Boing Boing guestbar alum Todd Lappin sez: “Sort of. This is an interesting tale of what might’ve been.”
A long lost jukebox owned by John Lennon has revealed that, when it
came to musical inspiration, even the Beatles got by with a little
help from their friends.
The 15 kg [Swiss-made KB Discomatic] portable jukebox, owned by
Lennon around 40 years ago, was bought by the late Bristol music
promoter John Midwinter for just £2,500 at a Christie’s sale of
Beatles memorabilia in 1989. He then spent years restoring it to
working order and researching its 41 discs. Listed in Lennon’s
handwriting, they are effectively the Desert Island Discs which
helped shape his musical genius.
[…]
Artists featured on the jukebox include the Animals, Chuck Berry, Bob
Dylan, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Smokey Robinson and Gene Vincent.
There are no Beatles records and only one sung by a woman, Fontella
Bass’s ‘Rescue Me’. In Lennon’s rough and ready scrawl, with gaps and
crossings out, The Lovin’ Spoonful become ‘The Lovin’s Spoonfuls’ and
Otis Redding is ‘Ottis Redding’.