A piano once owned by John Lennon and Yoko Onolater given to art curator Sam Green, who in turn loaned it to Andy Warhol, goes under the hammer in the fall at Maryland State.

The piano, which was made in 1929, is a Baldwin Concert Grand Model D that, according to its 19-page provenance report written by Karen Lile, Lennon bought in 1978. On it, John and Yoko composed songs from which spawned their 1980 album, ‘Double Fantasy’.

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The piano’s journey to auction was an eventful one. A gold plaque on it is engraved with the words ‘To Sam Love John And Yoko 1979’. It stayed in Sam Green’s home on Fire Island, New York until 1983 when he loaned it to another close friend of his, Andy Warhol. Warhol placed the piano in the offices of Interview magazine in the Big Apple. When he died, the piano was loaned to the New York Academy of Art. When Green sued the New York Academy of Art to get the piano back, in 2000 he testified in court that the piano had been given to him.

The following year, the court rejected the request (Green died in 2011). For its part, the New York Academy of Art had argued that the piano was a gift and, according to a New York Times report at the time, said it had sold it for a few thousand dollars to a Manhattan antique shop. Which in turn sold the piano to an auctioneer named Buddy Bain and then lost track of it.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono's piano

In the Sept. 30 auction at Alex Cooper Auctioneers, the piano is being offered by Mercersburg Academy, a prestigious private boarding school, and the proceeds from the auction — estimated to be as high as $3 million — will be used to establish a student scholarship. “I am pleased to have traced the ownership of the piano from 1978 when it was purchased by John Lennon to its current owners, Mercersburg Academy,” Karen Lile wrote in her report.