John Lennon letter shows fury at record label over Yoko Ono album Two Virgins

Bidding for the letter, which is expected to fetch up to $20,000, closes tomorrow (15 March)

(Getty Images)

A letter written from John Lennon expressing anger towards his record label over an album he released with Yoko Ono has resurfaced ahead of its sale at auction.

Written in 1971, the letter is expected to reach a price of £15,000 when bidding closes in Boston, Massachusetts tomorrow (15 March), just a few days before what would have been Lennon and Ono’s 50th wedding anniversary.

Addressed to “Martin George of Rock Ink”, the auction house cites “noted Beatles expert” Perry Cox in affirming that the letter was sent to the late Beatles producer George Martin.

However, author Mark Lewisohn told The Times that he believes that Lennon was actually responding to the journalist Martin George, who wrote for “a magazine or a weekly underground newspaper called Ink”.

Referring to his and Ono’s 1968 album Two Virgins, Lennon writes: “Yoko and I got ‘Two Virgins’ out in spite of [which is underlined] being past owners of Apple. We made it in May and they f***ed us about till November! Then E. M. I. (who have the real control) wrote warning letters to all their puppets around the world telling them not handle it in any way (this after Sir Joe [Lockwood, chairman of EMI] had told us face to face that he would do ‘everything he could’ to help us with it – and asking us for autographed copies!!).

The letter John Lennon sent where he expressed anger over the treatment of his 'Two Virgins' album with Yoko Ono (RR Auction)

“In the States it came out on Tetragrammaton which vanished leaving a few thousand spares (it was sold discretely wrapped in a brown paper bags),” Lennon continues. “Retailers here and there were too scared to handle it and it sold very few – it’s very well-known but not many people could actually get it. In most other major markets, e.g. Japan, it has never been released.”

EMI, Apple’s parent company, refused to distribute it due to the fully nude photo of John and Yoko that adorned its front and back.

Two Virgins was eventually released six months later by Track Records in the UK and by Tetragrammaton Records in the United States. Both labels sold the record in a brown paper bag packaging that hid the supposedly offensive artwork.

In the letter, Lennon also railed against the censorship of the word “f***” and the “banning” of Ono’s “Open Your Box” on the album before concluding with: “Just thought you’d like to know.”