Flute from Beatles song sells for £23,000

A flute which featured in the Beatles' song The Fool On The Hill has sold at auction for £23,000.

It originally belonged to Cornish flautist Jack Ellory, and was inherited by his son Brian Ellory who lives in Shropshire.

Jack was a session musician who played on classical and pop music records as well as soundtracks for James Bond films, Pink Panther films, and the musical Oliver!

Brian said his family was "very proud" of him and his achievements and it had been a "tricky decision" to sell it.

He said his father had grown up in a small Cornish village, but moved to London to become a session musician.

During the 1950s and 1960s, he said there would have been only two or three session flautists and they would be regularly booked by fixers for projects.

He said his father, like many musicians booked for these jobs, would have little interaction with the stars they were working with and when he got home "it wasn't something that was particularly discussed".

Brian was a teenager when his father went to work with the Beatles and looking back, he said: "If he'd have asked me to go on one of them I'd have been delighted to have done so, but i was never asked."

He said his father also worked with big names like Bing Crosby and Marlene Dietrich, but there was a culture amongst session musicians of not pushing themselves forward too much.

Jack Ellory played a number of instruments and Brian said his tin whistle could be heard on other Beatles tracks.

But the silver flute, made in 1959, was "his main instrument for the rest of his career".

It was passed onto him by his mother in 2016, although it "wasn't in very good condition" and was held together by elastic bands, Brian said.

He had it restored and took flute lessons, but eventually concluded he was not that good and took the decision to sell it, rather than hand it down to his own children.

The flute was sold at auction at Gardiner Houlgate in Wiltshire and he said he thought the £23,000 was a "really good price".

Brian was told the flute had been sold to an American museum, which he found a bit disappointing.

"I was hoping it would go to a musician who was going to play it," he explained.

He now hopes for a conversation with the museum to discover "whether it's just going to be kept in a glass case somewhere, or whether it will be let out for somebody to play".

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