Local pianist plays Lennon's piano before it's up for auction

Sep. 27—At precisely 5 p.m. Wednesday, pianist Paul Warthen launched into the opening chords of The Beatles' "Let It Be."

The venue wasn't a concert hall or piano bar, but the showroom of Alex Cooper Auctioneers in Towson.

The instrument Warthen — who lived in Mount Airy until he recently moved — was seated at was no ordinary piano.

It was a black grand piano once owned by one of the most famous musicians of all time, former Beatle John Lennon. The piano will be up for auction on Saturday.

Shari Cooper, one of the auction house's owners, posed for a picture at the piano with Warthen before he began to perform.

"I was just caught up in the moment. Just to sit on that bench, I couldn't believe it," Cooper said.

She called the instrument "a generational piece," and while she doesn't know how the sale will go, the piano has drawn a lot of interest, she said.

The items for sale include a variety of other instruments and musical memorabilia, from guitars signed by Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash to concert posters for the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company and other bands at San Francisco's Avalon Ballroom.

Lennon purchased the 1929 Baldwin Concert Grand Model D piano from the Baldwin store in New York City, according to the website for the auction house.

In 1979, Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono gave the piano to their friend, the art promoter and socialite Sam Green.

When Green moved the instrument to his home on Fire Island, N.Y., Lennon and Ono would often visit, and Lennon used the piano while composing songs for his final album, "Double Fantasy," according to the website.

After Lennon's murder in 1980, Green loaned the piano to his friend, the pop artist Andy Warhol, who placed it in the Manhattan office of his "Interview" magazine.

"If this piano could talk," said Warthen's wife, Ashley, about the instrument's journey through the rock and roll and New York arts and social scenes.

After the piano's time with Warhol, Green loaned it to the New York Academy of Art.

But the academy sold the piano without Green's permission, and after a sojourn to Alabama, it ended up in the possession of a family in Hagerstown.

They gave it to the Mercersburg Academy, who arranged for Saturday's sale.

"You almost need the Cliff's Notes version of this piano, because it has such a long history," said Alex Hernan, director of Decorative Arts and Furniture for Alex Cooper Auctioneers.

He said it's not known whether the piano was in Lennon and Yoko Ono's apartment in The Dakota apartment building or in some other location when the musician owned it.

But tracing the instrument's history has been an exciting challenge.

"This has really been a fun project," Hernan said.

Warthen said that although he's not a hardcore Beatles fan, he appreciates the band's history and music, and the connection the piano has to part of that history.

"It's just amazing that I get the chance to play it tonight," he said.

Warthen grew up in Thurmont, and began playing piano after taking a class in high school.

Forty years later, he makes a living playing weddings, cocktail parties, bars, and clubs.

When he and his wife sold their Mount Airy home in July, Warthen's piano mover asked how things were going in their new home of Key West.

Warthen told him a story about a family that came into the club he was playing over the winter, and requested he play Lennon's "Imagine."

As he played, the entire bar began singing along, leaving Warthen with goose bumps, he said.

When he heard the story, the piano mover, Dean Kramer of New Midway's Kramer's Piano Shop, told Warthen he would be moving a piano that had belonged to Lennon from the Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania to the Cooper's auction house for a sale to raise money for the school.

From there, the auction house asked Warthen to play at a private event Wednesday before the piano's sale.

For two hours, he entertained guests with a wide variety of standards and pop hits, played on the piano that stretches nearly 9 feet long from the keyboard to the back. He played songs by a wide range of songwriters and musicians, such as Paul Anka, Christopher Cross and Toto, as well as a few other Beatles songs.

Although the piano's worth was appraised in 2022 at just more than $5 million, bidding was expected to open at $300,000, and bring in $1 million to $2 million.

But Shari Cooper isn't worried about what the final bid will be.

"It's not about money. It's about the legend, the story," she said.

Follow Ryan Marshall on Twitter: @RMarshallFNP