Beatles’ unused Abbey Road photographs to be auctioned

There are only so many times you can interrupt traffic to walk over a busy London road to have your picture taken before you become a public nuisance – even if you are the Beatles.

Six, in fact, as shown by these rare photographs, one of which became one of the most famous album covers of all time.

In what is believed to be an auction first, the full set of six photographs of John, Paul, Ringo and George striding over Abbey Road is to be sold along with the picture of the street sign that was used on the back cover.

“They are incredibly rare,” said Sarah Wheeler, head of photography at Bloomsbury Auctions. “I’ve spoken to other music dealers and no one has been able to find a complete set on the market for at least 10 years.”

The shots were taken by the photographer Iain Macmillan, a friend of Lennon and Yoko Ono, on 8 August 1969. He had his Hasselblad, a stepladder and 10 minutes.

It was the fifth of the six shots that was chosen by McCartney for the album and it’s easy to see why as all four men are in step and nicely spaced.

Macmillan made a signed edition of 25 but most were sold individually, so having them all together as one set 46 years later is extremely exciting, said Wheeler.

As well as the six, Bloomsbury Auctions will be selling the back cover photograph, which Macmillan initially did not like; he was annoyed that a girl in a blue dress walked through his shot.

The collection will be sold at Bloomsbury’s photographs and photobooks sale on 21 November and has an estimate of £50,000-70,000.

Almost everything about the Abbey Road shoot has become famous, including the three decorators in the background and the white VW Beetle, which has ended up in the Volkswagen museum in Wolfsburg, Germany.

The album cover has inspired countless imitations and also helped to fuel a bizarre conspiracy theory that Paul McCartney was in fact dead and had been replaced by a body double.

There were secret messages in the cover, the theorists said – such as it having the air of a funeral procession and Paul was holding his cigarette in his right (wrong) hand.

The story is thought to be untrue.