Please Mr Post man

EXCLUSIVE:

THE photos of John Lennon and Yoko Ono posing after getting married in front of the Rock of Gibraltar are among the most seminal from the Rock n Roll vaults of fame.

The iconic shots that have appeared in thousands of publications and dozens of documentaries show perfectly the depths of love the Beatles lead singer and his Japanese paramour were in.

The story has been recounted to death, but like so many chapters in the life of the world’s most famous band, there is a back story almost as interesting.

And in this case it’s a darker one, for the set of photos - and others taken during the period in 1969 - were stolen, leading to a half-century closer to finding the negatives and explaining, at last, what happened to them.

It comes after the Olive Press received two anonymous letters from an individual in America named only as ‘R Sheelly’, with nearly two dozen copies of the negatives inside. Some blown up on card-

ANONYMOUS: But detailed and intriguing letters from America board, some as part of a contact sheet, they arrived two weeks apart, posted from Colorado and gave few clues to the sender’s identification. But what they did do was bring one of the most exciting times in British music history very much back to life.

The photos, including John Lennon wearing a silly hat, reading a newspaper on a plane, and canoodling with his new wife - as well as posing at the registry office and signing the marriage forms - have only once been seen before. And that is in the book of the man who borrowed them before they mysteriously vanished. Poring through them was like watching a decades-old cold case come back to life before our very eyes: The blackened embers of one of the greatest mysteries in Beatles history spluttering and sparking up once more.

Stamped from Fort Collins, Colorado (a ‘fake address’) on April 25, the first letter teased us with promises of new leads and a tantalising clue behind the legendary negatives, missing for nearly five decades.

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The second letter, a week after we published a story on the first letter, expressed the writer’s pleasure at making print and reaffirmed her goal - to get the missing photos ‘back to the photographer who took them’.

But first, we have to travel back to the spring of 1969,

No Hablo Ingles

The PP’s leadership hopeful joins a long line of Spanish politicians with no English

LEADERSHIP hopeful Alberto Nunez Feijoo of the Popular Party (PP) made a candid confession on live television last week: with around 50 days to go until the snap general election called by adversary, Pedro Sanchez, he does not speak English.

Speaking on a talk show, he added that his linguistic problems were shared with ‘the majority of Spaniards’. Although he does, however, speak Galician as well as Castilian Spanish and as such described himself as ‘bilingual’. But Feijoo has also struggled with names in English, not just the language, recently mangling Bruce Springsteen’s name to call him ‘Bruce Sprinter’.

Prime Minister Sanchez will be a tough act to follow when it comes to the language of Shakespeare.

Sanchez speaks very good English, and during his five years in office has used it to great effect – whether in live interviews on US TV, or at international summits. But it turns out he is a real anomaly. In fact, Sanchez is the only prime minister since Spain returned to democracy able to fluently speak it while in office.

As for the other leaders and politicians, there have been a series of gaffes that have left them looking rather silly.

Former PP Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy famously sat and a time of the Apollo program and sexual emancipation, when the soul of a young generation was unleashed by a new brand of rock’n’roll.

The fabled Summer of Love was imminent, New York was gearing up for Woodstock, and the Beatles had just played their last ever public performance.

Lennon, by now one of the greatest icons in pop music, had eloped with his controversial lover, Yoko Ono, often dubbed a groupie and hanger on.

They had chosen to wed in the one place where the press would not be able to hound them - at the registry office in Gibraltar.

At the peak of General Franco’s embargo of the British-held peninsula, the region was isolated and inaccessible, the border closed and flights limited.

John and Yoko flew out on March 20, 1969, and there they met a young London hipster photographer, David Nutter, who was handed the ‘secret assignment’ and had no clue of who his subjects were to be.

“I was told to come to Gibraltar with my camera and no questions asked,” Nutter told the Olive Press.

Londoner Nutter is a fabled snapper whose career spanned the golden era of rock and pop, working with luminaries such as Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, Elton John and the Beatles themselves.

The ‘magical’ day of the wedding featured just a few close friends and family of the couple - Paul McCartney absent - and no press. Nutter snapped away as the couple, who were like lovebirds the minute they landed at Gibraltar airport, trooped over to the local registry office and got married, giddy and in high spirits. The pair then embarked onto their famous down for a meeting with his British counterpart David Cameron and uttered the classic line: “It’s very difficult todo esto…” Meanwhile

PP leader Jose Maria Aznar did his best to speak English while in office, but it wasn’t until he left politics that he really got the hang of it. (As a side note, he spoke Spanish in a Texan accent while in the United States in 2003, for reasons that were never fully clear).

But perhaps the most famous incident involving a Spanish politician and English was when Ana Botella, Aznar’s wife and the then-mayor of Madrid, gave her famous speech to the Olympic Committee when the city was bidding to be host. Her phrase: “There is nothing like a relaxing cup of cafe con leche in the Plaza Mayor” became an immediate hit, and remains something of a meme all these years later. For much of the Spanish political class, in particular the PP, it would appear that some serious study is still needed.