The Beatles at Abbey Road, 1967 - 'Smoke' - 25x17"

On Thursday March 30th 1967 Frank Herrmann was despatched to Abbey Road Studios to cover a story on recording techniques for the Sunday Times newspaper. It was understood that Beatles manager Brian Epstein gave the Sunday Times access to the studios and the world's most famous band in the hope of broadening their appeal to an even wider, slightly older audience.

In fact the article that made it onto the Spectrum column in the Sunday Times' April 2nd edition was a story about the emerging trend for independence of record producers and their fight for more money. The article explained how George Martin had received only the union minimum of £15 for his work orchestrating Eleanor Rigby. It went on to show how the money was divided for one of the million selling Beatles LP's and how unfair to the artists this was.

From two rolls of film shot that day and out of many brilliant images, only one appeared very small from Herrmann's shoot in the 2nd April paper and that was a picture of John Lennon and George Martin sitting at the mixing desk, neither of them looking into camera. The images would sit undisturbed in Herrmann's archive for the next 30 years.

March 30th 1967 turned out to be a historic day in the Beatles calendar as following the recording session photographed here by Herrmann, they made their way to Michael Cooper's Flood Street studio to be photographed for one of the most famous album covers of all time, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

All prints are embossed with the photographers stamp, numbered and signed by the photographer Frank Herrmann in pencil on lower right margin.

Printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm fine art paper. This acid- and lignin-free classic meets the most exacting requirements for age resistance and is specially designed for FineArt applications. Whether it is used for FineArt photography or art reproductions, the ideal combination of structure, print quality and weight makes Photo Rag® one of the most versatile FineArt papers.

All works are sold unframed.

©Frank Herrmann