If you just plain can’t get enough of the Beatles and that mashup from a few days wasn’t enough, how about buying yourself a set of Russian nesting dolls of the Beatles? If I were to get one (or have one got for me) I’d want this one of the approximately Abbey Road era boys. I note that all sets, no matter the state of their hair and mutton chops, are invariantly in the order of outside-to-in Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starr. Is this the ranking of importance that Russians place on them? Not that I’d disagree with that, although some days I’d think about moving Harrison up to the 2 spot.
What I’d really want is a set of them from the concert on the roof. In the history of the band, that to me is the moment that has the whole story compressed into a few minues. Their love of music, their (waning) affection for each other, the inevitability of it all ending, every bit of that is in each of their faces as they play “Come Together”. That moment when Lennon tightens his coat around him, that gesture contains the beginning of the end. Any time I see any footage or even a still from that event, I get a twang of the heartstrings. Even when they parodied it on the Simpsons, I got the twang. All Camelot stories end with it falling apart, and all of them have that moment where the point of no return has been crossed. This was that moment for the Beatles.
