Beatles FAQ

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 th...

Photo by  Serena Repice Lentini  on  Unsplash I'd like to be under the sea In an octopus's garden in the shade Abbey Road was not a happy working environment during the recording sessions for The White Album. Ringo, the least involved in the squabbling and backbiting, suffered the most from the emotional fall out: I couldn't take it any more. There was no magic and the relationships were terrible. I'd come to a bad spot in life. It could have been paranoia, but I just didn't feel good – I felt like an outsider. Ringo, Anthology Things came to a head during  a recording session for  Back in the USSR on the 22nd of August, 1968. The precise trigger point is unknown but at some point Ringo snapped. After telling John and Paul he was leaving the group, he walked out of the studio. At first, Ringo's departure seemed to confirm the underlying reason for it. The others assumed that their drummer's 'resignation' was not seriously intended. The...

According to the delightful May Pang (John's girlfriend during his 'lost weekend') they did: