The Photography

Now These Days Are Gone

Michael Peto's photos capture The Beatles on the set of Help! at Twickenham Studios on Salisbury Plain, enjoying dinner at their Salisbury hotel, relaxing over tea and biscuits with their Help! co-stars, in the recording studio, and facing press the day their MBEs were announced to the world.

Some of the most remarkable images are those of Ringo, his former wife Maureen and their dog Tiger, taken at their home in Montagu Square, London, while Maureen was heavily pregnant with the couple's first son (Zak Starkey).

Maureen was a Cavern regular who'd met Ringo when he was with Rory Storm and The Hurricanes. The pair shared a mutual interest in hairdressing: Maureen was already working in a salon in Liverpool, and Ringo harboured dreams of opening a string of them if The Beatles' success supplied him with the finance.

George and John share bench space at the entrance to Twickenham Studios' viewing theatre, Friday, April 30, 1965. Twickenham, a slightly antiquated patch of Middlesex, became 'Beatles film central' during the Sixties, its inconspicuous location at the end of a row of terrace houses adding to its charm.

Ringo: 'Every day when there's a break in filming you get a chance to see rushes of the scenes they shot the day before.'
Paul: 'And that's hilarious because you get to see all the bits of the film where somebody mucked things up by laughing and forgetting their lines.'

Wherever The Beatles went, their travelling caravan - both musical and creative - was never far behind. Producer George Martin's presence was often a reliable sounding board for McCartney's compositions in the making.

Within the congested highway of success during 1965, without doubt the musical pinnacle for Paul McCartney was Yesterday. According to McCartney it started as a dream. It began to take shape during the filming of Help! but was too late to be considered for the film's soundtrack, although just where it could have been placed among the mayhem on screen is anybody's guess.

This is where things started to get complicated. One scene in Help! found the boys cavorting around 'Buckingham Palace'. Despite the fact the group was soon to be embraced by Royalty in the Queen's birthday honours list, there was not a whelk's chance in a supernova of them using the property to film in.

Instead Cliveden House - the 19th century stately home based just outside London, and still humming from the romps of the Profumo scandal - was used as a 'double'. Still, some scenes couldn't be done without causing serious damage to the building, so the set designers at Twickenham erected a mock 'palace' of their own.

Whereas A Hard Day's Night was universally received as a great movie, Help! palled to some degree because the immediacy and frenetic nature of Beatlemania was absent for most of the picture. But the making of the film was nonetheless a joyous time for cast and crew, and even for the embattled director on occasions.

Richard Lester: 'They knew themselves. They didn't often remember to bring their scripts with them: they got left in other people's cars or taxis or nightclubs. But apart from that technical problem they were very relaxed about what they were doing.'

The day of the MBE announcement, The Beatles were due at Twickenham to view a rough cut of Help! Lennon, fighting his conscience over the award, decided to make his own tacit protestation by lying in bed.

The clock ticking, an irate Brian Epstein personally arrived at Lennon's Weybridge manor to retrieve the errant Beatle so he could make the necessary noises to the press, albeit 40 minutes late, hair still a mess.


The Beatles' imminent investiture dominated the media's attention. As was becoming the norm, The Beatles had managed to stir a sleeping nation and re-invent themselves yet again in the process: from working-class heroes to society darlings, their metamorphosis was occuring on almost a daily basis.

John: 'I enjoyed filming it, you know. I'm sort of satisfied with it, but I'm not smug about it. It'll do... Because we're not capable actors to make it any better than that.'

The Author

Now These Days Are Gone

Colin Jones gives us an insight into Michael Peto in his Foreword:

'He would tell me such things as, 'Do not look at photography for inspiration, If you get stuck, cool off in art gallery.' 'Take pictures with your brain, not your eyes.' 'A good photograph is the one you can walk around like a piece of sculpture.' I now realise, many years later, that he was using photography as art. Michael was never interested in the competitive side of photography, winning awards or joining prestigious agencies: he absolutely hated all that.

'The Beatles photographs were never used. Michael had obviously spent quite a bit of time with the band, but as subject matter it certainly wasn't his forte. He got great portraits though because he was always very polite, very gentle and he would flatter people. He also knew when to leave, which is a skill many photographers don't have. I know that he would be surprised to see this book of his Beatles photographs. Let's hope that one day the world will see some of his greatest photographs that meant so much to him.'