“It’s an upbeat, rock-a-beat-a-boogie, with very Lennon lyrics,” George says, and even Timothy Leary can’t argue with the metaphor John gives him for repurposing the song—“he was a tailor and I was a customer who had ordered a suit and never returned. So he sold it to someone else.” (Despite the song’s pronounced Lennon flavor, he is sued for its similarity to Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me,” which includes the lyrics, “Here come a flat-top, he was movin’ up with me.” As part of a settlement, John agrees to cover three songs from Berry’s publisher for a mid-’70s oldies album.)

*  *  *

Between sessions, John rests at home, listening to Yoko play Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata on the piano.

Inspiration strikes. “Can you play those chords backward?” he says.

She does, and John writes “Because” around them.

“‘Because’ is one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever done,” George says. “It has three-part harmony—John, Paul, and George.”

All four Beatles need to agree on a name for the album. Everest, after the world’s highest mountain and also a popular brand of British cigarette, is the leading contender, but Paul is the only one enthusiastic about an international photo shoot.

“Well, if we’re not going to name it Everest and pose for the cover in Tibet, where are we going to go?” he asks.

Ringo offers an easy solution. “Let’s just step outside and name it Abbey Road.”

He’s only joking, but Paul is inspired. He makes some rough sketches of an album cover showing the four of them walking a zebra crossing on Abbey Road.

John contributes the photographer, Iain MacMillan. Yoko had commissioned him to document her 1966 show at the Indica gallery, the same one where she and John met.

On the morning of August 8, MacMillan hauls a stepladder into the middle of the London street and waits while a police officer stops traffic. John, dressed all in white, leads a dark-suited Ringo, a barefoot Paul with cigarette in hand, and a denim-clad George on six passes back and forth while the photographer snaps away.

Only one photograph shows them stepping perfectly in time.

*  *  *

The next night, more than five thousand miles away in Los Angeles, three disciples of a thirty-five-year-old self-proclaimed messiah named Charles Manson follow a winding private road in the exclusive Benedict Canyon enclave in the Hollywood Hills.

Armed with a gun and knives, they enter the home at 10050 Cielo Drive. Manson, an aspiring singer and guitarist, knows the address as that of twenty-eight-year-old Terry Melcher, the record producer and son of film and recording star Doris Day. The two men had met the previous summer at the home of the Beach Boys drummer, Dennis Wilson. Following an audition, Melcher told Manson he “wasn’t impressed enough to want to make a record.”