Paul McCartney almost hit by a car while recreating ‘Abbey Road’ cover
Few album covers in the history of popular music are as iconic as The Beatles‘ Abbey Road. It’s as simple as it is ingenious: no album title, no band name, and no additional information. Just a straightforward picture featuring the four band members crossing the street in front of their recording studio on a picturesque day in August of 1969.
Part of the beauty of Abbey Road is that anybody on the street can recreate the cover. The crosswalk in front of Abbey Road Studios is a public area, and every year, hundreds of thousands of fans congregate on the street to try and get their own shot of the cover.
For the new documentary If These Walls Could Sing, filmmaker Mary McCartney, daughter of former Beatle Paul McCartney, asked her father to recreate the shot. It wasn’t the first time that McCartney had paid homage to the Abbey Road cover – his 1993 album Paul is Live parodies the shot – but it was a rare time when McCartney physically returned to the zebra walkway.
Apparently, that recreation shot nearly cost McCartney his life. “The bit where the car nearly ran him over on the zebra crossing, that was so funny,” McCartney told S Magazine. “As we were leaving [the studio], I said, ‘I’ll film you [on the crossing],’ and he went over and this car totally didn’t stop for him.”
Imagine driving by Abbey Road on your daily commute and having to deal with the endless parade of idiots trying to get their precious souvenir photo. Then imagine this is the day you decide to give an old man a piece of your mind… and it turns out to be Paul McCartney.
If These Walls Could Sing is available now with a Disney+ subscription.
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