David Bowie’s handwritten Jean Genie lyrics fetch £46k at auction

David Bowie’s handwritten lyrics to ‘Jean Genie’ have fetched £46,000 at auction.

The late music icon had originally given the lyric sheet for the 1972 hit from his LP ‘Aladdin Sane’ to David Bowie fan club founder Neal Peters.

The lyrics went under the hammer at Omega Auctions in Newton-Le-Willows, Merseyside.

Auctioneer Paul Fairweather said: “We’re well pleased with the price achieved for this historic set of lyrics.”

The A4 sheet is signed and dated by the ‘Life on Mars’ hitmaker.

The latest Bowie lyric sale comes after handwritten ‘Starman’ lyrics sold for in excess of £200,000.

The sheet had all the corrections and edits made by the star himself and went under the hammer in Australia breaking the original estimate of £40,000 to sell for a whopping £203,500 – with the winning bidder named as Olivier Varenne, director of acquisitions and alliances and collections at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Tasmania.

The museum’s owner and founder David Walsh said of the sale: “We got carried away and paid too much. It’ll make an appearance in the expanded library we are currently constructing, along with many other items we got carried away with and paid too much for.”

Fairweather added: “We had almost unprecedented interest from around the world for this historic piece of memorabilia. We had five telephone lines in operation for the sale as well as bidders online and in the room.

“We’re very pleased with the incredible price achieved and are sure the lyrics will be rightly prized and treasured by the winning bidder.”

The lyric sheet had been with the same owner since the 1980s and had previously been displayed at the V and A Museum in London as part of the institution’s David Bowie collection.

‘Starman’ featured on Bowie’s fifth album ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’, and is credited with helping propel the singer to international fame.

Bowie died aged 69 on January 10, 2016.