| EXCLUSIVE |
One for the road ... Beatle Paul McCartney with a cigarette in his hand on the original 1969 album cover
By SIMON WHEELER
THE classic Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover showing the band on a zebra crossing has been altered – to remove the cigarette in Paul McCartney’s hand.
The original image shows a barefoot Macca third in line holding his ciggie.
The 1969 photo has been a poster best-seller since it was shot near Abbey Road studios in North London, where the Fab Four recorded most of their music.
But companies including US giant Allposters asked for the cigarette to be removed by computer wizardry to make it more politically correct.
Posters and merchandise items have already changed. Even the cover of the Abbey Road CD could be updated when it is re-issued.
An American source close to the two surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, said last night: “There has been a lot of pressure from the anti-smoking lobby. Much of the merchandise now appears without the cigarette.
“It may seem like political correctness gone mad but there is a strong feeling that smoking shouldn’t be depicted as cool. There is a movement to remove the cigarette from the actual album sleeve if it is re-issued.”
The move, 14 months after guitarist George Harrison died of cancer, will please anti-smoking campaigners.
Amanda Sandford, from anti-smoking group Ash, said: “We are happy to support this action.
“People who see their idols holding cigarettes are more likely to copy them and start smoking themselves.”
But Simon Clark, of pro-smoking group Forest, hit back: “This is pathetic. What next? We will have to remove pipes and cigars from pictures of Sherlock Holmes and Winston Churchill. These people should stop trying to re-write history.
“If this has happened with McCartney’s blessing, it’s strange coming from a man famous for smoking other substances as well.”
Sir Paul, 60, was arrested in Japan in 1980 when cannabis was found in his luggage.
The singer, who had flown in from America, spent ten days in jail after officials found about half a pound of the drug.
All the Beatles were heavy tobacco smokers during the Sixties and Seventies. Harrison blamed smoking for the cancer which killed him — aged 58 — in November 2001.
The Abbey Road shot is one of pop’s most controversial album covers. Myths grew up about what it meant after an earlier rumour claimed McCartney had died in a car crash and been replaced with a lookalike.
It was said the picture represented a funeral procession. John Lennon, wearing a white suit, symbolised a preacher while Starr and Harrison were coffin bearers. McCartney, shoeless and holding a cigarette, was the corpse.
A VW Beetle is pictured in the background with the number plate 28 IF — said to be how old McCartney would have been IF he had survived the “car crash”.
