Paul jams with Jefferson Airplane, 1967

4th April 1967 in San Francisco

This photo has been floating around on social media sites the past couple of days, prompting speculations about what the occasion was, until someone was able to sort it out. Turns out it’s photo of Paul McCartney with Jorma Kaukonen & Paul Kantner from Jefferson Airplane in San Francisco, taken on 4th April 1967. McCartney is playing a right-handed Rickenbacker 360/12, which probably belonged to Paul Kantner.

McCartney and Mal Evans visited the Fillmore Auditorium, where Jefferson Airplane were rehearsing. Afterwards they accompanied Marty Balin and Jack Casady to the Oak Street apartment they shared with the band’s road manager Bill Thompson. McCartney played them an acetate of the “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album.

They also attempted a jam, but that was abandoned because all their equipment was right-handed, which McCartney had trouble playing.

Speaking of rare photos, yesterday George Harrison’s Twitter account published a better photo of The Beatles sitting on the stairs of Abbey Road, with Ringo’s driver Alan standing behind them.

Alan

We have used this to replace our earlier version of this photo in our Abbey Road photo shoot extravaganza, “The road goes on forever“.