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John Lennon Signature Study 1970-1980

There was a recent discussion of a Lennon signature claimed to be from his appearance at radio station WFIL's Helping Hands Marathon in May, 1975. This prompted a suggestion that we should have a signature study of Lennon's sometimes difficult to authenticate post-Beatles signature. Some examples from this period are highly abbreviated.

I'd like to start by focusing on that May 1975 signing appearance with exemplars that are believed to be from that 3-day period. What would be particularly helpful would be examples from catalogs that go back a ways.

Here are a couple of WFIL signatures from Meet the Beatles For Real, one of which includes a doodle.

Here's a group of check signatures from 1970, sorted by date - April 8, June 3 (2), July 7, October 14, November 12 (3).

A few more from 1970:

Here are all of the examples I've seen that are known to be from 1973:

The abbreviated 1980 signature on copies of the Double Fantasy LP:

Tags: 1970s, Beatles, John, Lennon, WFIL

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Paul on August 6, 2017 at 6:24pm

I agree!
There doesn't seem to be much interest in this thread though.

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Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on August 6, 2017 at 11:08pm

I, for one, am extremely interested but these things can take time to develop. The Beatles signed LP census project has been going on for years now. It is also a peak holiday period in Europe.

As I said above, I think it would help to analyse each main period separately before trying to identify characteristics that remained constant from 1970 to 1980. If we start by comparing 1970 cheque signatures to signatures from the WFL event in 1975 or to Double Fantasy signatures we may just give up in frustration.

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Permalink Reply by wascher on August 13, 2017 at 10:54am

I am following along as well with great interest.

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Permalink Reply by Ben M on August 7, 2017 at 11:30pm

Wow, nice work, Ballroom!

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Permalink Reply by Jim Cushman on August 8, 2017 at 10:34am

Great job Ballroom...nice work!!!

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Permalink Reply by Jim Cushman on August 8, 2017 at 10:44am

Here 's a nice one of mine from c.1975...

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Permalink Reply by Macca Fan on August 8, 2017 at 11:38am

Jim, this was supposed to be 1970-1980 postings, Ballroom did allot of legwork to keep it on that 70-80 date range, how about starting a 60's posting, , I would like them in different postings, just my 2cents, I guess lets see what the peeps say

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Permalink Reply by Paul on August 8, 2017 at 3:40pm

Here's my nid 70s lennon.

Attachments: No photo uploads here

Screenshot_20170804-134150.png, 1.2 MB

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Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on August 8, 2017 at 10:07pm

The variety of these mid-70s Lennons is quite incredible. How a man could sign his name so differently over such a short period of time (3 days in the case of the WFL) amazes me.

I know I keep harping on about it but the presence and form of the "h" and "L" is particularly interesting to me - sometimes there appears to be no "h" at all and the "L" is sometimes appears to be upper case, sometimes lower and the lower case types sometimes look like "l" and sometimes "e".

Looking at the examples posted by Jim and Paul above, I would have thought that Jim's pre-dates Paul's by quite some years.

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Permalink Reply by KarlKeaton on August 8, 2017 at 11:35pm

Great thread, I remember Steve suggesting it but I have only just noticed it.

In the WFIL section I'd put the signed "Walls and Bridges" (First one) as being a bit later, not just the style but also the fact that it's much neater than most of the WFIL signatures.

I'll try to post my own 1978 later, I don't have access to a scanner right now but might be able to find an old jpeg of it I have somewhere.