6 Biggest Beatles Mysteries
2. Who Is The Man On Abbey Road?
Of the many things that The Beatles innovated in modern popular music, one they perhaps don't get enough credit for is their advances in album artwork. From their sophomore effort, With The Beatles, featuring their seminally half-shadowed faces, to the later psychedelic extravagance of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover, the group never failed to bring the artwork to the forefront of the art.
However, perhaps the most iconic of the Beatles' album covers is that of the 1969 masterpiece Abbey Road. The photograph of the four members walking along the zebra crossing outside the studio the album is named after has gone on to enter music folklore.
Though much of the fan-sleuthing at the time was dedicated to whether the arrangement of the picture contained any clues relating to the conspiracy that McCartney had died and been replaced by a lookalike, more recent research has unearthed another question.
Who is the man in the background of the famous artwork?
According to most reports, the man unknowingly featured in the image was Paul Cole, an American tourist who found himself walking on Abbey Road after deciding not to go into a nearby museum with his wife. Cole would later recall that he thought the group looked like a "bunch of kooks" due to McCartney being barefoot.
However, the mystery may not be solved. A fan blog makes a number of great points as to why Cole may not have been the man featured in the image and that, in fact, several people have recognised themselves in the background of the famous artwork over the years.
With Cole's passing in 2008, it is likely that the definitive truth of who is featured in the photo will never be uncovered.