The Beatles ‘reunited’ at celebrity-filled wedding reception for an ‘absolute rubbish’ performance

Though they would reform for the Anthology releases a decade after this “absolute rubbish” performance, The Beatles did “reunite”.

At the wedding of Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd, three of the four Beatles got together to perform for the first time since their impromptu rooftop gig. Almost a decade on from their tumultuous split and Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison got back together on stage. Harrison, who had been married to Boyd, finalised their divorce in 1977 but remained a close friend. He would marry Olivia Arias in 1978, and remained with her until his death in 2001. But he still attended Boyd’s wedding, with Clapton and Harrison remaining friends despite the infidelities between them.

Clapton had written the hit track Layla for Harrison’s then-wife, while the so-called quiet one would begin an affair with Starr’s first wife, Maureen Starkey. Despite the messy personal relationship between the group, Starr, Harrison, and McCartney attended Clapton’s wedding and gave what would can be considered the last-ever performance of The Beatles.

Though they were missing John Lennon, the band would take to the stage of Clapton and Boyd’s wedding, where Mick Jagger and Elton John were also in attendance. Denny Laine from Wings was there too, and called the set “absolute rubish”.

Despite the lacklustre set, it would be the last time the three were on stage together and performing Beatles hits. They played Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Get Back, and Lawdy Miss Clawdy. A recording of Something, allegedly played at the wedding, is linked below. Lennon was absent from the wedding for unknown reasons.

Laine was also a part of the jam session at the wedding reception, but does not view it as a reunion of The Beatles. Instead, he believes it was just a collection of “people I knew,” including Clapton, who Laine had knwon when the Derek and the Dominos guitarist was a member of The Yardbirds.

Laine would say: “I never think like that, ‘Hey, I’m jamming with (laughs) some of the Beatles.’ I never think like that. Y’know, these were all people I knew. Like Eric, I’d known when he was in the Yardbirds.” Jim Capaldi and Zak Starkey were also present at the reunion.

Photos of the trio performing together at the wedding were shared in Pattie Boyd’s book, My Life in Pictures, which released in 2022. It would mark the closest reunion The Beatles ever managed, with any talk of reuniting on stage or in the studio off the table after the death of Lennon.

Though the band would get back together for the Anthology retrospective series, they were all, at one point or another, against the making of new material without Lennon’s involvement. Yoko Ono offered McCartney a handful of at-home recordings which formed the base of Free as a Bird and Now and Then.