Jagger love letters sold at auction

AFP/London

A collection of letters sent by Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger to his secret lover in the summer of 1969 sold for around $300,000 at a London auction yesterday, trumping their pre-sale estimate.

Purchased by a private collector over the telephone, the letters sold for £187,250 at a Sotheby’s auction, trumping their pre-sale estimate of £70,000 to £100,000.

The letters were written to black American singer Marsha Hunt, aged 23 at the time, while Jagger was filming the movie Ned Kelly in Australia, and were presented as a window into a different side of the rock-and-roll legend.

“We are delighted with the result of today’s sale which reflects the great significance of these letters, written at such a vivid moment in social and musical history,” said Sotheby’s books specialist Gabriel Heaton.

“There has been enormous international interest in the letters, which depict Mick Jagger, not as the global superstar he is today, but reveal him as a poetic and self-aware 25-year-old with wide-ranging intellectual and artistic interests.”

Hunt, who starred in the original London cast of hit musical Hair and was the poster girl of the Black is Beautiful movement, had an initially clandestine affair with the rocker when interracial relationships were taboo.

“1969 saw the ebbing of a crucial, revolutionary era, highly influenced by such artists as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, James Brown and Bob Dylan,” Hunt said after the sale.

A leather jacket worn on stage by ex-Beatle George Harrison was sold for £110,450 at auction in London yesterday.

The black jacket dates from the Beatles’ stay in Hamburg, Germany, in 1960, and was worn by Harrison on subsequent occasions. It was the star lot at a rock memorabilia sale at Bonham’s auction house in London.

A guitar used by Paul McCartney in the 1950 went for £43,250, while a pair of Harrison’s custom-made leather boots were snapped up for 61,250.  The sale, which also included memorabilia relating to stars including Eric Clapton and David Bowie, amassed a total of 624,619, said Bonham’s.