The etchings on a wall are eternal and expensive! A piece of wall art with the signatures of England’s’ fab four is up for auction. This nearly 60-year-old inscription of The Beatles from the set of ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ in 1964 could end up in your living room for $1 million. New Jersey-based company Gotta Have Rock and Roll is accepting bids for its “Rock & Roll Americana” auction, which features 119 impressive items related to greats of the music industry like The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and Michael Jackson.
The sizeable movable plastic wall used as a background in the show features the signatures of all four iconic band members. The 40×122 cm plaque includes their names, some text and doodles, and an inscription, “The Beatles were here.” For the longest time, this piece was the cynosure at the Southdowns Lounge bar in the Baton Rouge area of Louisiana. Rodney Cary, the lounge owner, acquired it from a young Beatles fan, Loftin Sproles, in the mid-1980s.
Cary’s wife, Laurie, 2002, sold the wall art piece to a buyer from New Jersey. Unfortunately, the 4-foot-by-2-foot plastic wall has been making rounds of the auction block but never found a true fan.
It was put up for sale in 2014 through Dallas-based auction house Heritage Auctions and was expected to fetch between $800,000 and $1 million. The historic piece is available now through Gotta Have Rock and Roll’s website, with bids starting at $500,000. Perhaps 2023 is the lucky year?
