JOHN's FIREMAN COAT SELLS FOR $31,250

A personally-owned coat by Beatle John Lennon sold this evening for $31,250 which includes the buyer's premium at Nate D. Sanders Auctions.

Lennon's size 3, blue, cropped coat, designed by Great Coat Fireman, features an asymmetrical design, epaulettes and silver tone metal buttons. Andrew B. Harvey was given the coat in 1978. Harvey's certificate of authenticity states, 'This British fireman's coat once belonged to John Lennon. It was given to me in 1978 by Jon Hendricks, my (then) common-law wife's uncle. Brothers Jon and Jeff Hendricks own adjoining houses on Greenwich St. in the West Village. They jointly run (or ran) a mail-order art gallery called Backworks. Both Jeff and Jon were involved in the art movement know as 'fluxism' as was Yoko Ono. Through this they got to know the Lennons in the early seventies. Jon got the job of minding Julian Lennon on a trip (or trips) across the Atlantic. 

In 1978 we went to stay with Jon for a few weeks. He told me the fireman's coat hanging in the hall had been left there by John Lennon when he'd called in a few months earlier. I think that was the last time he saw John Lennon, (but his brother must still have been on good terms with Yoko because later, in 1982, he invited us on a New Year's eve jaunt in a Rolls that she had lent him and some friends for the evening).

Jon asked me if I wanted the coat, as I was off on a cross-country hitch-hiking trip and I didn't have one. I wore it through a couple of hard years. It may well be the coat that John Lennon is wearing on the back of the British album release (I think) as 'Life With The Lions', - unless he had several of them. The picture shows John and Yoko surrounded by British policemen, after John's drug bust.'

In 1996, Connecticut Beatles collector Keith Marron obtained the coat, which he owned until he put it up for auction through Nate D. Sanders.