Beatles photo shoot at the Serpentine, Hyde Park

On the day before the press party for the release of “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, the Beatles were in Hyde Park for a photo session with photographer Marvin Lichtner from Time Magazine. A photo from this shoot was published in the June 16, 1967, edition of Life Magazine.

Henry Grossman had taken some other photos of The Beatles during the recording of “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” on February 28, 1967, and on February 25, 1967, that were used to illustrate the same article.

Mal Evans, who had joined the band, also took some photos, which can be seen in The Beatles Monthly Book 49 (August 1967) and 50 (September 1967).

Furthermore, a German tourist happened to take the only known colour photos of this day. This is particularly significant since The Beatles were wearing colourful clothes on this day.

My dream has become reality. I met the Beatles and even talked to them. My friend and I went to London. As we walked into Hyde Park, we suddenly saw John, Paul, George and Ringo walking in front of us! The Beatles – all four of them – it really was them! They were dressed in bright clothes. John had a bright red jacket and light pink pants, a shirt with a colorful print, and a yellow scarf around his neck. George Harrison wore brown corduroy trousers and a saffron-yellow jacket with white fur trim. Paul McCartney wore black pants and a red jacket under a black cape, a blue shirt and a tie with a white and red pattern. The cape that Ringo wore was purple with black trim. His pants were black and his shirt was dark red with a pink pattern. All four of them looked great. The Beatles were very polite and even exchanged a few friendly words with us. We will never forget this meeting.

Konrad Wodausz – From BRAVO Magazine (translated from German to English)

From Meet the Beatles for Real: Hyde Park in Color, May 16, 2012:

Words cannot express how excited I am about these photos and this post. If you are a friend of the blog on Facebook, then you will know that I told you these were coming. Here they are, 1967 Hyde Park photos in colour, and there is a very interesting story behind them.

A fan named Konrad contacted me a couple of weeks ago asking me about the last photo, which I had posted quite a while ago. As usual with me and Beatles photos, I could not recall where I exactly had found this photo. Well… come to find out Konrad owns the copyright to this photo and the others you see here. Let me share with all of you what he shared with me.  

In 1967, Konrad had a classmate who visited London. While he was in London he happened upon the Beatles in Hyde Park doing a photo shoot (Many of which were taken by Mal Evans and appeared in the Aug and Sept 1967 issues of Beatle Book Monthly). This friend was not a Beatles fan, but took a few photos of the Beatles because of their fancy clothing. When he returned home to Germany, he showed the coloured photos to Konrad. Being a Beatles fan, Konrad offered to buy them (and the rights to them) off his pal. 

He saw a chance to have them in the German fan magazine, Bravo. They were interested in the photos and the story.  Although he told the magazine that he personally did not meet the Beatles, they wrote the article as if he did (this was a teen fan magazine in the 1960’s after all. It does make for a better story than the truth).  From there German fans saw the photos and started contacting him for copies and to be pen pals. And like so many other fan-taken photos of the time, he began trading the selling the photos with people from around the world.   

He does question if this classmate of his really did take these photos himself as he claimed; however it is a fact that he was in London during this time. And he had no interest in the Beatles or pop music, so why would he lie about it?  Regardless of all that, I do know that I have not seen coloured photos from this photo shoot in Hyde Park (besides the one of John), and they do look like “outtakes” from the official photos. 

Konrad graciously and kindly has allowed me to publish these on the blog.  I can’t thank him enough. 

Going further

• http://www.meetthebeatlesforreal.com/2012/05/hyde-park-in-color.html
• http://webgrafikk.com/blog/uncategorized/serpentine-hyde-park-may-18th-1967/

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