Richard Jones was the first guide to offer Beatles London walks. He first conducted his acclaimed tour around Beatles London in 1988 and was even featured on the cover of The Sunday Times Magazine standing outside the former Beatles Apple London headquarters in Saville Row with a group of intrepid Beatles fans.
One of the points that was raised time and again when Richard first blazed the trail with his Beatles London walk was “I thought the Beatles were from Liverpool?”
There was no arguing with that as the Beatles did indeed hail from Liverpool! But it was in London that they sought fame, it was in London that they recorded their records, and it was on the London social scene that they were most active. In short London was the place to be and it was in London that John, Paul, George and Ringo were transformed from four lads from Liverpool into an international phenomenon.
Richard remembers the time 21 years ago, as he mapped out the routes for his Beatles London walks, when he set off to research the various areas. “I found it strangely spooky,” he recalls. “It’s one thing to talk about historical figures from the distant past, such as Shakespeare and Dickens, but this was living history and the events I was covering were events I could just about recall from my childhood.”
These included the meeting between John and Yoko, which took place in an art gallery situated in Mason’s Yard just off Duke Street St James’s. “I found that site particularly moving as, standing there late one Sunday afternoon, I could just picture John Lennon climbing out of his psychedelically painted Rolls Royce and meeting with the woman who was to change his life.”
Some say that it was John meeting Yoko that ultimately led to the demise of the Beatles but Richard disagrees. “I think they would have gone their separate ways anyway. John and Paul and reached the summit of their creativity and I can’t help feeling that Yoko just became a convenient scapegoat for fans to blame for the break up of the fab four.”
Richard recently returned to his Beatles London walk for a film project that will soon be seeing the light of day. “I went to film on the Abbey Road crossing and outside the Abbey Road Studios” he says. “It was amazing that on a crisp winter’s afternoon in December 2008 Beatles fans from all over the world were making the journey to walk back and forth over that crossing.”
For the film project Richard interviewed several of those fans - some of whose parents weren’t even born when the Beatles broke up - as to what it is about the crossing that inspired them to traipse across London, walk over the crossing and stand outside the Abbey Road Studios, where some of them even paused write messages to their heroes on the white washed wall. “Most of them replied that they just wanted to because they were great Beatles fans and the cover of the Abbey Road album held an allure that they couldn’t explain.”
The Abbey Road album cover is the most iconic album cover ever and almost every hour of every day Beatles fans from all over the world are to be found striding over the crossing on which John, Paul, George and Ringo were photographed for the cover.
“If you think about it” says Richard “It’s just four men walking over a pedestrian crossing. But it really has filtered in to the international consciousness and has gripped the public imagination for almost 30 years.”
Indeed, such is the desire of people to look at the crossing that there is even a camera outside the Abbey Road Studios that sends out a live web feed so that people from all over the world can watch what’s happening on the crossing 24 hours a day. “I remember when I began the Beatles London walks,” says Richard “I found crossing that crossing to be quite an emotional experience.”
The irony is that the Beatles themselves took little effort over that album cover. The Abbey Road album was originally going to be called Everest, after the brand of cigarettes smoked by the Beatles sound engineer. A suggestion was made that the Beatles be taken to the summitt of Mount Everest to signify their position at the summitt of rock music.
But John Lennon told them what to do with that particular idea. So they went onto Abbey Road outside the studios, had themselves photographed walking back and forth over the crossing six times, and just chose one of the photographs.
They obviously didn’t care what photograph went on the cover, they just wanted to get it done as quickly and as effortlessly as possible.
If only they could have known that, in their eagerness to get the shoot over with as quickly as possible, they would turn a very ordinary London crossing into a major tourist attraction in its own right, and thereafter tens of thousands of people a year would follow in their footsteps and stride over it in adoration of four lads from Liverpool who really did change the world.
