Why was The Beatles last public performance on a rooftop?

For what was intended to be their final studio album, The Beatles decided to break with George Martin and the EMI/Abbey Road to approach to making records. They were open to new ideas - and with the characteristic abandon of the era went with one of the maddest proposed to them- a making-of-the-album documentary culminating in a live concert from Roman ruins in Tunisia.

“The Beatles were to start playing as the sun came up,” explained director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, “and you’d see crowds flocking towards them through the day.”

Within weeks, however, this Spinal Tap style project had to be abandoned. Not only were they not flying out to Tunisia, they were even refusing to go to Twickenham to rehearse.

This left the film without big finish or indeed any finish at all. And the one thing everyone agreed upon was that filming needed to end quickly.

Then someone suggested "Why don't we do the concert right here?"

So on the 30th of January 1969 the group - plus guest member Billy Preston - climbed onto a very windy rooftop of studios of the Apple Corps building.