PEOPLE Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the Beatles' Abbey Road with Special Edition Issue
1969. Before the year was out, we proved you could put a man on the moon. You could gather half a million people together in the name of peace and music. But you could not, for love nor money, keep together four young men who were outgrowing the band that had changed the culture forever.
The last year of the 1960s was as busy for the Beatles as it was tumultuous. Within 12 months they would record two albums: Abbey Road — celebrating the 50th anniversary of its U.S. release in October, and Let it Be, with an accompanying film that documented both the fighting and the genius present in the studio. Individually, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison pursued separate lives. Two of them married; one became a father; all of them readied their post-Beatles solo debuts. But before they went their own ways, they began the year with an electrifying live set — their first since 1966 — on a London rooftop.
Source: By Saleah Blancaflor /People Magazine
