Omega Auctions have secured the consignment of David Bowie's original handwritten lyrics to his 1972 hit Starman with an estimated sale price of £30,000 - £40,000.
The lyrics are handwritten on a single piece of graph paper measuring 29cm x 20cm and are believed to have been written by Bowie in January 1972 prior to the songs release on 28th April.
The lyrics include Bowie's amendments with spelling errors and chorus amendments.
The provenance states that the lyrics date from the final recording sessions of the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars with Bowie passing the lyric sheet to an employee of the record company to ensure the lyrics were printed on the album's record bag.
To add to the provenance in 2013 the lyric sheet was displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London as part of the David Bowie is exhibition which then toured the world including Paris, Tokyo, Barcelona and New York, receiving over 1m visitors worldwide - making it the V&A's most visited exhibition.
The auction ends on 27th September. View the full details at Omega Auctions.
The lyrics are clearly a fantastic piece of Bowie memorabilia which should far exceed the auction estimate as original handwritten lyrics are among the Holy Grail of music memorabilia.
In June 2021 RR Auction sold the handwritten lyrics for Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U sold for $150,986.
In 2020 Paul McCartney's hastily written lyrics for a 1968 studio recording of Hey Jude sold for $910,000 at Juliens in Los Angeles - nine times the auction estimate. Whereas John Lennon's handritten lyrics to All You Need is Love sold for $1,250,000 at a Cooper Owen auction in 2005.
But the record price belongs to Bob Dylan and a 4-page set of lyrics for 'Like a Rolling Stone' which sold for $2,045,000 at Sotheby's in 2014. The lyrics were believed to be the only known handwritten lyrics for the song.
So our guestimate is David Bowie's handwritten lyrics for Starman could sell for £1m+. What do you think?
2 comments
Sold for £203,500
I think it’s gonna sell for around 100k
It’s a huge sing of his, but I think life on Mars, but especially Space oddity, would sell for hundreds of thousands.