Terry O'Neill (1938-2019)
THE BEATLES IN THE BACKYARD OF ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS, 1963. Silver gelatin print, printed later, image size 380 x 585mm, signed and editioned '49/50' by the photographer in ink lower margin recto. Framed, frame size 682 x 925mm.

Terry O'Neill snapped this group portrait of the 'Fab Four' in the garden of Abbey Road Studios on 1 July, 1963, during the recording session for 'She Loves You', which would go on to become The Beatles' major hit single after the success of their album 'Please Please Me' earlier that year. Of his first meeting with The Beatles, he said, “I was asked to go down to Abbey Road Studios and take a few portraits of this new band. I didn’t know how to work with a group – but because I was a musician myself and the youngest on-staff by a decade – I was always the one they’d ask. I took the four young lads outside for better light. That portrait ran in the papers the next day and the paper sold out. That band became the biggest band in the world; The Beatles.”

Literature

O'Neill, T. The Beatles: Five Decades of Photographs, Welbeck, 2023, cover image.

ARR