Rare drawings by John Lennon, have been rediscovered at auction by a collector from Tynemouth, Newcastle. Sixty years after they were made, the works are to be exhibited at The Liverpool Beatles Museum.
Joseph Robert O’Donnell, a Beatles collector and dealer based in Tynemouth, uncovered the drawings at a London auction house, where they had gone largely unnoticed. Recognising their historical importance, he acquired them for his collection before offering them for exhibition to The Liverpool Beatles Museum.
The drawings, created by artist Stephen Verona and John Lennon, contained all of the lyrics to The Beatles’ song ‘I Feel Fine’ with each word and drawing on its own piece of paper. The 240 total drawings, or ‘cells’, were then made into a film, forming what is now largely considered the first music ‘video’ before the term was ever coined.
Stephen Verona later recalled in an interview:
I met John Lennon in London while directing a commercial. We started doodling drawings on a table, and I suggested making a film from them. That became the Beatles’ first animated music video - I Feel Fine. It was two minutes long, made from 240 drawings.
The commercial, for Ford Motor Company, featured Lady Godiva on horseback being over taken by a Ford Cortina. Following the filming Verona took Lady Godiva to a London Club where she introduced him to her friend Victor Spinetti who then introduced them to John and Cynthia Lennon. John was doodling on the paper tablecloth and Verona joined in. It was at this point that Verona suggested making a movie from them and Lennon agreed.
Verona then returned home and began producing bold pop-art cartoon images designed to fit the lyrics and follow the rhythm of the music. Lennon visited Verona’s Manhattan apartment, where Stephen recalls the two spent hours seated side by side at the kitchen table, smoking and hand-colouring the drawings with felt-tip markers, completing the animation cells for what is now widely regarded as ‘the world’s first true rock music video’.
The finished film was an immediate success. It was screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, won awards at the Atlanta, San Francisco and Chicago film festivals, received the prestigious CINE Golden Eagle Award, and subsequently toured major international film festivals, cementing its place as a landmark in both music and visual culture. Verona went on to make music videos for Barbara Streisand, Santana and Chicago.
These events took place against a backdrop of extraordinary tension. The band’s 1966 American tour had become increasingly fraught following Lennon’s controversial remark that The Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”, which had sparked protests, record burnings, death threats and widespread hostility across the southern states.
Amid the pressure, Lennon had begun to explore visual art, experimental film and alternative forms of expression, making the Verona collaboration a rare and intimate creative outlet away from the glare of Beatlemania.The original film reel is now held in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
In 2000, Stephen Verona consigned the complete set of 240 original animation drawings to Christie’s New York, where they sold for $58,750 before being separated and dispersed across the globe.
Now reunited, two of these lyrical sequences read: ‘Baby Says She’s Mine’ and ‘In Love with Her’, instantly recognisable lines from ‘I Feel Fine’ as well as two other singular drawings for the words ‘And’ and ‘I’.
These artworks will be revealed for the first time at the Liverpool Beatles Museum, 23 Mathew Street on 04.06.26 to an invited audience of Beatles aficionados and then remain on exhibition for several months thereafter.