John Lennon’s ‘Help!’ guitar going up for auction after being lost for 50 years

nme.com:

John Lennon and George Harrison, which appeared in the movie Help!, is headed to auction after being lost for 50 years.The model is a 12-string Hootenanny acoustic guitar, made in the early ’60s by Bavarian manufacturer Framus.

It famously appeared in the Beatles movie Help!, as Lennon used it to perform a rendition of ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’.It also features on the studio version of the song, and in ‘Help!’s title track, ‘It’s Only Love’ and ‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’.

As well as Lennon, the guitar was also used by another Beatles member, George Harrison, who used it on ‘Norwegian Wood’, as well as the ‘Rubber Soul’ song ‘Girl’.According to Darren Julien, the co-founder and executive director of Julien’s Auctions – where the guitar will be headed next month – the current owners were gifted the guitar by Gordon Waller, from 1960s pop stars Peter and Gordon, kept it in the attic and ultimately forgot they owned it.“Finding this remarkable instrument is like finding a lost Rembrandt or Picasso, and it still looks and plays like a dream,” Julien added (via The Guardian).He also said that he had travelled to the UK to verify the guitar and also rescued the original case, which had been thrown in the bin.

He, alongside Beatles historians Andy Babiuk and Danny Bennett, confirmed that the instrument was the model in question from Help!.“The woodgrain of a guitar is like a fingerprint in that no two guitars are the same,” he said. “Not only is the woodgrain a perfect match to the guitar that John and George are playing but so is the pickguard which can be exactly photo-matched.