NEW YORK (AFP).- Original manuscripts of classic songs by Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton will go on auction as part of a collection of rock memorabilia, Sotheby's said Monday.

The auction house estimated that the two manuscripts would fetch $50,000 to $70,000 each when they go on sale Saturday in New York.

The collection includes the manuscript of "Layla," one of rock's best-known songs of unrequited love, which Clapton wrote in 1970 about Pattie Harrison -- then the wife of his friend, Beatle George Harrison. She would later marry Clapton before they eventually divorced after nine years.

Clapton wrote the opening lyrics to "Layla," which was loosely inspired by the tale of the Persian Romantic poet Nizami Ganjavi, on the stationary of the Thunderbird Motel in Miami Beach.

Sotheby's will also auction the original typescript of "This Wheel's on Fire," one of the best-known songs from Dylan's 1967 sessions with Canadian folk rockers The Band around Woodstock, New York.

"This Wheel's on Fire," which the future Nobel laureate wrote with The Band's Rick Danko, went on to appear on the 1975 album "The Basement Tapes."

Among other items up for auction is a set of seven portraits that Dylan and fellow folk rocker Joan Baez sketched of themselves and each other.

Dylan and Baez, who had been lovers, drew the sketches in 1963 on stops at a coffeehouse in Woodstock on their motorcycle trips.

Sotheby's estimated that the set would sell for $30,000 to $50,000.


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