“Obviously a Lennon composition,” the Record Mirror states. “The firearm becomes feminine and the lyrics ambiguous,” referencing the intrigue that has circled for decades as to whether the lyric “When I hold you in my arms / And I feel my finger on your trigger” is sexual—“Oh, well, by then I’m into double meanings,” John later says.

According to the BBC, that’s precisely what makes the White Album “the greatest and truest most popular work of art in the history of the world, with the greatest cover—both avant-garde and incredibly popular at the same time.”

American rock critic Lester Bangs observes the passage of another creative milestone: “The first album by the Beatles or in the history of rock by four solo artists in one band.”

Each Beatle is to receive one of the first four albums in the run, with a sequential number printed on each cover.

John wants the first of the first, calling out, “Bagsy No. 1!”

“John got 000001 because he shouted the loudest,” Paul remembers.

Ringo keeps his double album in a bank vault. And there it stays until 2015, when the drummer discovers that his copy, not John’s, is the original—number 000001.

That Saturday, December 5, 2015, Julien’s Auctions, in Beverly Hills, sets a guide price of $40,000 to $60,000, which will go to Ringo’s charity, the Lotus Foundation.

The bidding shatters records, bringing $790,000. Ringo has a message for the buyer: “Whoever gets it it will have my fingerprints on it.”

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Forty-seven years earlier, in December of 1968, Mick Jagger is asking musical stars to appear in a concert he’s calling the Rock and Roll Circus. The BBC books twenty-eight-year-old Michael Lindsay-Hogg to direct the film at the Intertel Studios, Wembley. “All the performers in the show had basically come out of a little address book in Mick Jagger’s back pocket,” Lindsay-Hogg recalls. “He looks up L, he calls John, and then John says he’ll do it.”

On the afternoon of December 11, 1968, celebrity guests in costumes, including Yoko Ono and Marianne Faithful, gather in a studio space decorated as a circus tent. They watch as ringmaster Mick Jagger moves among the members of Sir Robert Fossett’s Circus, including trapeze artists, a live tiger, and a fire eater.

Jethro Tull and the Who are slated to perform, but the main draw is the supergroup dubbed the Dirty Mac, featuring twenty-eight-year-old John Lennon on vocals and guitar, twenty-three-year-old Eric Clapton on guitar, almost-twenty-five-year-old Stones guitarist Keith Richards on bass, and twenty-one-year-old Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience on drums.

When one of the crew asks John for his choice of amp, he answers, “Oh, one that plays!”

The all-star quartet launches into John’s “Yer Blues.” It’s John’s first performance outside the Beatles. Their second song, “Whole Lotta Yoko,” features Yoko Ono wailing over a blues-rock jam.

*  *  *