George Michael saved John Lennon's famous piano | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

While I have no problem with the gist of the story, the actual instrument involved is debatable (unless Michael bought and donated two pianos to The Beatles Story).

The piano in the article is a studio-owned upright made by the New England Piano Company, and used by John (among others) during sessions at the Record Plant in New York.

That is not the piano Michael most famously bought and donated to The Beatles Story in 2000.

That was John’s personally owned 1970 Steinway Model Z upright which he bought in December 1970.

It is, most famously, the piano on which John wrote Imagine  in early 1971.

Here is the original article about the purchase published on the BBC News website on 18 October 2000.

So, unless Michael bought two Lennon pianos, the Echo has written an article about the wrong piano…

The Beatles Story does have a white Steinway Baby Grand, @Leppo, but it is not the white Steinway Baby Grand. There’s a good chance it’s one of Steinway’s “Imagine ” model from 2010.

John’s white Baby Grand is still owned by Yoko, and according to the most recent mentions I’ve seen of it (last two or three years), it still sits in the same place in the Dakota as it was the last time John left.

While the white Baby Grand was shipped from Tittenhurst to New York, the Model Z went into storage in the UK, with John expecting to return at some stage.

Following his death, and with the true value of the instrument not really understood as music memorabilia was still in its earliest days, it was involved in a promotion in 1984 to do with, I believe, Milk And Honey . While I don’t know the details, it has to be imagined that it was offered as a competition prize!

Whatever the promotion was, it ended up in private hands, unseen again until 2000. At the beginning of 2000, it was lent for 10 months to The Beatles Story, until going up for auction in October of that year, when Michael bought it. It was donated to The Beatles Story in 2001.

Where I believe the confusion has come about about the Baby Grand is that when the Model Z was sold, lots was made of Imagine  being written on it, and in a game of Chinese Whispers, as the story spread, it became the Imagine  piano, and then the Baby Grand – as that was what everyone thought of as being the Imagine  piano.