The Beatles Era
As we come to remember George Harrison 20 years after he died, Peter Eijgenhuijsen looks at the cover to With The Beatles.
A friend of mine, a hard-core Beatles fan, came up with the idea of The Beatles Era when George died in 2001, this month twenty years ago. My friend was on a business trip to the United States, when he saw, in one of the offices he visited, a newspaper clipping on the wall. It showed just a picture of the cover of their second album With the Beatles with the left side made black. Only Paul and Ringo were looking at him, with serious faces, as if they were aware of their inevitable erasure.
It was then, that he realized that we were entering a new phase, that nothing would be the same ever again. It was then that he got the inspiration for his theory that we all live in The Beatles Era. An Era that can be divided in five periods: Before the Beatles, The Beatles Years, The Solo Years, The Reduced Solo Years, the period we currently live in, and the last and fifth period After the Beatles.
Everything Has a Meaning
One day, when I visited him, he showed me the impact of that moment with the album cover of With the Beatles. It was scary. The black and white picture, with from left to right John, George, Paul, and Ringo. When I covered the left side to get the effect of the newspaper picture, I understood that the effect must have been very powerful. “Of course,” my friend said, “we do not know how the period The Reduced Solo Years will end, but the order of the individual Beatles on the album cover does not look insignificant to me.” “Everything on the cover of Beatles albums, has a meaning,” I said. “Intentionally or unintentionally.”
Inspired by this story, I used the theory of The Beatles Era – A Quest for the Secret of The Beatles to unravel the secret of the Beatles.
Get Peter’s book, The Beatles Era now
