In 1976, the Sex Pistols – the notorious British punk band that helped ignite the punk movement – took inspiration from one of the most iconic images in rock history: The Beatles’ 1963 album cover for Please Please Me.
The original Beatles cover, shot by photographer Angus McBean, featured the Fab Four leaning over the interior balcony of EMI’s London headquarters at 20 Manchester Square, gazing down toward the camera in matching suits and cheerful expressions. It perfectly captured their clean-cut, youthful energy at the dawn of Beatlemania.
Fast forward about 13 years later, and the Sex Pistols’ world couldn’t have been more different. By 1976–77, they embodied rebellion, anti-establishment anger, and a rejection of everything the Beatles’ generation had come to represent. Their manager Malcolm McLaren, ever the provocateur, orchestrated a photoshoot that recreated The Beatles’ Please Please Me cover, but with a sneering punk twist.
The Pistols — Johnny Rotten (John Lydon), Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and Sid Vicious (who replaced Glen Matlock) — posed at the same location in Manchester Square, leaning over the same stairwell where the Beatles had once stood. But instead of tidy suits and smiles, they appeared in ripped clothes, sullen faces, and rebellious attitudes.
The original building in Manchester Square in London was demolished in 1999, and EMI took the stair railings to its new headquarters. When it dissolved and merged with Sony in 2012, the entire structure went into the hands of Paul McCartney, and is located in its studios in Sussex.


















































