Immortal beloved

For photographer Tom Murray, 'a day in the life' turned into the stuff of legend

By Newt Briggs

It was a typical summer Sunday in late '60s London when Tom Murray--then an apprentice at the London Sunday Times--threw his Nikon F camera and two rolls of Kodak Ektachrome color film into his red Jaguar coupe and headed off for a photo shoot with renowned British war photographer Don McCullin. McCullin had been retained by a local pop group for a day of press and promotional photography, and he had enlisted Murray as a driver and general assistant. McCullin had also advised him to bring along a camera because "he might get some nice snaps," but he never mentioned the exact subject of the shoot.

"Don went inside while I parked the car," Murray says. "When I was walking up to the house, I heard someone playing `Lady Madonna,' and I said, `Oh, someone's playing a Beatles tune.' Then I poked my head in, and I went, `Oh shit.' It was Paul McCartney. Over in the corner were George and Ringo, yacking away, and across the room were John and Yoko. So I looked at Don, and I said, `Is this the band?' He said, `Oh yeah, I didn't tell you?'"

For the next few hours, the group zipped around London, shooting photos in the studio and at four outdoor locations--Old Street Underground Station, St. Pancras Old Church and Gardens, Paul's backyard greenhouse and Wrapping Pier alongside the Thames River. Paul was wearing a pink suit, John a fur coat, George a pair of orange- and gray-striped pants and Ringo a yellow tuxedo shirt. A year removed from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and six months from the landmark debut of the self-titled double LP that would forever be knows as "The White Album," they were, as Murray says, "the most famous four in the world."

"With celebrities, the trick is to get them to let their guard down for that split second," Murray says. "The great thing was, we really had a ball. Even Yoko was nice to me."

Due to the limitations of his gear, Murray could only shoot photos outside, where the daylight complemented the slow speed of his film. Luckily, it was the perfect afternoon for outdoor photography--what Murray describes as "Kodak cloudy bright." And the band was in a remarkably playful mood, mugging by the docks, loitering in the garden and jostling on the roof of the station. In one photo--since titled "Coming Apart"--Paul appears to be slipping off the rooftop as John reaches out to pull him back. With Paul's right foot kicked comically into the air and Ringo forming an unlikely anchor for the group, the picture has the spontaneous levity of a Three Stooges still. But as Murray tells it, Paul actually lost his footing and came unsettlingly close to tumbling to his doom.

"It was a big drop," says Murray. "He would have been very dead."

Murray shot the picture anyway--only later realizing how close Paul had come to becoming the dead man immortalized on the Abbey Road cover. "It's like a road crash," he says. "You either photograph it, or you stop and stare at it. If you're really good, you photograph it, and then you go help."

Another striking photo depicts the band hovering over John Lennon's lifeless body. Twelve years before John was actually gunned down by Mark David Chapman in front of the Dakota Apartments in New York City, the photo is a chilling vision of future violence. In a second, less morbid photo, George is wearing Lennon's signature round spectacles and smirking at his bandmate's simulated demise.

"They were very like their songs," says Murray. "George was very, very quiet, but he also penned some great stuff. I mean, `My Sweet Lord' is played all over the place. And Ringo, he's got that earthy voice that's so real and so fantastic. And clearly, John and Paul were the daftest of the group. They sparked off of each other the entire time."

By the end of the day, Murray had shot about 60 pictures, from which he culled 23 serviceable negatives. Since the photos were not intended for publication, he brought them home and stowed them in a drawer, where they languished for the next dozen years. In fact, he only thought to pull them out when John Lennon was murdered. As Murray recalls, "I sent to London to get them out of the drawer, but Time magazine said the one of John lying on the ground was too spooky for the cover."

Murray took them out again in 1993, when project Angel Food, an L.A.-based AIDS charity, approached him about contributing a few prints to a celebrity auction. After the photo of John lying dead sold for $7,800, Murray's lawyer insisted that he have the negatives valued. She packed them off to Christie's and later informed Murray that they were worth $100,000. Each.

"There are lots of silly things in the pictures that a non-photographer wouldn't notice," he says. "In the ones by the river, there's a big clump of red flowers to the right. I kept them in because I liked the fact that they were there."

Three of Murray's dockside photos are now part of the permanent collection at the Museum of London. And all 23 will be on display at the Art of Music Galleries inside the Aladdin and the Fashion Show Mall from Sept. 18-Oct. 31. Fab Four fanatics can even purchase signed, limited-edition prints of the photos--of which only 185 have been struck. The prices range from $2,000 to $2,500, and they will be the last prints made from Murray's collection.

"I reckon there are three great monuments in pop music history," says Murray, who will appear at gallery openings on Friday at the Aladdin and Saturday at the Fashion Show. "Elvis is the King, the Beatles were the most famous four in the world and Michael Jackson made the most brilliant videos. That covers almost 50 years."