Road trips, yoga and LSD with the dentist: what the Beatles did next

Fifty years after the band announced their split, Craig Brown looks back at the Fab Four’s remarkable return to ‘normal’ life

On 29 August 1966, the Beatles closed their set at the Candlestick Park baseball stadium in San Francisco with “Long Tall Sally”, an old Little Richard number that had been part of their repertoire from the very start. “See you again next year,” said John as they left the stage. The group then clambered into an armoured car and were driven away. It was to be their last proper concert.

Their American tour had been exhausting, sporadically frightening, and unrewarding. By this stage their delight in their own fame had worn off. They were fed up with all the hassle of touring, and tired of the way the screaming continued to drown out the music, so that even they were unable to hear it. Having been shepherded into an empty, windowless truck after a particularly miserable show in a rainy St Louis, Paul said to the others: “I really fucking agree with you. I’ve fucking had it up to here too.”

'I was a lonely little poet on the road,' said Paul. But few poets have cruised round Europe in a brand-new Aston Martin DB6

Do you dig us or don’t you? asked Hells Angel Spider. 'Yin and yang, heads and tails, yes and no,' replied George

Related: 'This tape rewrites everything we knew about the Beatles'