Forty-two minutes on a roof, and then never again

The January 1969 sessions that became Let It Be were meant to end with a concert, and the band could not agree on where. An amphitheatre in Tunisia, a ship, a hospital: every idea died. With the cameras still rolling, someone suggested going upstairs. On 30 January, in a wind that had Ringo Starr borrowing his wife's red coat and John Lennon wearing Yoko Ono's fur, they set up on the roof of Apple Corps with Billy Preston on electric piano.

They played for forty-two minutes: Get Back three times, Don't Let Me Down twice, I've Got a Feeling twice, One After 909 and Dig a Pony. Below on Savile Row, office workers came out onto ledges and the street filled up. The Metropolitan Police were called about the noise, walked up through the building and asked them to stop; the band played Get Back once more as the constables stood at the edge of the roof, and Lennon signed off with the line about hoping they had passed the audition.

They never performed together in public again. Abbey Road was recorded that summer, the split was announced in April 1970, and the rooftop became the closing scene of the Let It Be film and, fifty years later, of Peter Jackson's Get Back.