The Beatles Behind the Scenes: 24 Photos of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr at Home
The Beatles Behind the Scenes: 24 Photos of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr at Home
In apartments, mansions, backyards and on pool decks, the Fab Four rocked out even when they were offstage
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr of the Beatles started out in Liverpool, England, but it wasn’t long before the band took the entire world by storm. As the group ascended to superstardom, the famed foursome expanded their horizons and put down roots around the UK and beyond.
The group’s 1964 song “I’ll Follow the Sun” is “a ‘Leaving of Liverpool’ song,” McCartney explained in his 2021 book The Lyrics. “I’m leaving this rainy northern town for someplace where more is happening.” Once they did leave, the band's rise to fame was stratospheric. Of course, it wasn’t all massive crowds and wild concerts; the four led quieter lives in their time at home, where they penned and practiced some of their greatest hits. To provide a peek behind the curtain into their private worlds, we’ve rounded up some domestic snapshots of the iconic musicians below.
Photo: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images1/24Harrison’s childhood home
Harrison spent the first six years of his life at 12 Arnold Grove in Wavertree, Liverpool, before the family moved into a council house (a form of British public housing) at 25 Upton Green in Speke. The three-bedroom home, as seen in this 1955 photograph of Harrison at age 12, served as a frequent rehearsal spot for the band, who then called themselves the Quarrymen. Because the dwelling was much larger than the terraced house he spent his early days in, the young Harrison “ran around and round it all that first day” as his family settled in, according to biographer Hunter Davies.
Courtesy Everett Collection2/24Before he was Ringo
Ringo Starr grew up as the only child of his mother, Elsie Starkey, in Liverpool, and the two shared a closeness forged after his father left when Starr was young. “Things were always tough for Elsie, as I’ve always called my mother,” he told biographer Alan Clayson. “We were poor but never in rags.” The pair lived at 10 Admiral Grove in Toxteth, a modest two-up, two-down attached home with a shared outdoor toilet. Small as it was, the house held outsized memories—including Starr’s 21st birthday, when, by his own account, some 80 guests packed into the roughly 20-square-foot space. “We had a great birthday,” he later recalled in an interview.
Photo: Getty Images/Staff3/24Beginnings of the band
This post-war terraced home at 20 Forthlin Road in Liverpool, now a National Trust property, is where McCartney grew up. The residence is commonly referred to as the birthplace of the Beatles. McCartney, Lennon, and Harrison are pictured here outside the house in 1960. (Starr joined the group two years later.) According to the National Trust, the front porch served as a rehearsal space. If McCartney’s father wasn’t home, the trio of musicians would convene in the parlor, which McCartney’s mother Mary had decorated in Sanderson designer wallpaper.
Photo: Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images4/24Starr at home
Starr is pictured in this ’60s snapshot at what appears to be The Flying Cow, the home bar in his Sunny Heights property (located in the English county of Surrey). He bought the mock Tudor residence on Weybridge’s prestigious St. George’s Hill estate in 1965. In addition to the metal cash register seen above, other trappings of the musician’s newfound wealth found at the home were a go-kart track that made its way in and out of tree-lined paths, a game room with an unfinished mural started by Starr and added to by friends and visitors, movie projectors, and a swing set in the yard.
Photo: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images5/24Starr’s tranquil backyard
Shortly after Starr married hairdresser Maureen Cox in February 1965, the two moved into Sunny Heights. The couple is pictured in their yard in August 1967 with their eldest, Zak, shortly before Cox gave birth to their second son, Jason. “When I was very young, there was music all around me in my parents’ house,” Zak told Modern Drummer in 2006.
Photo: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images6/24Lennon’s private sanctuary at Kenwood
From 1964 to 1968, Lennon lived with first wife, Cynthia Powell, in a Tudor Revival–style residence known as Kenwood. The estate, located in the Surrey Hills, was designed by architect T. A. Allen. “In My Life” is among the Beatles classics Lennon penned during his time at the manor. In a 1971 interview with Rolling Stone, he explained, “I used to write upstairs where I had about 10 Brunell [sic] tape recorders all linked up.”
Photo: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images7/24Lennon at home in Weybridge
To decorate Kenwood, the Weybridge home Lennon bought in 1964 with Powell, the singer hired Kenneth Partridge. The in-demand interior designer to the stars was famous for his outlandish aesthetic. In his reimagining of the estate, Partridge opted to knock down walls to make the pad better suited to large soirées; plastered the place with mauve wallpaper; and installed a globe-shaped bar. Lennon is pictured relaxing on the plush cushions of a rattan sofa at the residence in this 1967 snapshot.
Photo: Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images8/24Lennon’s Kenwood work
Lennon was reportedly not a huge fan of Kenwood, though he spent thousands on renovations, including commissioning tiler Joseph Ritrovato to create a psychedelic eye mosaic installed in the deep end wall of his swimming pool. He’s seen smiling in this 1960 backyard snap with his son Julian, but Lennon wrote lyrics alluding to tougher times while residing there. When asked about “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” Lennon told Rolling Stone he wrote the song at Kenwood, explaining, “It’s one of those that you sort of sing a bit sadly to yourself, ‘Here I stand, head in hand…’”
Photo: Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images9/24Harrison’s Kinfauns home
In this 1964 photo, Harrison stands outside Kinfauns, a 1950s bungalow in Surrey. The “Run of the Mill” singer called the place home from 1964 to 1970. Many demo recordings for the band’s 1968 self-titled double album (also known as the White Album) were made here. According to Joshua M. Greene’s Here Comes The Sun: The Spiritual And Musical Journey Of George Harrison, the artist and his first wife, model Pattie Boyd, faced some privacy issues there. “George and Pattie returned home one night to find that two girls had broken in and were hiding under their bed and giggling,” Greene wrote.
Photo: Daily Mirror/Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty Images10/24The band’s Bel-Air crash pad
While scores of fans clamored to see the Fab Four during their 1964 North American debut, not everyone was so delighted to welcome the world’s most famous band. When the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles canceled their reservation due to concerns over legions of devotees potentially swarming the spot, Mary Poppins actor (and fellow Englishman) Reginald Owen opened his Bel Air home to the group, renting the mansion for $1,000 over a four-day period. McCartney, Harrison, and Starr are pictured here lounging poolside at the estate. In 2023, after more than 50 years off the market, the 6,310-square-foot, six-bedroom home commanded a hefty $48,000 a month in rent.
Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images11/24Harrison’s home and wedding venue
When Harrison married Boyd in 1966, the couple had already been living together in Kinfauns. They also chose to host their wedding reception, pictured here, at the upscale bungalow. The top model, who eventually left Starr for musician Eric Clapton, discussed the process of furnishing the home with Harrison in her 2008 autobiography Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me, noting that they opted for “black leather sofas, a teak dining table and chairs, and a pine table for the kitchen.” They converted their garage into a projection room to screen films with friends and also tapped a Dutch husband-and-wife team—Simon Posthuma and Marijke Koger of an artist collective known as The Fool—to paint a Salvador Dalí–inspired mural around a fireplace in their living room. The young couple added flair to the home’s façade with graffiti; Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull were among the duo’s famous friends who contributed to that exterior artwork.
Photo: Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images12/24McCartney’s St. John’s Wood home
At the peak of Beatlemania, McCartney bought a home in St. John’s Wood, London, for a reported sum of £40,000 (around $50,000—equivalent to over $500,000 today), but he admitted in a 1966 interview with NME that he didn’t know too much about real estate. “Do I know anything about property? Not really,” admitted McCartney, pictured here outside the home in 1967 alongside his sheepdog, Martha. “Well, I suppose I do, come to think of it. I’m being vague. But don’t think I’m a big property tycoon. I only buy places I like.”
Photo: Leslie Lee/Express/Getty Images13/24Man’s best friends
In addition to Martha—who inspired the name of the band’s 1968 song, Martha My Dear—McCartney had cats during his early years at his St. John’s Wood abode. One kitten, Thisbe (named after Lennon’s character in the Beatles’ 1964 performance of Shakespeare’s Pyramus and Thisbe), went on to have a litter christened by the musician with the biblical names Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Photo: Keystone/Getty Images14/24McCartney’s affinity for traditional style
As for how McCartney furnished his homes in the ’60s (at the time he owned three: the aforementioned London home, one in Liverpool, and a farm property in Scotland), the songwriter admitted that he didn’t care for anything too fancy. “As far as the St. John’s Wood house goes, I’ve furnished it in traditional style because I don’t go for this modern stuff that always looks as if it needs something doing to it,” McCartney, pictured here at home in 1967 alongside his father, James McCartney, told NME. “I like it to be comfortable. Those mod leather chairs…ugh. They’re too cold.”
Mirrorpix/Getty Images15/24A “Rembrandt” in the family
Paul McCartney is pictured with his then fiancée, Jane Asher, at the 1968 wedding reception of his younger brother, Mike McCartney, seen here seated with his new bride. The celebration took place in the backyard of the Heswall, Cheshire, home McCartney purchased for his father in 1964, following the Beatles’ early success. Known as “Rembrandt,” the mock-Tudor house sat on a sweeping property overlooking the River Dee, complete with half an acre of gardens tended by McCartney’s father, who was an avid gardener.
Photo: Keystone Features/Getty Images16/24Florals and family time
Flowers seemed to be an important motif in Lennon’s life. In his 1973 song “Mind Games,” he sang, “Love is the flower. You gotta let it, you gotta let it grow.” He’s pictured here in 1968 at his Weybridge home with son Julian in a bedroom covered in floral patterns.
Photo: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images17/24Close commute
McCartney’s St. John’s Wood home in London is just a stone’s throw away from the famed Abbey Road Studios, where the group convened—specifically, in Studio Two—to record many of their hit tunes in the 1960s. The group’s 1969 album Abbey Road is named for the legendary studio space.
Photo: Michael Putland/Getty Images18/24Minimalist lounging with Lennon
In 1969, Lennon added a mansion located in Tittenhurst Park in Ascot, Berkshire to his holdings. The musician bought the 72-acre estate on London Road for £145,000 (equivalent to nearly $183,000 today). He’s seen here at the abode in 1971 hanging out with his friends and his wife, Yoko Ono, whom he married in 1969.
Michael Putland/Getty Images19/24Tittenhurst
It was at Tittenhurst that Lennon finished most of his Imagine album. He and Ono poured significant money into repairs and upgrades to the 300-year-old Georgian mansion, including adding a recording studio, expanding the already large kitchen, and constructing a lake on the property. Contained within the 30-room abode were seven bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a series of reception rooms and staff quarters, while the surrounding estate unfolded into formal gardens, farmland, cottages, outhouses, and a lodge.
Photo: Olley Alan/Mirrorpix/Getty Images20/24Home exchange
Lennon eventually sold Tittenhurst Park to Starr in September 1973. The drummer renamed the home’s recording space Startling Studios. He is pictured here outside the mansion with his second wife, Barbara Bach, and their dogs, in 1981, the year the couple got married.
Photo: Tim Ockenden/PA Images via Getty Images21/24McCartney’s Sussex home
In 1973, McCartney purchased a 160-acre property dubbed Blossom Wood Farm near Rye in East Sussex. He’s seen talking to press outside the estate here in 2001, shortly after the death of Harrison. In 2020, McCartney told NPR’s All Things Considered that “George was very into horticulture, a really good gardener. So he gave me a tree as a present: It’s a big fir tree, and it’s by my gate. As I was leaving my house this morning, I get out of the car, close the gate and look up at the tree and say, ‘Hi, George.’ There he is, growing strongly.”
Photo: Tony Korody/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images22/24Ringo rocks out at home
Like all of the Beatles, Starr, photographed here in 1981 behind a drum set at his home, released solo projects after the group disbanded in 1970. He’s commented that he never formally trained as a musician. “I never studied anything, really,” Starr explained. “I didn’t study the drums. I joined bands and made all the mistakes onstage.”
Courtesy Everett Collection23/24Life at the Dakota
John Lennon is pictured with his son, Sean, at their apartment in The Dakota, the storied New York City building sitting on the edge of Central Park. Built in the 1880s, the seven-story edifice is often cited as Manhattan’s first luxury apartment house and has counted residents including Lauren Bacall and Roberta Flack (who lived next door to Lennon and Yoko Ono and was a dear friend of the family). The family’s four-bedroom aerie stretched nearly half a block, with sweeping views of the park’s tree canopy and lake. Designed in a mix of German Renaissance Revival, Châteauesque, and Gothic Revival styles, the fortress-like building—with its H-shaped courtyard—reminded Lennon of Victorian-era architecture in his native Liverpool. Ironically, despite its privacy and round-the-clock security, the building later became inseparable from the tragedy that ended Lennon’s life, as it was just outside the building’s gates where the Beatle was shot.
Yui Mok - PA Images/Getty Images24/24The Beatles—an intrinsic part of English culture
Yoko Ono flashes a peace sign from a window of the first home she shared with John Lennon, a duplex apartment at 34 Montagu Square in Marylebone, London. Part of a Grade II–listed terraced house, the residence spans the building’s basement and ground floor and was owned at the time by Ringo Starr, who also hosted Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix there briefly. During the couple’s five-month stay beginning in the summer of 1968, Lennon worked on the Beatles’ self-titled album (known as the White Album) and it was here that the pair were photographed for their album Two Virgins. In 2010, English Heritage marked the apartment with a blue plaque, recognizing its cultural significance.
