What do you do when the odds are completely against you?

He said, “Just after being introduced to the drums, I was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, which is a rare form of eye cancer … It required that in order to save my life, they had to remove my right eye … So, I’ve been blind in my right eye ever since … What they did is put a removable prosthetic in the socket, and in addition to that, when the surgeon was doing the operation to remove my eye, he made a mistake, and it happens sometimes in operations like this … and he clipped a muscle in my eye lid … So, I grew up … with my lid half-closed, without eyesight in my right eye, and a lot of hospital visits …”

Lennon’s personal copy of infamous Yesterday and Today – autographed by Lennon, McCartney and Starr – sets third-highest price ever paid for vinyl record.

A John Lennon-owned copy of the Beatles’ infamous “butcher cover” version of Yesterday and Today, autographed by three members of the Fab Four, sold for $234,000 at a Beatles-themed auction this week.

The vinyl copy – autographed by Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and featuring a back cover sketch drawn by Lennon – was the centerpiece of Julien’s Auctions’ The Beatles in Liverpool auction, which featured over 300 items of Fab Four memorabilia.

“He’s just an amazing drummer, and an amazing person,” observes noted drum enthusiast and educator David Frangioni, author of 2018’s Crash: The World’s Greatest Drum Kits – From Appice to Peart to Van Halen (Insight Editions). Crash is devoted to being, quote, “the ultimate photographic guide to the world of rock ’n’ roll’s most famous drum kits,” and the 208-page hardback includes a lavish spread on Todd and his massive, current (albeit soon-to-be revised/replaced!) drum setup, as seen above in a photo by Jason Powell.