Ran across the above image on Pinterest today.
Seems a bit off, doesn’t it? Here’s what they were reaching for.
The website the Pin linked to didn’t offer any information beyond the headline, “Abbey Road Album Cover Outtakes.” You’d think there be a word or two about the photographer, etc.
But no. In this increasingly image-oriented world, too often we only get the pictures.
But I went and found this info elsewhere:
Iain Macmillan was a freelance photographer and a friend to John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He used a Hasselblad camera with a 50mm wide-angle lens, aperture f22, at 1/500 seconds.
Prior to the shoot, Paul McCartney had sketched his ideas for the cover, to which Macmillan added a more detailed illustration….
A policeman held up the traffic as Macmillan, from a stepladder positioned in the middle of the road, took six shots as the group walked across the zebra crossing just outside the studio.
The Beatles crossed the road a number of times while Macmillan photographed them. 8 August was a hot day in north London, and for four of the six photographs McCartney walked barefoot; for the other two he wore sandals.
Shortly after the shoot, McCartney studied the transparencies and chose the fifth one for the album cover. It was the only one when all four Beatles were walking in time. It also satisfied The Beatles’ desire for the world to see them walking away from the studios they had spent so much of the last seven years inside….
Of course, we are left to guess whether that’s accurate. But it sounds right. Notice how Paul was driving everything? By the end, he was the only one interested in doing things together as Beatles…
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Have you heard the reconstituted Black Album, the best of the ex-Beatles?
http://ht.ly/AtTLQ
I had heard that Paul was wearing sandals but took them off because it was hot. I’d not heard that they wanted to be walking away from the studio. It does seem believable. I’ve been there and I remember, but otherwise, I wonder how you would necessarily know the direction they were walking was away from the studio.
Whats interesting to me is that they apparently did put some fore thought into symbolism in this picture though it is not at all the forethought and symbolism that people thought was there, since, after all, Paul continues to remain not dead.
Neat info. Believe it or not I ran into Iain Macmillan sitting at the bar at AW Shucks In Charleston a few years back. He autographed the back of my teeshirt.