FEATURE:
A Perfect Shot in St John’s Wood
PHOTO CREDIT: Iain Stewart Macmillan
The Cover of The Beatles’ Abbey Road at Fifty-Five
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THERE is a lot written about…
PHOTO CREDIT: Iain Stewart Macmillan
the cover of The Beatles’ Abbey Road. The final album they recorded, it was released on 26th September, 1969. On 8th August that year, the band shot the cover of the album. It is, in my view, the greatest album cover ever. So iconic and discussed. Many people reacting to conspiracy theories and supposed symbolism in the shot. This pure moment where we capture John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr outside EMI/Abbey Road Studios in St John’s Wood on a warm day. One of the great things about the Abbey Road cover is the sense of the still and mobile. There is movement from the band members, yet there is this feeling of stillness. Like someone has covertly captured the guys walking across a zebra crossing. I never thought it seemed too posed and planned – even though, of course, it was. There is a lot of detail in the shot from Iain Stewart Macmillan. I want to come to a few features about the iconic photoshoot. There are features that look at some of the theories about the images. The ‘Paul is dead’ theory. First, this feature from last year takes us inside a fabulous day in August 1969:
“On August 8, 1969, on a street in north-west London and almost directly outside a celebrated recording studio, one of the most famous ever album covers was shot.
Photographer Iain MacMillan took the image that would adorn the cover of the brilliant new record named after the street where he stood, Abbey Road. The zebra crossing, almost exactly in front of the studio where The Beatles had created the vast majority of their body of work, was about to become one of the most recognized sites in London.
Before the shoot began, MacMillan, a friend of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s, had taken Paul McCartney’s initial sketch idea of the potential cover image and added detail of exactly how the famous quartet might look on the crossing. The street sign of Abbey Road that adorned the back cover of the album was taken by MacMillan on a junction with Alexandra Road that no longer exists.
PHOTO CREDIT: Iain Stewart Macmillan
Linda McCartney was also on hand to take some extra shots, before traffic was stopped by a solitary policeman and MacMillan got on his stepladder to take six images of the group crossing the road. Perhaps the four most famous men in the world walked crossed the road three times. McCartney took the lead in choosing the fifth of the transparencies to be used, partly because it was the only one that showed the group walking in exact time together. In 2012, one of the five outtakes sold at auction for £16,000.
What else did The Beatles do that day?
That afternoon, The Beatles and George Martin were inside Abbey Road, rather than outside, to resume work in a session for the upcoming album, recording “Ending,” which would become “The End.” The studio time was booked for 2.30pm, so as Mark Lewisohn reported in his Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, to kill time after the photo session, Paul took John back to his Cavendish Avenue house, George Harrison went with Mal Evans to London Zoo, and Ringo Starr went shopping. The Abbey Road album would be released seven weeks after the photo shoot, as The Beatles’ recording story came towards an end”.
Prior to moving on to features that deal with conspiracy theories and symbolic references in the cover shoot, American Songwriter highlighted an immortal photo. For a band who were known for their incredible album covers, Abbey Road stands out on top. It is a mesmerising image that will endure for generations to come. Maybe this feeling that they are striding away from Abbey Road and their lives together. Or they are confidently walking into the studio to record. There is that sense of importance about the photo by Iain Stewart Macmillan:
“Macmillan reportedly only had about 15 minutes to get the shot after The Beatles walked out onto Abbey Road. (The famous road was the location of EMI Studios, now Abbey Road Studios, where The Beatles recorded some of their music in Studio Two of the building.) The final photo was taken from up high on a stepladder.
Additionally, the album cover for Abbey Road remains the only original cover to completely omit the actual album title or band name. “I insisted we didn’t need to write the band’s name on the cover,” Kosh explained in a previous interview with BBC. “They were the most famous band in the world after all.”
What you might’ve missed
While the Abbey Road album artwork is immediately recognizable, there are a few details that might’ve evaded the average eye.
For one, did you notice that only McCartney is barefoot and out of step? Or that Harrison is the only Beatle donning a jean outfit instead of a Tommy Nutter-designed suit? Whether you did or not, the details are there, adding little intricacies to a photo that captured the personality and success of The Beatles.
Oh, and one more thing, the license plate on the white Volkswagen Beetle (LMW 281F)? It was repeatedly stolen after the album was released. Now, what kind of fan would do that? We would never dream of doing such a thing…”.
As whack and insane as conspiracy theorists are, they exist. For decades, they have been over-analysing events and spouting nonsense. Unfortunately, the cover to Abbey Road was not immune to crackpot theories. It is interesting to entertain them for the sake of this feature, as sadly, there were some who did believe Paul McCartney was dead. In fact, almost as much has been written about conspiracy theories around the cover shoot as a celebration of the shot and the beauty of it. This Biography feature from 2020 explores theories around the rumour McCartney had died:
“Ask your friends to name the biggest hoax of 1969 and you might hear the "Paul Is Dead" rumor. For much of the late 1960s, hearsay about the Beatles had been building up until the strange meme hit newspapers everywhere: that Paul McCartney fatally crashed his Aston Martin in 1966 and for years had been replaced by an impostor. Conspiracists based their claim on a car accident report involving one of McCartney’s cars. They also note years’ worth of clues found in song lyrics and on album covers ranging from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band to the Magic Mystery Tour.
The speculation over McCartney’s demise was at an all-time high when the band’s Abbey Road album cover was later released in September 1969. For many, the cover may simply show the band harmlessly walking across London’s Abbey Road, but for some Beatlemaniacs, the imagery was a kooky dissertation in morbid symbolism. Was it a grand conspiracy or an elaborate marketing scheme? Here are eight symbols pointed out over the years in no particular order of truthiness:
It’s a funeral procession
That’s what theorists likened to the photo of the band crossing the North London Street. They point out that John Lennon’s white suit symbolized the color of mourning in some Eastern religions while Ringo Starr is donned the more traditional black. What they neglect to point out, however, is that George Harrison is wearing denim — the color of mourning in Canada.
McCartney's cigarette in his non-dominant hand
Paul held his cigarette in his right hand, even though he is a lefty.
McCartney’s feet are bare
Why? It’s a reminder, theorists say, that in some cultures the dead are buried without their shoes.
The license plate
In the background we see a Volkswagen Beetle with the plate "LMW 28IF" Conspiracists claim this to mean that McCartney would be 28 if he were alive. (Nevermind the fact that he would actually have been 27 if the rumor were true.)
The police van
Parked on the side of the road is a black police van, which is said to symbolize authorities who kept silent about McCartney's fatal fender-bender.
The girl in the blue dress
On the night of McCartney’s supposed car accident, he was believed to have been driving with a fan named Rita. Theorists say the girl in the dress featured on the back cover was meant to be her, fleeing from the car crash.
Connect the dots
Also on the back cover are a series of dots. Join some of them together and you can make the number three — the number of surviving Beatles.
Broken Beatles sign
On the back cover, we see the band’s name written in tiles on a wall and there’s a crack running through it. Of all the symbols, this one turned out to be the most meaningful, and sad. Although the release of Abbey Road was followed with ample evidence that McCartney was alive and well, what the public didn’t know was that the Beatles had secretly broken up. Abbey Road would be the band’s penultimate studio album, and the group would call it quits only a year later”.
I am going to end with a Classic Rock. Although it was a magical day in North London in 1969, instead of there being this unanimous celebration of the cover photo for Abbey Road, many espoused macabre theories. It is a shame that it almost overshadows all the brilliance of the photo. How eye-catching and sense-altering it is:
“In keeping with the pencil sketch that Paul McCartney had given to photographer Iain Macmillan, the cover of The Beatles' classic Abbey Road simply shows the four musicians walking across the zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios in North London.
The famous cover shot was one of six taken by Macmillan at 10am on August 8, 1969. As a policeman held up the traffic, the photographer had just 10 minutes to balance on a stepladder and get the shots. The result was striking and iconic. But few could have imagined the reaction it got.
Shortly before the release of the Abbey Road album, an American newspaper ran a story that claimed Paul McCartney had died in a car accident in 1966, and that the current ‘Paul’ was actually a lookalike called William Campbell. The rumours gathered pace and when Abbey Road arrived that October, its sleeve was pronounced by conspiracy theorists as final proof of Macca’s demise.
Inevitably, the ‘clues’ were somewhat tenuous, McCartney was out of step with his bandmates; his eyes were closed, and he wasn’t wearing shoes (like a buried body); he held a cigarette in his right hand (despite being left-handed); over his shoulder was a Volkswagen with a number plate interpreted as ‘28IF’ (ie McCartney would have been 28 if he lived; although actually he would have been 27).
The order in which the four Beatles were arranged was also deemed significant. John Lennon, bearded and dressed in white, represented Jesus. Ringo Starr, in a sober black suit, was the undertaker. George Harrison’s jeans and denim shirt made him the gravedigger.
Of course, McCartney has always dismissed these clues as nonsense. “We were wearing ordinary clothes,” he once protested. “I was barefoot because it was a hot day. The Volkswagen just happened to be there.”
McCartney’s supposed ‘death’ is old news these days, of course, but the Abbey Road sleeve continues to make headlines. In 2003, US poster companies sparked controversy by air-brushing Macca’s cigarette out of the image”.
On 8th August, it will be fifty-five years since that remarkable photograph by Iain Stewart Macmillan was taken. I love the outtakes of it. What was actually captured and used for Abbey Road is the greatest album cover ever. So brilliant and timeless in its seeming simplicity. I hope that the anniversary will compel people not only to discover more about the album cover shoot for Abbey Road. Also listen to the album itself. Perhaps the greatest album from The Beatles, it has a fittingly outstanding cover. Although some would argue against the fact it is the best album cover ever, to me it will…
ALWAYS be the best.