The group spent their time at Twickenham running through a number of new compositions by Lennon, McCartney and Harrison. Many hours were spent jamming various covers of rock and roll numbers and standards from other genres, as well as some instrumentals and even versions of some old Beatles songs. As a result of the unpleasant working environment at Twickenham and the group members’ personal differences, the rehearsals quickly disintegrated into acrimony. George Harrison was increasingly resentful, while he was treated respectfully by musical colleagues such as Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton, within the Beatles his songs were either derided or ignored (at one point during the rehearsals, Lennon responded to Harrison demonstrating his new song “I Me Mine” to him by stating “We’re a rock and roll band – run along, boy” and later chose to waltz with Ono rather than join the other three Beatles as they arranged and rehearsed the song). With the band seemingly unable to generate much enthusiasm or focus their attention, their playing was largely ragged and unprofessional, not helped by the fact that they were severely out of practice at playing as a live ensemble. McCartney tried to impose some form of order and encourage his bandmates, but his attempts to hold the band together and rally spirits were seen by the others as controlling and patronising.

Matters came to a head on 6 January, when Harrison had a heated argument with McCartney during a rehearsal of “Two of Us”, which later became one of the most famous sequences in the Let It Be film. What is not shown in the film is another, allegedly much more severe argument Harrison had with Lennon on 10 January. Harrison had become fed up with Lennon’s creative and communicative disengagement from the band and the two had a blazing row. According to journalist Michael Housego of The Daily Sketch, this descended into violence with Harrison and Lennon allegedly throwing punches at each other, though in a 16 January interview for the Daily Express, Harrison said, “There was no punch-up. We just fell out.” After lunch, Harrison announced that he was “leaving the band now” and told the others “see you round the clubs”. He promptly walked out, getting in his car and instead of returning home to his wife Pattie at his Esher home Kinfauns, he drove straight to his parents’ home in Speke, Liverpool.

After Harrison’s departure that afternoon, the three remaining Beatles attempted to continue the rehearsal. As a practical solution to the problem of Harrison’s absence, Lennon suggested hiring Eric Clapton to replace Harrison, possibly as a full time member of the Beatles if Harrison stuck with his decision to quit the band permanently. McCartney and Starr vetoed this suggestion, with the former arguing that the group could not truly be considered as the Beatles without all four traditional members of the band.

The cover designer was Apple Records creative director Kosh. The cover photograph was taken by photographer Iain Macmillan. Macmillan was given only ten minutes around 11:30 that morning to take the photo on a zebra crossing on Abbey Road. That cover photograph has since become one of the most famous and most imitated album covers in recording history. In the photograph, the Beatles walk across the street single file from left to right, with Lennon leading, followed by Starr, McCartney, and Harrison. McCartney is bare-footed and out of step with the other three. The photograph also played a prominent part in the “Paul is dead” urban legend in late 1969. With the exception of Harrison the group are wearing suits designed by Tommy Nutter. The man standing on the pavement in the background is Paul Cole (c. 1911 – 13 February 2008), an American tourist unaware he had been photographed until he saw the album cover months later. The zebra crossing today remains a popular destination for Beatles fans. There is even a webcam featuring it.

The Abbey Road cover is the only Beatles album cover of their original UK albums to have neither the group’s name or an album title visible (in America, Hey Jude also has a cover like that).

The Beetle

The Volkswagen Beetle (LMW 281F) parked next to the zebra crossing belonged to one of the people living in the apartment across from the recording studio. After the album came out, the number plate was stolen repeatedly from the car. In 1986, the car was sold at auction for £2,530 and is currently on display at the Autostadt museum in Wolfsburg, Germany.

The white VW Beetle which, according to some proponents of the “Paul Is Dead” conspiracy theory, was parked there intentionally as a rebus. Those subscribing to the “Paul is Dead” theory believed the procession on this cover was supposed to reflect a preacher (Lennon), an undertaker (Starr), a corpse (McCartney – hence he is the only one barefoot) and a gravedigger (Harrison). The number plate on the VW Beetle also plays into the “Paul is Dead” theory. Part of the registration number reads “281F” which some have read as “28 IF”, meaning that Paul would have been 28 if he had lived.

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The Abbey Road Zebra Crossing as it appears today.

The film featured reverse film effects, stop motion animation, jump-cuts from daytime to night-time, and The Beatles playing and later pouring paint over an upright piano. The video for “Strawberry Fields Forever”, along with that of “Penny Lane”, was selected by New York’s MoMA as two of the most influential music videos in the late 1960s. Both were originally broadcast in the US on 25 February 1967, on the variety show The Hollywood Palace, with actor Van Johnson as host. A cartoon based on the song was the final episode produced for The Beatles animated television series.

Starr purchased his home on July 24, 1965 after bandmates John Lennon and George Harrison had bought houses. Sunny Heights, along with its large house and grounds, boasted its own bar, The Flying Cow, where Starr played host. The previous owner had been Mr. H.E.Pope, who changed the name of the house from Haleakala to Sunny Heights II when he bought it in 1948; the name came from the house in Amberley that the Pope family had evacuated to during the Second World War.

Manager Brian Epstein had hoped each Beatle would buy adjacent properties, with a central one for himself. While Starr and Lennon (who purchased Kenwood, a mock-Tudor house nearby) did buy places close to each other on the same estate, and it comforted each to know the other could be found close by, Harrison broke herd by getting a house (Kinfauns) on another nearby estate in Esher, while Paul McCartney bided his time, and bought a house on Cavendish Avenue in St. John’s Wood, a short walk from EMI’s Abbey Road recording studios.

Maureen Cox married Starr in 1965, joining him at Sunny Heights and giving birth to their three children (Zak, Jason and Lee Starkey). While this was their primary residence, Starr also kept a London apartment in Montagu Square, which was often lent out to guests.

As the Beatles began to break up, Lennon sold Kenwood, purchasing Tittenhurst Park in 1969, while Harrison bought Friar Park early in 1970. Ringo in 1968 purchased Brookfield, in Elstead, from actor Peter Sellers. When Lennon (with second wife Yoko Ono) moved to New York City in 1971, Starr bought Tittenhurst Park, moving in with his family, who lived there until 1988.

View of Ringo Star's former home, Sunny Heights

(Source – Wikipedia)

The last Beatles photo session took place at Tittenhurst Park on 22 August 1969, and the photos were used for the front and back covers of their Hey Jude album (a collection of single sides) early in 1970. Also during that year, and in the wake of the Beatles’ breakup, Lennon built his own recording studio, dubbed Ascot Sound Studios, in the estate grounds, where he and Ono recorded their next several albums. The matching cover photos of their twin Plastic Ono Band albums were taken at Tittenhurst by the pair, using an Instamatic camera, and portions of the Imagine movie-length video – which included selections from the Fly album – were also filmed in the grounds.

Ascot Sound Studios

Ascot Sound Studios was a tape-based analog recording studio, built by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1970, on the grounds of Tittenhurst Park.

Lennon built the studio, which featured eight recording tracks on one-inch open-reel tape and a sixteen-channel mixing console, so that he and wife/collaborator Ono could record without the inconvenience of having to book studio time at Abbey Road or another location. They could also avoid negative pressure from EMI and Apple Records staffers, and members of the British public, who disdained Ono’s avant-garde stylings and tried to persuade Lennon to make more “sellable” music, as he had with the now-defunct Beatles. (Chance encounters with other ex-Beatles were likewise avoided.) Technical personnel and outside musicians were summoned as required, kept on standby, or stayed at Lennon and Ono’s guest quarters (as they did for the Imagine and Fly sessions) if necessary, to make records that satisfied the two.

First to be recorded were the twin Plastic Ono Band albums (portions of which were also recorded at Abbey Road), released simultaneously in December 1970. (Lennon’s rose to #6 in the Billboard charts, while Ono’s – largely recorded in a single night of jamming with Lennon, Klaus Voormann on bass and Ringo Starr on drums – barely made the Top 200.) The following year brought Lennon’s best-selling Imagine, with Phil Spector as co-producer. George Harrison joined Lennon and Voormann at Ascot to play on several songs, including “How Do You Sleep?”, a song that criticised the odd ex-Beatle out, Paul McCartney. The album sessions were extensively filmed, and the footage appears in both the Imagine: John Lennon documentary and a separate documentary about the making of the album.

Recorded at the same time as Imagine was Yoko Ono’s album Fly (whose title song was the soundtrack to their movie of the same name), and these appear to be the last recordings the couple completed at the studio.

Source – Wikipedia.
Note – The Tittenhurst Park Blog has a number of articles on Lennon’s time at Tittenhurst Park.

During 1967, Harrison and Boyd painted the outside of the house in psychedelic patterns; a mural around the fireplace was created by design collective The Fool, who also painted several Beatles musical instruments and Harrison’s Mini.

Aside from Paul McCartney’s house at 7 Cavendish Avenue in St. John’s Wood, Kinfauns was probably the home the Beatles gathered at most, as it was only a short drive from the homes of John Lennon (Kenwood) and Ringo Starr (Sunny Heights). It was where Harrison, Lennon and their wives retreated during their first LSD experience in 1965, and in May 1968 it was where many of the demo recordings for the White Album were made, on Harrison’s Ampex four-track reel-to-reel tape recorder. (These demos have been released on various bootleg albums; seven of them also appear on The Beatles Anthology, Vol. 3.)

Harrison was the first Beatle to own or use a Moog Synthesizer, and he recorded “Under The Mersey Wall” with his Moog at Kinfauns; the track became one side of his Electronic Sound album, released in May 1969.

Kinfauns was where police arrested Boyd and Harrison in 1969, for hashish possession, as Lennon and Yoko Ono had been months earlier while staying at Ringo Starr’s Montagu Square apartment. (Both couples insisted the drugs found had been planted on the premises.)

After moving to Friar Park, Harrison sold Kinfauns; both houses were listed as assets of the Beatles’ company Apple Corps.

The site of Kinfauns lies within the historic garden walls of the adjacent Claremont Fan Court House, a 19th Century royal residence. Following a series of planning applications in the early 21st Century the bungalow was substantially demolished and replaced with a new two storey house.

View of George Harrison and Pattie Boyd's former home Kinfauns.

(Source – Wikipedia)

John Lennon, of The Beatles, bought Kenwood for £20,000 on July 15, 1964, on the advice of The Beatles’ accountants, Dr. Walter Strach, and James Isherwood. Lennon was resident from the summer of 1964, until the late spring of 1968. Film of the exterior of the house and the gate was included in an ITN programme called Reporting 66, in 1966. Parts of a home movie showing Lennon at Kenwood (1967) were featured in the film Imagine: John Lennon.

Kenwood is close to Sunny Heights, the former home of Ringo Starr, and a short drive from Kinfauns, George Harrison’s former home in Esher. In October 2006, Kenwood went back on the market, with an asking price of £5.95 million, and was sold in January 2007 for £5.8 million.

Read the full Wikipedia entry for Kenwood

The front gate as it is today, which replaced a sliding wooden door to keep out fans of The Beatles.

A fake helipad was constructed, and The Beatles were filmed running around and acting up. John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison were also filmed jumping from a wooden ladder held in place by an on-set electrician, with the cameraman situated at ground level.

A children’s playground was later built on the spot where the helipad was constructed. The shoot ended at 1pm, but Lennon had to leave early to attend a Foyle’s literary luncheon held in his honour.

The book was also transformed into a play, co-authored with Victor Spinetti (with Adrienne Kennedy), who directed, at the National Theatre, premièring on 18 June 1968, at the Old Vic.

Spinetti and Lennon appeared together in June 1968 on BBC2′s Release. During the interview, Spinetti said of the play, “it’s not really John’s childhood, it’s all of ours really, isn’t it John?” John Lennon, assuming a camp voice answered “It is, we’re all one Victor, we’re all one aren‘t we. I mean ‘what’s going on?’.” Spinetti said the play “is about the growing up of any of us; the things that helped us to be more aware.”

Lennon’s arrival at the premiere with Yoko Ono caused much fuss among the journalists and reporters present. Although the pair had first appeared in public some weeks earlier, the news of Lennon’s marriage ending was still largely unknown.

Also at the premiere of the play were George and Pattie Harrison, and Ringo Starr and his wife Maureen. Paul McCartney was absent, choosing instead to attend the opening of another play, starring his fiancée Jane Asher.