
He’s also on the ground with Paul McCartney and Wings rehearsing for their 1975 tour, as well as with Paul and Ringo on the set of the film Give My Regards to Broad Street.īut the run of photos of the most interest as those he took at Ringo Starr’s 1981 wedding to Barbara Bach, where O’Neill was both a guest and tasked with taking photos to provide to the world. He also visits a post-breakup George Harrison on the grounds of his estate, looking very guru-esque. O’Neill is there on opening night of the ill-fated Apple Boutique, where readers learn only apple juice was served as they did not have a liquor license.


“They were magic on film, and what we were doing behind those cameras was to propel them from a club band to number-one recording artists.”īook cover A drummer himself, O’Neill was closest to Ringo Starr, and there are shots of him imitating Winston Churchill with a big cigar and flashing a peace sign right outside the Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street in the early days of Beatlemania.
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“The Beatles knew how to work the camera-my camera, as well as the television cameras,” O’Neill, who died in 2019, is quoted in the book’s intro. Maybe there was something to this beat music-and teenagers with money to purchase newspapers and magazines-after all. When his session pictures were chosen to appear on the front page, the issue quickly sold out. O’Neill and his paper were on to something for sure. It’s not surprising that it’s this image which graces the cover of The Beatles by Terry O’Neill: The Definitive Collection(256 pp., $39.99, Weldon Owen/Simon & Schuster). It’s also one of O’Neill’s most famous of the many, many images he took of the group both together and apart. Looking at the photo today, it’s compelling to think what would lay ahead for these four young lads, and how they and their music would affect the world.

Since they didn’t want to carry Ringo’s entire drum kit out, he’s got sticks and a cymbal in his hand. Some band who called themselves the Beatles.ĭuring a break while recording their new single “She Loves You” and B-side “I’ll Get You” O’Neill took John, Paul, George and Ringo into the back yard, clicking off some quick shots of the group posing with their respective instruments. He already knew a lot of the bands and club scene in London, but this was a group who’d come down from Liverpool. Photo by Terry O'Neill So when his editor at the Daily Sketch asked him to head over to EMI Studios on Abbey Road to take some shots of a pop group who he felt might have something going on, O’Neill did.
