parked in storage at Biblioctopus since the 1990s, when the dealer bought it at an auction “at Butterfields before they joined with Bonhams,” Hime says. The price then was around US$20,000.
Source: Joe Dziemianowicz/barrons.com
