Letter of the month

LALA AND LENNON, WITH LOVE

I want to tell you a beautiful story about an autograph of John Lennon that I own.

I’m 58, and a French reader of RC for a long time and a serious record collector. When I was leaving in Saumur (a city of the Loire Valley) in the 70s, my grandmother (1902-1998) was president of the movie club of the city and for that reason, Lala (as she was called) was invited each year during the 60s and 70s to the famous Festival de Cannes for the movie competition.

When she came back home after the 1971 festival, she brought me a marvellous gift and told me this wonderful story: “I got a private invitation for the premiere of The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter and by chance, I was just sitting beside John Lennon and Yoko Ono! We looked at the movie together! Just before the end of the screening, he begged me to let him go away discreetly; of course, I agreed and asked him to sign an autograph on my ticket. He did it nicely and wrote on the back ‘To Doriaken love John Lennon Yoko Ono Lennon’ – Yoko signed too.” (My name is Decker but he must have not clearly understood the name given by my grandmother and he wrote in the dark.)

In Lala’s memories, he was very charming and certainly pleased to give an autograph to the grandson of this “old lady” (she was then 69 years old) watching a Rolling Stones movie beside him!

The year before (1970), she had already brought me some promotional items about Woodstock and another year, a poster of Easy Rider.

Today, I preserve this unique autograph of John Lennon like a jewel. Here is a picture of John and Yoko taken at this projection (15 May 1971); we can’t see my grandmother but we can “imagine” her beside John. Even if I own a 10,000-records collection (many are on the Blue Horizon label), my rarest item is certainly not vinyl, but this autograph, obtained with a little help from… my dear Lala (now resting in the sky with John). Many thanks to her! An amazing story, thank you for sharing it with our readers. Were YOU left amazing memorabilia, readers? Do let us know…

by M Decker
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