The former policeman who halted The Beatles’ final live performance does not regret his actions.
PC Ray Dagg was just 19 when he was sent to Apple HQ in London to stop the roof-top gig in 1969.
He threatened to arrest the band if they did not halt the performance after complaints – and the Fab Four never performed live as a group again.
Now the focus has fallen on Ray in the new Peter Jackson series Get Back.
It draws from material captured for Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 documentary Let It Be, including the historic gig.
Ray, now 72, said: “It was just work, and it’s blown up into all this. I didn’t know they’d never play together again.
“At least there’s something on a film somewhere that will forever show that PC Ray Dagg shut down the Beatles. If that’s my lasting image of life, that’s not bad.”
Ray’s moment of fame is captured in Jackson’s Disney+ documentary of the band working on Let It Be, their last studio album.
He was sent with PC Ray Shayler to stop the gig on Savile Row, which had caused traffic chaos.
Ray recalled spotting a microphone hidden in a flowerpot and explained: “I said to Shayler we had better be on our best behaviour because we’re being filmed.”
The officers eventually got onto the roof, where Paul McCartney could be seen grinning as he spotted them.
Ray told the band’s manager they would be arrested unless they stopped but he could not have acted as they were on private property, saying: “Well, I was running a bluff on it.”
But would he have followed through with his threat?
He replied: “At 19, I was pretty gung-ho and I think I probably might have and taken the flak afterwards for wrongful arrest.”
Ray, not a Beatles fan, was offered £3,000 by the film-makers but could not accept the cash, though he added: “If I knew then what I know now, I’d have resigned and taken the money.”
Dagg quit the police in 1975 and had a successful career in sales.
