A rare photograph of The Beatles walking the "wrong way" across the Abbey Road pedestrian crossing is going up for auction, and should fetch around 9,000 pounds. The version found on the group's 1969 album Abbey Road shows the band walking across the famed crossing from left to right, though the photograph in question sees the Fab Four heading in the opposite direction, back to the studio.
In the version up for sale, John Lennon leads the group across the road, while Paul McCartney wears a pair of sandals (he has bare feet on the album cover). The cigarette that Paul holds on the album version is also missing on the rare version, reports the UK's Guardian newspaper. The photograph was just one of a handful taken outside the Abbey Road Studios in St John's Wood, north-west London during a quick shoot by the late Iain MACmillan. Sarah Wheeler of Bloomsbury Auctions said, "MACmillan had 10 minutes to do the shoot and he took six photographs of the Beatles walking backwards and forwards across the zebra crossing. He was standing up a ladder to take the pictures. The photo has been called an icon of the 1960s. I think the reason it became so popular is its simplicity. It's a very simple, stylised shot and is a shot people can relate to".
If you're a big enough Beatles fan - and have a few thousand pounds spare - head down to the auction at Bloomsbury on May 22, 2012.