David Mamet and Abbey Road

I am the managing editor of a weekly newspaper in Eastern Ontario. My duties include writing a regular column. My column cannot be defined, really. Sometimes it's serious, sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's religious, sometimes it's nostalgic, sometimes it's even a bit offensive.

One of the things I enjoy is working David Mamet references into my column. I did it recently with my piece on Abbey Road. Here it is:

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Abbey Road gets very few jaywalkers.

That’s one of the things I noticed while watching webcam footage of the iconic London road.

For those of us who are completely ignorant of pop culture, the road is iconic because it was featured on the front cover of the 1969 Beatles album, which was named for the road. (If you’ve never seen it, look it up on Google images now or this column will make no sense.) I first became aware of the album when I was in Grade 9 and my English teacher, Mr. Jelinek - a huge Beatles fan - showed it to us. To me it was just a picture of four guys crossing the street but Mr. Jelinek insisted that it was much more than that. It was rife with symbolism. He pointed to a Volkswagen Beetle in the background whose license plate read LMW 28IF. “Paul McCartney was 28 when this picture was taken,"  he said. Actually, Paul would have been 27 but I’ll let it go at that.

Rock musicians might be notorious for planting hidden imagery in album covers but it’s doubtful that the Beatles had the time or the inclination to do that with Abbey Road. According to the BBC, photographer Iain Macmillan only had 10 minutes to take the shot. Abbey Road was a busy thoroughfare and the authorities weren’t too keen on having traffic diverted just so a rock and roll group could get its picture taken. Also, that car and its license plate weren’t planted at all. The car was owned by some poor dude who lived nearby. For years he had to deal with Beatles fans stealing his license plate. He later sold that car to an American collector for 2,500 British pounds. Apparently it still runs.

By the way, there’s actually five people shown on the front cover of Abbey Road - two of them are named Paul. There’s Paul McCartney and there’s Paul Cole, who can be seen standing on the sidewalk on the right side of the album. Mr. Cole, a salesman from Florida, just happened to be vacationing in London with his wife. His wife had wanted to go into a nearby museum and Mr. Cole had elected to stay outside. He happened to be in the right place at the right time when Mr. Macmillan’s camera went click. Mr. Cole had no idea what happened until much later, when he became something of a minor celebrity. When he died in 2008 at the age of 96, newspapers everywhere carried the story. I’m sure Mr. Cole lived a happy life but it must suck knowing that the most significant thing you’ve ever done was just stand there.

(Note: I tried to work in a funny reference to the Beatles song I saw her standing there but was  unable to do so. I hope this bracketed tangent brings a smile instead.)

The album Abbey Road was released in September of 1969 (Paul was still 27) and I guess that Beatles fans ate it up and thought it was fantastic and super. They also decided that the intersection - which features a zebra pattern and is located in the borough of Camden right outside the Abbey Road Studio - is holy ground. In December of 2010, English Heritage gave it Grade II Listed Building Status. I’m not sure what that means but you’re probably not allowed to go there in the middle of the night and tear it up with a jackhammer.

Somewhere along the line, some genius got the bright idea to install a webcam overlooking the crossing, which brings me back to my original point about the virtually nonexistent jaywalkers. It seems that everyone who crosses that street crosses at the crosswalk. I guess it’s because they know that crosswalk has the stuff of immortality in it and they’d like to walk where John Lennon trod. I’m a nominal Beatles fan but if I found myself at Abbey Road, I confess I’d probably want to cross it too. And take my picture. (To prove that I’m just as big a fanboy as the next person, I confess that I did drive down to a café in Vermont once so I could sit at the same table where Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Mamet once sat.)

If you watch the webcam for long, you’ll notice a lot of people getting their pictures taken. You can actually tell when it’s going to happen. A group of people gathers on one side of the road and then waits for a break in traffic. Then they rush onto the sidewalk and pose while their designated photographer snaps the pic. Sometimes cars approach the intersection and they usually wait patiently. I imagine that delays at good ole Abbey Road are just a part of London life.

With fan photos taken at the site every single day, it stands to reason that a few people are going to have some close encounters with traffic. In a 20th anniversary retrospective essay published in The Guardian in August of 1989, writer Tom McNichol tells the story of Arne, a vacationing Swedish newspaperman who was almost wiped out by a motorcyclist while trying to photograph his four companions. Thankfully the motorcyclist was not from Quebec. He would have run right over him.

So a word of advice to anyone planning on taking a picture at Abbey Road: Look both ways before you cross the street.

I’m just speaking words of wisdom. Let it be.