John Lennon’s Ice Bucket Challenge

Ice bucket challenge, 1965

The ice buck­et chal­lenge is pret­ty played out. So why post this pho­to? Quite sim­ply because I can find scant lit­tle infor­ma­tion about this curi­ous Bea­t­les pic. One Bea­t­les blog dates the pic­ture back to 1965. After that, bup­kis. No infor­ma­tion. So, for once, I’m throw­ing up my hands and ask­ing for a lit­tle help from our friends. Some­where out there, an ardent Bea­t­les fan knows the sto­ry, and we’re hop­ing that you can give us the low­down, either by email, or in the com­ments sec­tion below. We thank you in advance…

Update: We got an email from a for­mer radio exec who offers more details. Jon tells us:  “These shots were done in the Bahamas back in 1965 while the Bea­t­les trav­eled the world to film their sec­ond movie Help! This sequence most like­ly came as a result of set close up shots that direc­tor Richard Lester need­ed of each Bea­t­le dur­ing a pool sequence since John is wear­ing that same shirt dur­ing sev­er­al of those water sequences shot in the Bahamas. Ringo has always said it was cold dur­ing the shoot as they filmed it dur­ing a cool­er time (Jan.?) that year. That would explain John’s look after being doused.” And there you have it!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks for The Bea­t­les’ Cli­mac­tic 16-Minute Med­ley on Abbey Road

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ Christ­mas Records: Sev­en Vin­tage Record­ings for Their Fans (1963 – 1969)

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)


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  • sfemet says:

    I think I can place the pho­to. John wore that shirt in the movie Help, part of it was filmed in the Caribbean, which explains the palm trees. I recall a lot of splash­ing about in the sea and swim­ming pools as well. I’ve got the DVD, it will be fun to watch it again.

  • Julia says:

    It was fun­ny those days but today… It’s seem’s for me like avoid­ing any dona­tion! Even very rich peo­ple pre­fer to have fun not help. What going on? ;-)

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