THE BEATLES’ FINAL LIVE PERFORMANCE WAS CUT SHORT BY POLICE 57 YEARS AGO TODAY:
Even after their instruments were set up on the roof of Apple Corps, Lennon, McCartney, Starr, and Harrison almost didn’t go through with it.
The director [Michael Lindsay-Hogg] explained, “We planned to do it about 12:30 to get the lunchtime crowds. They didn’t agree to do it as a group until about 20 to 1:00. Paul wanted to do it, and George didn’t. Ringo would go either way. Then John said, ‘Oh [f***], let’s do it,’ and they went up and did it.”
Police were called after noise complaints came in from neighboring buildings surrounding the rooftop and clogged streets from the thousands who stopped to listen. Police officer Ray Dagg and other officers were forced to end what would turn out to be the last live performance by the world’s most famous band.
“We’ve had 30 complaints at West End Central in minutes,” former London Metropolitan Police officer Dagg said in a video clip. “Turn the PA off, and we’ll see what happens.”
Fifty years after the incident, in 2019, Dagg told The Times of London the event was “just work, and it’s blown up into all this. It’s ridiculous, I just don’t understand it.”
He continued, “At that time, I didn’t know that they would never play together again. At least there’s something on a film somewhere that will forever show that PC Ray Dagg shut down the Beatles.”
Additionally, Dagg told CTV that reflecting on the moment, he didn’t know if he actually would have arrested The Beatles. “The problem with it is that for the offenses they were committing, there was no power of arrest on private property. It has to be on public property.”
“So it would have meant arresting them on private property,” Dagg said. “Taking them outside, and then I’d have gotten into a lot of trouble if I turned up at the station with The Beatles in tow, wrongfully arrested.”
Would have been a great ending to the movie, though!
Earlier, from your humble narrator:
● The Beatles get Back in Peter Jackson’s New Three-Part Documentary.
● The Beatles’ get Back: The Long and Grinding Road.
● I Question the Premise: The Beatles: Get Back shows that deepfake tech isn’t always evil.