The Way We Were
50 years ago, St John’s Wood played host to a scene more important than any silver hammer and more colourful than an octopus’ garden
Abbey Road, London, 8 August 1969
On Friday 8 August, 1969, Iain Macmillan took a half dozen shots of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr on the zebra crossing outside the EMI studios at Abbey Road in St John’s Wood. McCartney had developed the shoot’s original concept, and the session commenced at 11.35am, to avoid Beatles fans.
The photographer positioned a stepladder in the middle of Abbey Road and had just 10 minutes to complete his assignment. Lennon subsequently mused ‘ We’re meant to be recording, not posing for Beatle pictures – that’s what we were thinking’. Later that day work continued on The End, I Want You (She’s So Heavy) and Oh! Darling.
The fifth photograph was finally selected for the cover of the last album recorded by Beatles. Abbey Road did not bear the name of the group, for by then they genuinely merited the term ‘iconic’. Meanwhile conspiracy theorists enthusiastically claimed that the image was further proof that Paul had died in an accident on the M1 in November 1966. Did not John’s white outfit denote a preacher, George’s denims a
gravedigger and Ringo’s black suit a mourner? As for ‘Fake Paul’ (allegedly one William Campbell, a look-a-like), his bare feet represented a corpse and the numberplate on the VW Beetle, LMW 281F, told the world that Linda McCartney was Widowed and Paul would have been 28 ‘if’ he had lived. The fact that Paul was born in 1942 did not impede such drivel so let us depart turn to a certain London Metropolitan Police Morris J4.
The ‘Black Maria’ was used by the two officers to hold up the traffic – one further down the road and the other behind Macmillan. The van does not appear in early shots and the first has a Mercedes-Benz ‘Fintail’ leaving the studio car park on the left of the frame and a Vauxhall Victor FC on the opposite side of the road. An Austin FX4 taxi approaches the crossing in picture number three and an RT doubledecker in picture four. The Morris would feature in the fifth image and it became the world’s most famous J4 (aside from the ‘Get in the back of the van!’ one in Withnail and I).
When BMC launched the ‘new style in local delivery’ noone at Cowley or Longbridge could have envisaged that nine years later it would be associated with any form of popular music. Indeed, the J4 was the polar opposite of any form of glamour as it was the archetypal light commercial ‘ box on wheels’ – a vehicle employed by market gardeners, builders and as a grocery delivery van.
And despite being no more than two years old, SYO 724F is a reminder of an older world. Some of the parked cars bear reflective numberplates and on the right is a Ford Escort estate, launched in March of 1968. But the design and ethos of the J4 hark back to 1960, when ‘The Silver Beetles’ (John, Paul, George, Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe) made their debut at the Indra Club in Hamburg. Ironically, their transport to Germany was the J4’s stablemate, the Austin J2.
Rather more important than crackpot theories concerning allegedly deceased bass guitarists is the LP released on 26 September 1969. The cover depicts the group walking away from the studio after seven years that changed popular culture. And the gulf between the quasi-skiffle sound of Love Me Do, and the symphonic rock medley that makes up the B-side of Abbey Road can be measured in aeons.