The Beatles

[Juniper]

21 minutes ago, Boss said:

My answer to anyone that says Ringo is a bad drummer or John Lennon is a bad guitar player is quite simply: "They were in The Beatles". That's all you need to say. 

Anyone that calls Ringo a bad drummer doesn’t know what they are on about. 
 

It’s quite an easy way of picking out who knows what they are talking about, when it comes to drumming. 

[Barrington Womble]

5 minutes ago, torahboy said:

Spot on about Lndsey Hogg: made a really exhaustive, well shot document, but was just a shit editor. He'd captured a pulsating, insightful and mostly joyous process and, incredibly, reduced it to the sombre, practically lifeless experience that was 'Let It Be'. Yet he should be credited with catching the images and we should thank him for that.

to be fair to MLH, the thing is firstly that movie needed to fit the requirements of the beatles contract and deliver a movie - which then had to coincide with the album release. that story couldn't be told in 90 mins, which is why we got what we got and probably delivered the narrative everyone wanted in the wake of the impending (well impending while he was making the movie) break up - who'd have bought into this film had it not shown the miserable story it did in 1970? 

 

Jackson has shown us what he has, because he was set no limits, it was a passion project and he spent 4 years delivering this masterpiece. And who knows, if it wasn't for covid, we may not have exactly what we've seen. There's no doubt this is an amazing documentary and there's no doubt to me both film makers played their part. 

[s(k)aturation]

38 minutes ago, Juniper said:

Anyone that calls Ringo a bad drummer doesn’t know what they are on about. 
 

It’s quite an easy way of picking out who knows what they are talking about, when it comes to drumming. 

 

I actually don't give a fuck what anyone says about Ringo or the Beatles.

 

I have been enjoying him and them with my own ears and brain for the better part of 50 years now.

 

The people that want to give us drumming critiques and stuff, good for them.

 

[Juniper]

6 minutes ago, s(k)aturation said:

 

I actually don't give a fuck what anyone says about Ringo or the Beatles.

 

I have been enjoying him and them with my own ears and brain for the better part of 50 years now.

 

The people that want to give us drumming critiques and stuff, good for them.

 

You’d be surprised how often Ringo comes up in drumming communities though. 

[Bobby Hundreds]

Just finished it, absolutely loved it. Strangely made me feel closer to the music ive been listening too my whole life and even connect them to home, family and friends more. Really seen the Liverpool in the lads, for the behemoths they are it was nice to see.

[Sugar Ape]

Didn’t realise Billy Preston was quite that young. This would make him 16 when he met them in Hamburg backing Little Richard. 
 

 

[Bobby Hundreds]

They all seemed much older Neil Aspinall 27 he looked about 40 odd so did mal Evans.

[Jimmy Hills Chin]

On 09/12/2021 at 11:01, Barrington Womble said:

I've just finished this now, having held back to rooftop for when I knew I wouldn't be disturbed. Fucking amazing. I will certainly watch this again and again. 

 

But it has to be said, even in 1969, the police were utter fucking bellends. The look of utter contempt from one of those PCs when he was on the roof watching the Beatles, I wanted to punch the cunt in the face! Got to laugh at macca though once he realised they were getting shutdown, gives them no time to interrupt and off he goes on the next one. 

I only found out recently that Paul had to intervene to stop one of the plods arresting Mal Evans. Imagine being so utterly fucking joyless that you couldn’t enjoy being at a live Beatles show but instead had to live up to the stereotype copper. He must have been a joy to live with.

[Barrington Womble]

48 minutes ago, Jimmy Hills Chin said:

I only found out recently that Paul had to intervene to stop one of the plods arresting Mal Evans. Imagine being so utterly fucking joyless that you couldn’t enjoy being at a live Beatles show but instead had to live up to the stereotype copper. He must have been a joy to live with.

I read somewhere the other day, the cunt was only 19 too. Imagine that. 19 in 1969 and too much of a twat to realise what he was watching. I even understand he probably had to shut it down, but there was just no need to be the complete fucking bellend he was. 

[Barrington Womble]

On 10/12/2021 at 18:52, Sugar Ape said:

Didn’t realise Billy Preston was quite that young. This would make him 16 when he met them in Hamburg backing Little Richard. 
 

 

Fucking hell. Mal Evans and George Martin must have lived hard lives! 

[Sugar Ape]

5 hours ago, Barrington Womble said:

I read somewhere the other day, the cunt was only 19 too. Imagine that. 19 in 1969 and too much of a twat to realise what he was watching. I even understand he probably had to shut it down, but there was just no need to be the complete fucking bellend he was. 

He did an interview in The Times the other day. 
 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ray-dagg-i-was-the-19-year-old-police-officer-who-silenced-the-beatles-mmxl9f2s7
 

Ray Dagg: I was the 19-year-old police officer who silenced the Beatles. 

 

Ray Dagg is not a name associated with iconic cultural moments, but it ought to be. As a Metropolitan police constable he ended the Beatles’ final live performance, on a London roof.

 

Now he is the unlikely star of a new wave of Beatlemania, powered by the release of a documentary of the band working on Let It Be, their last studio album to be released.

 

Dagg’s walk-on role on the roof at 3 Savile Row, as a polite but exasperated 19-year-old police officer trying to restore tranquillity to a London street known more for its tailoring than its tunes, has turned him into a cult figure. He has been inundated with friend requests on Facebook, interviewers from Brazil want to speak to him and an American Reddit member painted him in watercolour.

 

“It was just work, and it’s blown up into all this,” Dagg, 72, said. “It’s ridiculous, I just don’t understand it.”

 

Speaking publicly for the first time since the concert on January 30, 1969, Dagg said that he had no regrets at being responsible for shutting down the Beatles’ last gig but admitted that his threats to arrest the band and their manager for playing music too loudly was a “bluff”.

 

The gig was the Beatles’ first public performance since August 1966 in San Francisco — at the tail end of Beatlemania, when fans could see their heroes but not hear them over the screaming.

 

The band played songs from their as-yet-unreleased record including Get Back, I’ve Got A Feeling, One After 909 and Dig A Pony. It is broadcast for the first time in full for 40 minutes at the end of Get Back, Peter Jackson’s eight-hour Disney+ documentary series, which is based on more than 60 hours of footage recorded by Michael Lindsay-Hogg for his 1970 documentary, Let It Be.

 

Responding to complaints from neighbours about the noise, Dagg convinced the Beatles’ road manager, Mal Evans, to stop the gig. How does it feel to be known as the man who forced the Beatles to pull the plug for the last time?

 

“Well, at that time, I didn’t know that they would never play together again,” he said. “At least there’s something on a film somewhere that will for ever show that PC Ray Dagg shut down the Beatles.

 

“If that’s my lasting image of life, if that’s what people remember me for, that’s not bad. Thousands, millions of people don’t get remembered at all.”

 

After clocking on at West End Central police station in Savile Row at lunchtime, Dagg was sent to stop the gig that had caused gridlock in the West End. He entered the building, headquarters of the Beatles’ Apple record label, with a colleague, PC Ray Shayler.

 

Lindsay-Hogg’s team hid a camera behind a two-way mirror in the lobby of the building to film the consequences of the disturbance but Dagg insisted that he was not fooled by the ruse — especially when he saw a microphone hidden in a flowerpot. “I thought there’s something going on here,” he said. “I said to Shayler that we had both better be on our best behaviour because we’re being filmed.”

 

The police constables were stalled by Apple staff as the band continued to play and it took almost ten minutes for Evans to meet the officers in the lobby. Dagg said that the noise was causing a breach of the peace.

 

“I’m not going to be difficult about this,” he told Evans. “All right, so you’ve got to record but this isn’t necessary is it? We’ve had 30 complaints at West End Central within minutes. It’s got to go down, otherwise there will be some arrests. I’m not threatening you, I’m telling you what’s going to happen.”
 

Dagg now says that while the “phone was going bonkers” at the station, “I don’t know where I got 30 from. I probably made it up.”

 

Evans returned ten minutes later and took the officers to the roof. Paul McCartney, 26 at the time, turned around, saw the constables behind him and whooped as he broke into a gleeful grin.

 

Dagg had an animated discussion with the band manager that is inaudible over the sound of the band. However, he revealed that out of microphone range he was more forthright after being messed about for half an hour.

 

The PC threatened to have Evans and the band arrested for highway obstruction and obstructing a police officer executing his duties. It appeared to have the desired effect: Evans unplugged George Harrison’s guitar amplifier during Get Back and the gig ended.

 

Dagg admitted that his threats to cart the world’s most famous band to jail were a “bluff”.

 

“Obstruction of police in the execution of their duty and highway obstruction are powers of arrest by the police but they are not applicable on private premises,” he said. “The gamble was that they didn’t know that. Probably because I was so young and stupid I was running a bluff on it.” He did not recall speaking to any members of the band, but said: “It was 52 years ago.”

 

Though his life was back to “normal” the next day, Dagg had to revisit the incident about eight months later, when his commander told him that they had to go and watch a preview of Let It Be, as the makers had asked for the force’s permission to retain the shots of Dagg. 
 

His commander told him that was pleased with how the officer conducted himself — and that the film-makers wanted to pay him £3,000, about double his annual salary at the time. However, Dagg was told that he could not accept the cash as a serving police officer, and that it would go to a police widows and orphans fund.

 

“If I knew now what I knew then I’d have resigned, taken the money and rejoined the police,” Dagg said.

 

After the film’s release, some cinemagoers in Dagg’s West End patch recognised him and asked for autographs, while some of his colleagues gave him “a load of stick in the canteen” and nicknamed him “superstar”. The attention soon died down and only resumed when Get Back was released last month.

 

Dagg’s father, also Ray, was a Metropolitan Police officer who was the first in Britain to use mechanical photofits to help identify criminals; his mother, Daphne, was a fashion model who died last year at the age of 97. He was born in Chelsea, and after leaving Emanuel grammar school in Battersea, southwest London, aged 16, decided to follow his father into the force.

 

He got a plum posting to West End Central, which is now defunct, after joining a police cricket team as a left-arm fast bowler and befriending the inspector who decided placements. “Everybody wanted to go to Mayfair and Soho, it was really glamorous in those days,” Dagg said.

 

Dagg, who has never owned a Beatles record and preferred Simon and Garfunkel, left the Met about six years after the rooftop concert and joined the sauce maker HP to pursue a career in sales. He went on to work at the telecoms giant Marconi and the home appliance producer Morphy Richards. Dagg never had children and lives in rural Warwickshire with his second wife, Linda, 60, who works at Canon, the Japanese technology company.

 

If they had not stopped playing when they did, would Dagg have arrested the Beatles? “I think now, at 72 years of age, I can say I wouldn’t. At 19, I was pretty gung-ho and I think I probably might have, and taken the flak afterwards for wrongful arrest,” Dagg said. “But it would have stopped it, that’s the main thing. I’d have been praised for stopping it but then bollocked for using the wrong powers of arrest.”
 

 

[johnsusername]

"At least there’s something on a film somewhere that will for ever show that PC Ray Dagg shut down the Beatles."

 

Never trust anyone who talks about themselves in third person. 

[Total Longo]

"Well, at that time, I didn’t know that they would never play together again,” he said. “At least there’s something on a film somewhere that will for ever show that PC Ray Dagg shut down the Beatles.

 

What an absolute knob.

[Bruce Spanner]

7 minutes ago, johnsusername said:

"At least there’s something on a film somewhere that will for ever show that PC Ray Dagg shut down the Beatles."

 

Never trust anyone who talks about themselves in third person. 

 

3 minutes ago, Total Longo said:

"Well, at that time, I didn’t know that they would never play together again,” he said. “At least there’s something on a film somewhere that will for ever show that PC Ray Dagg shut down the Beatles.

 

What an absolute knob.

 

ACAB

[johnsusername]

PC Ray Dagg is almost certainly a lifelong Conservative voter. 

[Skidfingers McGonical]

He should defo he investigated as part of Yew Tree, got nonce written all over him. 

[Barrington Womble]

6 hours ago, Sugar Ape said:

He did an interview in The Times the other day. 
 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ray-dagg-i-was-the-19-year-old-police-officer-who-silenced-the-beatles-mmxl9f2s7
 

Ray Dagg: I was the 19-year-old police officer who silenced the Beatles. 

 

Ray Dagg is not a name associated with iconic cultural moments, but it ought to be. As a Metropolitan police constable he ended the Beatles’ final live performance, on a London roof.

 

Now he is the unlikely star of a new wave of Beatlemania, powered by the release of a documentary of the band working on Let It Be, their last studio album to be released.

 

Dagg’s walk-on role on the roof at 3 Savile Row, as a polite but exasperated 19-year-old police officer trying to restore tranquillity to a London street known more for its tailoring than its tunes, has turned him into a cult figure. He has been inundated with friend requests on Facebook, interviewers from Brazil want to speak to him and an American Reddit member painted him in watercolour.

 

“It was just work, and it’s blown up into all this,” Dagg, 72, said. “It’s ridiculous, I just don’t understand it.”

 

Speaking publicly for the first time since the concert on January 30, 1969, Dagg said that he had no regrets at being responsible for shutting down the Beatles’ last gig but admitted that his threats to arrest the band and their manager for playing music too loudly was a “bluff”.

 

The gig was the Beatles’ first public performance since August 1966 in San Francisco — at the tail end of Beatlemania, when fans could see their heroes but not hear them over the screaming.

 

The band played songs from their as-yet-unreleased record including Get Back, I’ve Got A Feeling, One After 909 and Dig A Pony. It is broadcast for the first time in full for 40 minutes at the end of Get Back, Peter Jackson’s eight-hour Disney+ documentary series, which is based on more than 60 hours of footage recorded by Michael Lindsay-Hogg for his 1970 documentary, Let It Be.

 

Responding to complaints from neighbours about the noise, Dagg convinced the Beatles’ road manager, Mal Evans, to stop the gig. How does it feel to be known as the man who forced the Beatles to pull the plug for the last time?

 

“Well, at that time, I didn’t know that they would never play together again,” he said. “At least there’s something on a film somewhere that will for ever show that PC Ray Dagg shut down the Beatles.

 

“If that’s my lasting image of life, if that’s what people remember me for, that’s not bad. Thousands, millions of people don’t get remembered at all.”

 

After clocking on at West End Central police station in Savile Row at lunchtime, Dagg was sent to stop the gig that had caused gridlock in the West End. He entered the building, headquarters of the Beatles’ Apple record label, with a colleague, PC Ray Shayler.

 

Lindsay-Hogg’s team hid a camera behind a two-way mirror in the lobby of the building to film the consequences of the disturbance but Dagg insisted that he was not fooled by the ruse — especially when he saw a microphone hidden in a flowerpot. “I thought there’s something going on here,” he said. “I said to Shayler that we had both better be on our best behaviour because we’re being filmed.”

 

The police constables were stalled by Apple staff as the band continued to play and it took almost ten minutes for Evans to meet the officers in the lobby. Dagg said that the noise was causing a breach of the peace.

 

“I’m not going to be difficult about this,” he told Evans. “All right, so you’ve got to record but this isn’t necessary is it? We’ve had 30 complaints at West End Central within minutes. It’s got to go down, otherwise there will be some arrests. I’m not threatening you, I’m telling you what’s going to happen.”
 

Dagg now says that while the “phone was going bonkers” at the station, “I don’t know where I got 30 from. I probably made it up.”

 

Evans returned ten minutes later and took the officers to the roof. Paul McCartney, 26 at the time, turned around, saw the constables behind him and whooped as he broke into a gleeful grin.

 

Dagg had an animated discussion with the band manager that is inaudible over the sound of the band. However, he revealed that out of microphone range he was more forthright after being messed about for half an hour.

 

The PC threatened to have Evans and the band arrested for highway obstruction and obstructing a police officer executing his duties. It appeared to have the desired effect: Evans unplugged George Harrison’s guitar amplifier during Get Back and the gig ended.

 

Dagg admitted that his threats to cart the world’s most famous band to jail were a “bluff”.

 

“Obstruction of police in the execution of their duty and highway obstruction are powers of arrest by the police but they are not applicable on private premises,” he said. “The gamble was that they didn’t know that. Probably because I was so young and stupid I was running a bluff on it.” He did not recall speaking to any members of the band, but said: “It was 52 years ago.”

 

Though his life was back to “normal” the next day, Dagg had to revisit the incident about eight months later, when his commander told him that they had to go and watch a preview of Let It Be, as the makers had asked for the force’s permission to retain the shots of Dagg. 
 

His commander told him that was pleased with how the officer conducted himself — and that the film-makers wanted to pay him £3,000, about double his annual salary at the time. However, Dagg was told that he could not accept the cash as a serving police officer, and that it would go to a police widows and orphans fund.

 

“If I knew now what I knew then I’d have resigned, taken the money and rejoined the police,” Dagg said.

 

After the film’s release, some cinemagoers in Dagg’s West End patch recognised him and asked for autographs, while some of his colleagues gave him “a load of stick in the canteen” and nicknamed him “superstar”. The attention soon died down and only resumed when Get Back was released last month.

 

Dagg’s father, also Ray, was a Metropolitan Police officer who was the first in Britain to use mechanical photofits to help identify criminals; his mother, Daphne, was a fashion model who died last year at the age of 97. He was born in Chelsea, and after leaving Emanuel grammar school in Battersea, southwest London, aged 16, decided to follow his father into the force.

 

He got a plum posting to West End Central, which is now defunct, after joining a police cricket team as a left-arm fast bowler and befriending the inspector who decided placements. “Everybody wanted to go to Mayfair and Soho, it was really glamorous in those days,” Dagg said.

 

Dagg, who has never owned a Beatles record and preferred Simon and Garfunkel, left the Met about six years after the rooftop concert and joined the sauce maker HP to pursue a career in sales. He went on to work at the telecoms giant Marconi and the home appliance producer Morphy Richards. Dagg never had children and lives in rural Warwickshire with his second wife, Linda, 60, who works at Canon, the Japanese technology company.

 

If they had not stopped playing when they did, would Dagg have arrested the Beatles? “I think now, at 72 years of age, I can say I wouldn’t. At 19, I was pretty gung-ho and I think I probably might have, and taken the flak afterwards for wrongful arrest,” Dagg said. “But it would have stopped it, that’s the main thing. I’d have been praised for stopping it but then bollocked for using the wrong powers of arrest.”
 

 

That doesn't make him sound less of a twat! 

[Total Longo]

Mal Evans rightly looks like he wants to batter him in that photo. Probably residual hatred of all plod that got him killed 6 years later. That and being absolutely off his cake. 

[Boss]

The bit where Paul notices the coppers in the middle of Get Back is boss. You can see the jubilance on his face. It's like he was transported back to Hamberg, when The Beatles used to play the strip clubs in the pleasure zone.

 

Lemmy once said about The Beatles, that the image of them as sheltered good boys in comparison to the bad boy drug-addled image of The Rolling Stones was a load of bollocks. Ringo came from the Dingle, which he compared to the Bronx. He said, he once saw Lennon headbutt a fella in a club for calling him gay. The Beatles were the working-class tough guys. The Rolling Stones were the pampered rich mummies boys that went to London to pretend to be starving. 

 

You can see that in McCartney's face in this scene, and the way George just turns the amp back on without saying a word. They don't give a fuck.

[Total Longo]

10 minutes ago, Boss said:

The bit where Paul notices the coppers in the middle of Get Back is boss. You can see the jubilance on his face. It's like he was transported back to Hamberg, when The Beatles used to play the strip clubs in the pleasure zone.

 

Lemmy once said about The Beatles, that the image of them as sheltered good boys in comparison to the bad boy drug-addled image of The Rolling Stones was a load of bollocks. Ringo came from the Dingle, which he compared to the Bronx. He said, he once saw Lennon headbutt a fella in a club for calling him gay. The Beatles were the working-class tough guys. The Rolling Stones were the pampered rich mummies boys that went to London to pretend to be starving. 

 

You can see that in McCartney's face in this scene, and the way George just turns the amp back on without saying a word. They don't give a fuck.

Lennon battered Bob Wooller because Wooller insinuated that the Spanish holiday with Brian Epstein wasn't exactly a "lads holiday".  

[Skidfingers McGonical]

2 hours ago, Total Longo said:

Mal Evans rightly looks like he wants to batter him in that photo. Probably residual hatred of all plod that got him killed 6 years later. That and being absolutely off his cake. 

I live round the corner from Mal’s Mam and Dad’s old house. 

[NoelM]

50 years old.

 

 

[Total Longo]

On 13/12/2021 at 22:32, Barrington Womble said:

Fucking hell. Mal Evans and George Martin must have lived hard lives! 

I think George Martin looks fantastic in this, so used to him being proper old and having that mad professor haircut, he was a dapper, handsome devil back then. 

 

Also, any excuse to post my favourite sketch of all time...

 

 

[torahboy]

On 14/12/2021 at 03:44, Sugar Ape said:

He did an interview in The Times the other day. 
 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ray-dagg-i-was-the-19-year-old-police-officer-who-silenced-the-beatles-mmxl9f2s7
 

Ray Dagg: I was the 19-year-old police officer who silenced the Beatles. 

 

Ray Dagg is not a name associated with iconic cultural moments, but it ought to be. As a Metropolitan police constable he ended the Beatles’ final live performance, on a London roof.

 

Now he is the unlikely star of a new wave of Beatlemania, powered by the release of a documentary of the band working on Let It Be, their last studio album to be released.

 

Dagg’s walk-on role on the roof at 3 Savile Row, as a polite but exasperated 19-year-old police officer trying to restore tranquillity to a London street known more for its tailoring than its tunes, has turned him into a cult figure. He has been inundated with friend requests on Facebook, interviewers from Brazil want to speak to him and an American Reddit member painted him in watercolour.

 

“It was just work, and it’s blown up into all this,” Dagg, 72, said. “It’s ridiculous, I just don’t understand it.”

 

Speaking publicly for the first time since the concert on January 30, 1969, Dagg said that he had no regrets at being responsible for shutting down the Beatles’ last gig but admitted that his threats to arrest the band and their manager for playing music too loudly was a “bluff”.

 

The gig was the Beatles’ first public performance since August 1966 in San Francisco — at the tail end of Beatlemania, when fans could see their heroes but not hear them over the screaming.

 

The band played songs from their as-yet-unreleased record including Get Back, I’ve Got A Feeling, One After 909 and Dig A Pony. It is broadcast for the first time in full for 40 minutes at the end of Get Back, Peter Jackson’s eight-hour Disney+ documentary series, which is based on more than 60 hours of footage recorded by Michael Lindsay-Hogg for his 1970 documentary, Let It Be.

 

Responding to complaints from neighbours about the noise, Dagg convinced the Beatles’ road manager, Mal Evans, to stop the gig. How does it feel to be known as the man who forced the Beatles to pull the plug for the last time?

 

“Well, at that time, I didn’t know that they would never play together again,” he said. “At least there’s something on a film somewhere that will for ever show that PC Ray Dagg shut down the Beatles.

 

“If that’s my lasting image of life, if that’s what people remember me for, that’s not bad. Thousands, millions of people don’t get remembered at all.”

 

After clocking on at West End Central police station in Savile Row at lunchtime, Dagg was sent to stop the gig that had caused gridlock in the West End. He entered the building, headquarters of the Beatles’ Apple record label, with a colleague, PC Ray Shayler.

 

Lindsay-Hogg’s team hid a camera behind a two-way mirror in the lobby of the building to film the consequences of the disturbance but Dagg insisted that he was not fooled by the ruse — especially when he saw a microphone hidden in a flowerpot. “I thought there’s something going on here,” he said. “I said to Shayler that we had both better be on our best behaviour because we’re being filmed.”

 

The police constables were stalled by Apple staff as the band continued to play and it took almost ten minutes for Evans to meet the officers in the lobby. Dagg said that the noise was causing a breach of the peace.

 

“I’m not going to be difficult about this,” he told Evans. “All right, so you’ve got to record but this isn’t necessary is it? We’ve had 30 complaints at West End Central within minutes. It’s got to go down, otherwise there will be some arrests. I’m not threatening you, I’m telling you what’s going to happen.”
 

Dagg now says that while the “phone was going bonkers” at the station, “I don’t know where I got 30 from. I probably made it up.”

 

Evans returned ten minutes later and took the officers to the roof. Paul McCartney, 26 at the time, turned around, saw the constables behind him and whooped as he broke into a gleeful grin.

 

Dagg had an animated discussion with the band manager that is inaudible over the sound of the band. However, he revealed that out of microphone range he was more forthright after being messed about for half an hour.

 

The PC threatened to have Evans and the band arrested for highway obstruction and obstructing a police officer executing his duties. It appeared to have the desired effect: Evans unplugged George Harrison’s guitar amplifier during Get Back and the gig ended.

 

Dagg admitted that his threats to cart the world’s most famous band to jail were a “bluff”.

 

“Obstruction of police in the execution of their duty and highway obstruction are powers of arrest by the police but they are not applicable on private premises,” he said. “The gamble was that they didn’t know that. Probably because I was so young and stupid I was running a bluff on it.” He did not recall speaking to any members of the band, but said: “It was 52 years ago.”

 

Though his life was back to “normal” the next day, Dagg had to revisit the incident about eight months later, when his commander told him that they had to go and watch a preview of Let It Be, as the makers had asked for the force’s permission to retain the shots of Dagg. 
 

His commander told him that was pleased with how the officer conducted himself — and that the film-makers wanted to pay him £3,000, about double his annual salary at the time. However, Dagg was told that he could not accept the cash as a serving police officer, and that it would go to a police widows and orphans fund.

 

“If I knew now what I knew then I’d have resigned, taken the money and rejoined the police,” Dagg said.

 

After the film’s release, some cinemagoers in Dagg’s West End patch recognised him and asked for autographs, while some of his colleagues gave him “a load of stick in the canteen” and nicknamed him “superstar”. The attention soon died down and only resumed when Get Back was released last month.

 

Dagg’s father, also Ray, was a Metropolitan Police officer who was the first in Britain to use mechanical photofits to help identify criminals; his mother, Daphne, was a fashion model who died last year at the age of 97. He was born in Chelsea, and after leaving Emanuel grammar school in Battersea, southwest London, aged 16, decided to follow his father into the force.

 

He got a plum posting to West End Central, which is now defunct, after joining a police cricket team as a left-arm fast bowler and befriending the inspector who decided placements. “Everybody wanted to go to Mayfair and Soho, it was really glamorous in those days,” Dagg said.

 

Dagg, who has never owned a Beatles record and preferred Simon and Garfunkel, left the Met about six years after the rooftop concert and joined the sauce maker HP to pursue a career in sales. He went on to work at the telecoms giant Marconi and the home appliance producer Morphy Richards. Dagg never had children and lives in rural Warwickshire with his second wife, Linda, 60, who works at Canon, the Japanese technology company.

 

If they had not stopped playing when they did, would Dagg have arrested the Beatles? “I think now, at 72 years of age, I can say I wouldn’t. At 19, I was pretty gung-ho and I think I probably might have, and taken the flak afterwards for wrongful arrest,” Dagg said. “But it would have stopped it, that’s the main thing. I’d have been praised for stopping it but then bollocked for using the wrong powers of arrest.”
 

 

This Dagg guy and his buddy were pure Steve Bell caricatures. Yet the most typically aggressive looking policeman was the sergeant who turned up. With a face like thunder, he looked like he would be the most officious and arrogant of the trio. As it turned out he was a perfect gentleman - polite and pleasant with the Apple staff, asking permission to move through the building without even a hint of irritation. The difference between knowing what your job is and actually knowing how to do it. Probably a wife beater at home, though.

[VladimirIlyich]

I thought Mal Evans came across as a massive dope in this documentary. Fair fucks for the lads giving a job to an old mate though,you've got to admire that loyalty. Yoko Ono properly wound me up though,and I have no agenda against her. She just seemed to have some spell over Lennon that I couldn't understand. I have no idea if she was a groupie who struck gold as I haven't read that much about her personal lfe beforehand but it just looked a bit like that to me as an onlooker.