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Guitar played by John Lennon on Help!, lost for 50 years, going up for auction

Guitar also played by George Harrison on Norwegian Wood could sell for millions in May auction, alongside other memorabilia including a book of Tupac Shakur’s handwritten lyrics

The 12-string acoustic guitar, a Hootenanny model made by Bavarian firm Framus in the early 1960s, was primarily played by Lennon and also appears in the movie Help!, used to perform You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away. Also going up for auction on 29 and 30 May, online and at New York’s Hard Rock Cafe, is another piece of Lennon history: the telephone he used during the Bed-Ins for Peace, protests against the Vietnam war made by him and wife Yoko Ono. The Lennon/Harrison guitar discovery comes after another long-lost Beatles instrument, a Höfner bass owned by Paul McCartney, was returned to him in February after it had been stolen in 1972.

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