Description

The most imitated photograph in rock was made in ten minutes. At 11:35 on the morning of 8 August 1969, Iain Macmillan climbed a stepladder in the middle of Abbey Road, outside EMI's studios in north London, while a policeman held back the traffic behind him. The four Beatles walked back and forth over the zebra crossing as he shot six frames. Paul McCartney later went through all six with a magnifying glass before choosing the fifth for the sleeve.

The location was a matter of convenience. The album's working title had been Everest, after the cigarette brand favoured by engineer Geoff Emerick, but nobody wanted to fly to the Himalayas for a photo session, so the band walked out of the front door instead. Apple's creative director John Kosh then made a bold decision: the front carries no band name and no title. It is the only original UK Beatles sleeve without either, a sign of how little the group needed to announce itself by 1969.

The ordinary details took on lives of their own. A white Volkswagen Beetle belonging to a local resident sits parked at the left of the frame, and its number plate, LMW 281F, was stolen repeatedly after release; the car itself was auctioned in 1986. Within weeks, American students had turned the picture into evidence for the "Paul is dead" rumour, reading the line of walkers as a funeral procession with a barefoot McCartney as the corpse. The rumour helped sales in the US, and the crossing has been a pilgrimage site ever since.

Credit

Cover photograph by Iain Macmillan; cover design by John Kosh.