Although they broke up over fifty years ago, the Beatles remain Britain’s favourite pop group and have now become part of the tourist business in London. The group came from Liverpool and were originally called the Quarrymen after Quarry Bank High School which John Lennon, the group’s founder, attended. Iconic places that the Beatles sang about, such as Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields, are found in Liverpool 200 miles north of the capital.

Photo of The Beatles with Ed Sullivan in February 1964. Photo Credit: © Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Abbey Road: The Beatles’ Musical Home

The place in London that attracts most Beatles fans is Abbey Road, where the group recorded most (but not all) of their albums and singles. Although you cannot walk off the street to tour the studio, you can book and pay for a private tour in advance. You can also cross the road on the same pedestrian crossing used by the group for the cover photograph of their last and best-selling album which is called simply Abbey Road.

It was at this studio that the first Beatles album was recorded in February 1963. The producer was George Martin who had virtually no experience of pop music but was persuaded to take a chance on the group by their manager Brian Epstein. He enjoyed the Beatles’ Liverpudlian sense of humour and had saw that they had a raw talent, unlike the record company executive who told Epstein that ‘guitar groups are on the way out noMartin hired the studio and recorded the band’s first album there in just one day. It was named after the single Please, Please Me which Martin had correctly predicted would provide the group with their first number one hit. It also included the group’s first single Love Me Do which had entered the charts but not reached number one. Another twelve tracks make up the album, some but not all penned by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Main entrance at EMI Studios (now Abbey Road Studios, pictured 2007). Photo Credit: © Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The Legacy and Impact of the Beatles

By the time the group came to record the Abbey Road album, they were writing all their own songs and had been joined by guitarist George Harrison, who wrote Something for it. It is the second most covered Beatles song after the Paul McCartney penned Yesterday. Paul was becoming more important to the band and bought a house near the studio. George’s career as a singer-songwriter took off once the Beatles had broken up when he grew wings.

In British law, pedestrians have priority over cars which have to stop for them when they are walking across a pedestrian crossing, which is sometimes called a zebra crossing after the black and white stripes that can be seen on it. A policeman stopped traffic for ten minutes while the photographer Neil MacMillan took the picture that was on the cover of the album. A third to half a million people head to Abbey Road to recreate this picture every year.

Beatles fans who want a souvenir of their visit to London can be seen leaving St John’s Wood underground station. It is just a five to ten-minute walk to Abbey Road and the gift shop there does a brisk business. Winston Churchill’s wartime speeches were recorded for posterity at Abbey Road and bands who have used it include Pink Floyd and Oasis. Photographs of famous visitors and a historical timeline can be seen at the gift shop.

London Rock N Roll – Abbey Road. Photo Credit: ©Nigel Rundstrom.

Abbey Road studio was founded in 1931 and an early recording of Edward Elgar’s violin concerto was performed by an orchestra with the solo violin played by the young prodigy Yehudi Menuhin. It is Elgar’s name that is on the plaque on the outer wall of the studio. Menuhin recalls that he was not very interested in rehearsing with the orchestra. Once he was convinced they knew what to do, Elgar headed for the racecourse.

In the background of that famous photograph of the Beatles is parked a Volkswagen Beetle which can be seen parked in the road. This car was eventually acquired by VW at the cost of around $25,000 and was put on display in the Volkswagen museum in Wurzburg, Germany. It can be seen there standing near to that other famous Beetle car Herbie, which was featured in a 1969 Hollywood film The Love Bug and its various sequels.

Another famous photograph of the Beatles looking down the stairwell of the EMI building, which graced the cover of the group’s first album and was recreated for by photographer Angus McBean in 1969 cannot now be recreated as the EMI building in Manchester Square near Marble Arch was demolished in 1995 as the company was reorganised and eventually sold. The photographs can still be seen on the Red and Blue ‘Best of’ Beatles albums.

EMI missed a trick there as they could easily have charged Beatles fans £10 or more to reproduce McBean’s photographs at the original site where they were taken. Beatles fans instead go to Abbey Road to take their photographs for free. Many people write messages to band members on the wall of the studio, so much so that they have to be whitewashed over every three months or so. The gift shop, meanwhile, is still doing good business.