Beatles treasures to go up for auction in New York
Band's first recording contract, a 1962 autographed copy of Love Me Do, and the first single recorded with Ringo Starr among items going under the hammer
The Beatles' first recording contract was signed in Hamburg, Germany, where the band honed their craft performing in the city's boisterous nightclub district.
A recording session in 1961 produced the single My Bonnie. It was released on the Polydor label in Germany where it got to number five on the charts, but failed to make a mark in Britain. That tune did, however, lead directly to The Beatles' discovery back home, a contract with EMI the following year and their first hit, Love Me Do.
The six-page contract will go under the hammer at Heritage Auctions in New York on September 19 for an estimated US$150,000.
It is the centrepiece of a Beatles collection spanning the band's career that's being sold by the estate of Uwe Blaschke, a German graphic designer and noted Beatles historian who died in 2010.
"Not many people know that The Beatles started their careers in Germany," says Beatles expert Ulf Kruger. "The Beatles had their longest stint in a club in Hamburg at the Top Ten Club. They played there three months in a row, every night. The style they invented in Liverpool, they cultivated in Hamburg."
"Without this contract all of the pieces wouldn't have fallen into place," adds Dean Harmeyer, Heritage's consignment director for music memorabilia, who says the band was "a ramshackle, amateur" outfit when they first went to Germany "… probably a C class in the pantheon of Liverpool bands".