A lock of hair cut from the head of an unwitting Paul McCartney outside a BBC studio is for sale at a British collectibles company.
Paul Fraser Collectibles are listing the dark-brown hank of Beatle hair that fan Martha snipped outside a recording, probably for the BBC show Saturday Club, in 1965 or 1966.
Martha’s confession recalls a time when fans could get relatively close to the Liverpool band and other stars of an exploding British beat scene.
She recalls: “We saw and got autographs of Wayne Fontana, The Spectrum, Paul Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, Ross MacManus, The Tremeloes, Georgie Fame, and, of course the Beatles.”
Paul McCartney’s hair is for sale alongside his signature. Image courtesy Paul Fraser Collectibles.
With most of the band in her autograph book, Martha and a friend went one step further to show their admiration for the Fab Four.
“At school we made plans to cut a piece of Paul’s hair (back then it was a ‘normal’ thing to do) and went prepared with scissors. When the Beatles left the studio we mobbed them with a crowd of other fans and just grabbed Paul’s hair and cut!
“Sounds a dreadful thing now,” she says.
They even wrote via the band’s fan club offering an apology but never heard back.
60 years later that girlish enthusiasm has produced a valuable artefact of the most exciting era in British – maybe world – youth culture.
The snipped hair is being sold with an autograph collected separately.
Paul Fraser, chairman of Paul Fraser Collectibles said: “Both are frozen in time from those spine-tingling days. When the Beatles were transforming music, and transforming the world, with every new record they made.
“The style of Paul’s signature indicates he signed it in the mid 60s – 1964 onward.”
Beatle hair was sold along with any and every other aspect of their lives in the frantic heyday of Beatlemania.
Surviving fragments are now rare, and may, Paul Fraser says, have considerable resale value.
“It’s possible that a music memorabilia dealer will buy it and sell it strand by strand,” he said. “The lock has a potential retail value of £140,000 when sold as separate strands.”
This lock is for sale now at £20,000 and Mr Fraser is expecting it to sell quickly.
