Rare photo from filming "Penny Lane"

Filming the horse riding scenes for "Penny Lane".

As you may know, some of the scenes of the Beatles horse riding in the Penny Lane music video was filmed in Stratford, London - around a street called Angel Lane, February 5, 1967.

When they weren't filming, they used the nearby pub, The Salway Arms as HQ, the pub was located at 31, Angel Lane. Here's a photo you might not have seen before, of the Beatles with the landlord and his family. We apologise for the poor quality of the photo, as it is a still from a YouTube video of Mark Lewisohn holding a lecture in Iceland in November 2015.

The Beatles at Salway Arms.

Even though the video was uploaded in December 2015, no one seemed to have gone to the trouble of capturing the image of this photo until March this year. After that, you may have seen it on Facebook, on Twitter or over at our neighbourhood blog, Meet The Beatles For Real. Expect to see a better version of the photo when the next volume of Lewisohn's Beatles biography is published (Oh, glorious day!).

There were two pubs in the area, and the other pub was called "Two Puddings". Outside the Two Puddings was a sign which read "The greatest pub in the world". After The Beatles had visited the Salway Arms, the landlord there put a big notice up saying "We might not be the greatest pub in the world, but we had the greatest (pop) group in the world drinking in here!" Part of Angel Lane was demolished ca 1970 and the Salway Arms was in that part. Stratford Shopping Centre now occupies some of the area.

The authenticity of the photo has been questioned, some have said it looks like a photoshopped image, and someone seems to have misidentified the location as a hotel the Beatles stayed in while filming in Sevenoaks. This is not so, the image is as bad as it is because it's just a YouTube capture, and "the Beatles never stayed in Sevenoaks, only me at Brights Hotel," says Tony Bramwell - who produced both the music video for "Penny Lane" as well as the one for "Strawberry Fields Forever".


Links:

• Mark Lewisohn's talk in Iceland, where the photo was first shown
• The Landlord of Two Pudding recalls
• Meet The Beatles For Real
• The Beatles Bible: Filming Penny Lane