The day the music died
It’s 50 years since the last performance of The Beatles. MARION McMULLEN looks at how some of the biggest music stars took their final bows
THERE was no warning and everyone was taken by surprise when The Beatles suddenly turned up on the roof of the Apple Records office building in London one lunchtime and started playing.
The Fab Four serenaded neighbouring office workers and passers-by with a 42-minute set that included hits like Get Back and Don’t Let Me Down... before they were shut down by the police.
John Lennon told the crowd: “I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we passed the audition.”
The event on January 30, 1969, proved to be the final time The Beatles ever played together and the rooftop performance at Savile Row was captured for director Michael Lindsey-Hogg’s documentary
Let It Be.
Paul McCartney later said: “At the end of the Beatles, I really was done for the first time in my life. Until then, I really was a kind of cocky sod.”
George Harrison said: “I just got so fed up with the bad vibes. I didn’t care if it was The Beatles: I was getting out.”
Queen singer Freddie Mercury’s musical farewell came in front of an even bigger audience – more than 120,000 people at Knebworth Park on August 9, 1986.
The concert was part of a 26-date European tour – known as The Magic Tour and followed the release of the band’s album It’s A Kind Of Magic.
The band arrived by helicopter and played a two-hour set that included One Vision, We Are The Champions and Bohemian Rhapsody and ended with a performance of God Save The Queen.
No-one knew it would be Freddie’s final performance with Queen, but he later discovered he was HIV positive and died in 1991.
It was the beginning of the end for the Sex Pistols when they headed to America in 1978. The chaotic 12-day tour ended in San Francisco at the Winterland Ballroom on January 14.
The gig attracted mildly curious punters who came along simply to see what all the fuss was about surrounding the British punk band.
The group’s final number was a cover version of No Fun by The Stooges and singer Johnny Rotten promptly walked off the stage afterwards asking the audience “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
It was the last time the original line-up ever played together live as bassist Sid Vicious died the following year of a drug overdose.
No-one at Brixton Academy in London on December 12, 1986, realised they were seeing the final live performance of The Smiths.
The concert was a charity show for Artists Against Apartheid and included songs like Is It Really So Strange? and Bigmouth Strikes Again. The group later returned to the stage for an encore of The Queen Is Dead.
The show had originally been planned a month earlier, but was postponed after guitarist Johnny Marr was involved in a serious car accident.
But the cracks in the band were starting to show and Marr left a few months after the Brixton date, never to return.
He once said: “My experience tells me, unfortunately, that so many people ask the question about The Smiths reforming without really caring about the answer. They just really want to ask the question.”
However, chances of an actual reunion seem as remote as ever and singer Morrissey has said: “Let lying dogs sleep is something I always say in reference to The Smiths.”
American band Nirvana performed for the last time on March 1, 1994 – a month before the death of lead singer Kurt Cobain. They played at airport hanger venue Terminal One at the old Munich Airport before more than 3,000 people. Conditions were far from ideal and the sound cut out during a performance of Come As You Are.
Cobain was suffering from bronchitis and was losing his voice so the second night’s concert was cancelled. The final song they ever performed together was HeartShaped Box.
The turbulent relationship between brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher came to a head 10 years ago following a V Festival performance on August 22 at Weston Park in Stafford.
The band had been on the road for a year as part of their Dig Your Soul tour and played Wonderwall and Champagne Supernova before ending their set with a cover version of The Beatles song, I Am The Walrus.
But their second night at the festival was cancelled and Noel later announced he was quitting the band claiming he could not work with younger brother Liam “a day longer”.
Both have gone their separate ways since then with Noel finding success with his own band High Flying Birds and Liam fronting Beady Eye before embarking on a solo career.