A HANDWRITTEN letter sent to an American journalist by a furious John Lennon is set to fetch up to £15,000 at a rock'n'roll sale.
The Liverpool legend penned the letter to a New York Times reporter after reading an article which accused The Beatles, along with other white artists, of ripping off black American music in their early cover records.
The letter was written in 1971. Lennon was so upset that he fired off a handwritten letter on American Airlines notepaper.
He wrote: "Money, Twist'n'Shout, You Really Got A Hold On Me, etc, were all numbers we used to sing in the dance halls around Britain, mainly Liverpool.
"It was only natural that we tried to do it as near to the record as we could.
"I always wished we could have done them even closer to the original.
"We didn't sing our own songs in the early days - they weren't good enough - the one thing we always did was to make it known that there were black originals, we loved the music and wanted to spread it in any way we could."
