Paperback photo

In around four weeks, the UK paperback edition of You Never Give Me Your Money will be in the shops - price £9.99, ideal Christmas present for all the family, etc. etc.

The photograph on the front cover (top right, at the top of this blog) comes from the peerless collection of Sean O'Mahony, publisher of The Beatles Book monthly magazine between 1963 and 1969, and then from 1976 to 2001. (He was also the founder and publisher for more than 20 years of Record Collector, the magazine I edited for much of that period.)

The picture - which appeared on the back of the UK hardback, but wasn't featured in the US edition - doesn't fit the timeframe of the book, which is why I didn't think to suggest it as the cover shot for the hardback. But (in comic style) it summarises the theme of the book, and the central rift between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, so well that in retrospect we perhaps should have used it on all the different editions.

As l9yal readers of The Beatles Book will alreadly have recognised, the photo was taken on the streets of Notting Hill in West London, during the filming of A Hard Day's Night in spring 1964. Whether John and Paul were asked to adopt this pose by the photographer (Leslie Bryce) or O'Mahony, or whether it was their idea, we will never know. But neither man could ever have imagined that just five years later, the picture would symbolise the sorry state of the Lennon/McCartney relationship, and the fistfights would be for real.