Mike's Travel Snaps

Abbey Road The zebra crossing across Abbey Road at its intersection with Grove End Road is perhaps one of the most famous rock & roll tourist destinations in the world. Certainly one of the most unlikely--people traveling halfway across the world to walk across a street? But it's said that every daylight hour of every day since the Abbey Road album was released by The Beatles on September 26, 1969 (October 1st in the U.S.), people do	Click on the above image to see a larger version.
indeed stride across this intersection not to get to a where, but to get to a when. All these fans are whisking themselves back to August 8, 1969, at 11:35am when photographer Iain Macmillan, perched precariously on a stepladder in the roadway, snapped the shutter of his Hasselblad camera six times to correspond with the six times four uniquely clad men walked back and forth along the pedestrian crossing.
Abbey Road Here's Abbey Road today. Sorry, I wan't going out into the center of the road to get the proper angle. People have been hit by cars doing that. It's a very busy road. My friend Paul (not McCartney), with whom I went to a few pubs on May 10th, told me he used to drive on Abbey Road on his commute and the tourist-caused delays were extremely frustrating (especially when whole busloads of Beatles-fans are walking across the intersection and taking snapshots).	Click on the above image to see a larger version.
Abbey Road Another view of Abbey Road, this one taken from a traffic island in the middle of the three-way intersection between Abbey road and Grove End Road. On the extreme right center of the photo, you can see the graffiti-covered Abbey Road street sign shown above. In front of it are two Beatles fans from Scotland who asked me to take their picture acouple of minutes after I took this picture (I did; of course, they provided their own camera).	Click on the above image to see a larger version.
Abbey Road This is it. The studios where it all happened. Nearly all of the entire official output of The Beatles was recorded here. It's staggering to think of how much these four walls and roof contained the creative genesis of a huge sea-change in pop culture. And yet, seeing the building first-hand one might almost walk by without a second thought. Gone are the crowds of devoted fans (mostly young women) who used to congregate on the sidewalk here hoping to catch a glimpse of Paul or a brief conversation with George or a wave from Ringo.	Click on the above image to see a larger version.
Instead, there's a steady stream of passers-by who linger for a few minutes, walk purposefully across the crosswalk (and maybe back again), take a few pictures, and then depart. But just a glance at the facade evokes so much history in the minds of fans! Just several notable events sprang to my mind. First was the night of Tuesday, March 21, 1967. While recording a vocal overdub for "Getting Better" for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, John Lennon began feeling ill. Producer George Martin took him uip to the studio roof for a breath of fresh air, oblivious that the source of John's "illness" was actually the ingestion of LSD. Paul and George Harrison (fully aware of John's state) brought him back down from the roof, knowing that there was no railing protecting John from a drop to the pavement. A couple of months later in 1967, The Beatles were shown live around the world in Studio One here performing (and recording) "All You Need Is Love" for a special television broadcast. While they performed, a who's who of music sat on the studio floor and looked on: Mick Jagger, Keith Richard, Eric Clapton, Keith Moon, Graham Nash, and others. And another remarkable event took place at a session here on February 4, 1968. On this date, The Beatles began recording John's new composition "Across the Universe." John and Paul decided that the recording needed falsetto harmony parts sung by female singers, but it was a Sunday evening and not a likely time to successfully cold-call and book background singers. So Paul strolled out to the very sidewalk from which I took this picture to see the fans who congregated here practically 'round the clock. He auditioned several of them on the spot, then selected 16-year-old Lizzie Bravo from Brazil and Londoner Gayleen Pease (age 17), and brought them inside the sacred recording sanctum of Studio Three to become the only fans ever to contribute to a Beatles track. They sang the "nothing's gonna change my world" part. Their version is the one on the Past Masters, Vol. 2 CD. If you're a Beatles fan, you absolutely have to check out the Abbey Road Studios website. They have a zebra crossing webcam, 360° images of each history-filled studio, and you can even leave some "virtual graffiti" on the studio's wall.
Paul's Cavendish Home In the Fall of 1965, Paul moved into new digs just a brief walk from the Abbey Road studios here at 7 Cavendish Avenue (if you look on the linked map, you'll see that Paul's house is just a brief walk north, then a left on Circus Road, a right onto Grove End Road, and one block north you're on Abbey Road by the studios). You really can't tell anything from the outside of the house, and certainly Paul doesn't spend much time here these days (although he is, according to reports, still the owner), but	Click on the above image to see a larger version.
Paul really used to give this place a "lived-in" look back in the day. According to the biography McCartney by Chris Salewicz, EMI engineer Norman "Normal" Smith visited Paul at Cavendish once and reported, "This is a bit of a dump.... [W]e went into the main lounge where...[there was] a screen on which to show films that was supposed to come down from the ceiling--except that it got stuck halfway down, and was all cock-eyed. And there was muck and filth all over this really nice house. The garden was a complete mess, not helped at all by his Old English sheepdog, Martha, who was s****ing and p***ing everywhere." McCartney even did some recording here. Around Christmas 1969, Paul had a Studer 4-track recorder installed at his home, and he began recording what would become his debut solo album, the underrated McCartney.
Marylebone Rail Station This is the place where the Fab Four shot their rail departure and arrival in A Hard Day's Night--you know, the scene in the beginning where Paul is reading a newspaper with a fake beard and mustache.	Click on the above image to see a larger version.
Boston Place Boston Place is a non-descript little alley on the eastern side of the Marylebone Rail Station, but it has special significance for Beatles fans. It's the place where The Beatles are running from fans in the opening of A Hard Day's Night (George, as you may recall, inadvertantly ad libbed a stumble and fall, injuring himself).	Click on the above image to see a larger version.
Boston Place Another shot of Boston Place, a little further north along the street.	Click on the above image to see a larger version.
3 Savile Row Number 3, Savile Row was the site of Apple Records' offices in the late '60s. While The Beatles were planning a live concert that was to close their documentary project Get Back (later to become known as Let It Be), they couldn't decide on a suitable location, so they just decided to run up to the roof of Apple and perform there. This is the building that housed Apple, and the site of the famous rooftop concert that so upset the local businessmen (as was shown in the film). The performance took place on January 30, 1969, running through the following set list:	Click on the above image to see a larger version.
"Get Back" (rehearsal) "Get Back" "Don't Let Me Down" "I've Got a Feeling" "One After 909" "Dig a Pony" "God Save the Queen" "I've Got a Feeling" (another version) "Don't Let Me Down" (another version) "Get Back" (another version; this time performed with police waiting to shut the performance down)
Palladium This is the London Palladium, the self-styled "home of the stars." Here's where the word Beatlemania was coined. It was at a Beatles performance on October 13, 1963 that the screaming hordes of adoring fans made the Fleet Street press realize that the Beatles were something out of the ordinary. The word "Beatlemania" hit the streets the following day in the morning editions. As you can see in the photo, there's currently a production of a musical based on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in the theater.	Click on the above image to see a larger version.