On 30 January 1969, The Beatles performed together in public for the last time.
It was the anti-climax of arguably their most difficult time as a group, after spending weeks working on what would eventually be released the following year as the Let It Be album, with an accompanying film.
The results of their efforts in the studio were shambolic, while the documentary film, instead of shedding light on the magical recording process, simply showed the group bickering, falling out and imploding.
The sessions for the Let It Be album (or "Get Back" as it was tentatively originally entitled) were indeed dismal. The cracks which had appeared during the recording of The Beatles (aka The White Album) the previous year were now positive chasms.
John Lennon, who was using heroin, retreated further into his artistic bubble with partner Yoko Ono, while Paul McCartney attempted to pull the group together.
This succeeded only in alienating the others, especially George Harrison. He had had enough and walked out, parting with the words: "See you around the clubs."
There were also reports of serious arguments over music and burgeoning business problems, worsened by their lack of management and disagreement over who should actually take the task on.
Harrison returned on the basis that they would wrap the project up.
The problem was, despite having worked on some strong material - including McCartney's outstanding Let It Be (the eventual title track) and The Long And Winding Road, during the sessions - the recordings had been painfully undisciplined and poorly executed by the group, lacking energy or enthusiasm.
Lennon later referred to it in typically concise and dismissive style, calling it "the s*******t load of badly recorded s*** with a lousy feeling to it, ever".
Bemused producer George Martin recalled: "Let It Be was such an unhappy record. I thought I would never work with them again.
"I was quite surprised when Paul rang me up and said, 'We're going to make another record'."
This became Abbey Road and is in truth a far more worthy swansong for the group than the lacklustre album which followed it.
As Ringo Starr observed: "When we were excited, the track is exciting."
McCartney's contemporary understatement that The Beatles were "a big act" may or may not have resonated with the rest of the group, but in any case, Lennon was in and so was Starr.
Even the sceptical Harrison accepted the consensus that "we ought to do one better album".
The Fabs then set about recording their ultimate masterpiece.
Almost immediately, things were different. For a start, this time around all of the band were married.
Lennon had been married and divorced already, but on 20 March he married Yoko Ono. Eight days earlier, McCartney had married Linda Eastman, while Harrison had been married since 1966 and Starr since 1965.
McCartney has observed that The Beatles were like army buddies, saying: "One day we were going to go and kiss the army goodbye and get married and act like normal people.
"We always knew that day had to come."
However, there were other factors at play, and it has been proved since (not least by McCartney himself), that groups can actually exist without members' marriages necessarily triggering their dissolution.
The more general point here is that The Beatles' own relationships with each other had been intense and focused on the brand. Now, their priorities were shifting.
During the album's production in July of 1969, Lennon put out a single, the memorable Give Peace A Chance, which, although originally carrying a writer's credit to Lennon-McCartney, had nothing to do with The Beatles.
He also performed live in Canada without the other three.
Each of The Beatles had worked independently on solo music or film projects in the previous years, but this time it was different.
Perhaps most devastatingly of all, six days before the release of Abbey Road in the UK on 26 September, Lennon announced privately to McCartney, Harrison and Starr that he was leaving the group for good.
By the time Abbey Road was spinning on turntables around the world, The Beatles had effectively ceased to exist.
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