Abbey Road

I guess it’s easier for an album cover to become iconic when the band itself has changed the course of music history. Such is the case with Abbey Road by the Beatles. A seemingly effortless photo shoot involved the band stepping out of the studio and crossing the street. Simple and spontaneous. And the stuff of legend.

A Beetle for the Beatles

The eagle-eyed among Beatles listeners will likely notice a Volkswagen Beetle parked right behind George Harrison on the cover of Abbey Road. If you want to get into details, it’s a white 1968 model, license plate LMW 281F. One would think this a prop for a clever album cover photo shoot, but the story is far more mundane than what seems obvious.

Paul Is Dead(ish)

Before we get into the details of the Beetle as part of the Beatles iconic photo, we ought to address the conspiracy theory in the room.

For 75% of forever, conspiracy theorists have remained convinced that Paul McCartney died back on November 9, 1966 in a car wreck—three years after he shot President Kennedy from the grassy knoll. Of course, in theory at least, he was replaced by a lookalike (and presumably sing-a-like) for the remainder of the Beatles (and his own solo) career.

You have to admit the data in favor of the “Paul is dead” story is near indisputable. At the end of the song Strawberry Fields Forever, a possibly drug-addled John Lennon mumbles something near unintelligible that might be loosely interpreted as “I buried Paul.” Or something.

And then there’s the Abbey Road funeral procession disguised as four guys crossing the street. On the cover shot, only Paul is barefoot, once again proving he’s not very alive.

The nail in Paul’s coffin though is the Beetle license plate. The LMW undoubtedly represents “Linda McCartney Weeps” while the “28” part of the tag number hints that Paul would have been 28 had he lived. Never mind the fact he was only 27 at the time, dead or alive.

Mount Everest Smokes

Abbey Road wasn’t always Abbey Road.

The band originally wanted to name this record Everest, in homage to their recording engineer’s (Geoff Emerick) favorite brand of cigarettes. There was even talk of flying out to the mountain of the same name for the cover photo shoot. Paul would have risked severe frostbite going barefoot for that one. Maybe that would have brought truth to the “Paul is dead” rumors.

The Easy Out

As it’s wont to do, laziness kicked in and the band decided to step outside the studio to snap the famous cover photo. It didn’t take long for the location of the picture, Abbey Road, to become the de facto title of the record.

As for the famous Beetle behind the Beatles? It just happened to be parked there at the time. No planning, no prop placement and nothing remotely intentional. The car belonged to a neighbor who lived several houses away.

Fame has its cost, however. As the album cover gained notoriety, the Beetle’s license plate was repeatedly stolen over the years. Word has it that the car now resides in a German museum.