Over four weeks in 1969 a succession of cultural shocks – the moon landings, Manson murders, Woodstock and the Beatles’ walk across Abbey Road – ended the Sixties. But, at the time, we had no idea what we were living through
Sharon Tate in 1968: the Beatles’ press officer Derek Taylor described her murder as “pretty nasty” ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy
Around lunchtime on Friday 8 August 1969, as a policeman held up traffic, the four members of the Beatles crossed and re-crossed the zebra crossing outside the studio in St John’s Wood where they were making their latest and what would turn out to be their last album. The photographer, who had erected his ladder in the middle of the road, took just six exposures before they went back into the studio to complete it.
That same night, thousands of miles away, four other long-haired people, this time acting on the orders of a jailbird and would-be rock star called Charles Manson, descended on a luxury home in the Hollywood hills and butchered the five people they found there, the most famous of whom was the beautiful actress Sharon Tate.
Fifty years later those two events continue to reverberate, benignly or otherwise. People who weren’t even born when the Twin Towers came down in 2001, let alone when the Beatles were up and running, still make pilgrimages from all over the world to snap Instagram pictures on what is Britain’s only listed zebra crossing. Some may also go to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s well-timed new film set in Los Angeles against the background of the Charles Manson murders. The former doesn’t seem quaint nor the latter repellent. In a way, they’ve both turned out to be classic or, as the present prefers to put it, iconic.
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