NEW YORK (AP) – An old sketch up for auction May 20 at the Hard Rock Cafe in Manhattan is a crude, ink-on-paper drawing of the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club” album cover. The artist is almost surely John Lennon.
Julien’s Auctions says the drawing was discovered by a former resident of the Weybridge house in England where Lennon lived from 1964 to 1968. The artwork is clearly an outline for the “Pepper” cover, showing the Beatles gathered around a drum, the group’s name spelled out in front of them and circles in the back that would be filled in by such famous faces as Bob Dylan’s and Oscar Wilde’s.
The drawing is undated. It could be a draft or an idle doodle from later on.