McCartney Blocks 'Hey Jude' Auction

By Beth Lipton

04/29/2002 at 01:00 AM EDT

Former Beatle Paul McCartney won an eleventh hour court order in London Monday that, for the moment, will keep auction house Christie's from selling the sheet on which he scrawled the lyrics to the cherished song "Hey Jude," the Associated Press reports. The sheet, which was expected to go for at least 80,000 pounds at auction tomorrow, will remain at Christie's London headquarters for the time being. McCartney won the reprieve in the British High Court thanks to his claim that the sheet had disappeared from his west London home. Richard Meade, an attorney representing the former Beatle, told the court that the sheet with the handwritten lyrics is especially valuable to McCartney, who he said wrote the song to cheer up bandmate John Lennon's then-young son Julian while his father sought a divorce from his mother, Cynthia, according to the AP. The sheet was placed up for auction by Florrent Tessier, a Frenchman who says he bought it in a London street market for 10 pounds in the early 1970s (McCartney penned the lyrics around 1967-68). Christie's representative Richard Morgan told the AP that McCartney had not provided evidence that he owns the paper on which the lyrics are written, and added that McCartney never reported the sheet stolen, in spite of his claim that it has great sentimental value.