With "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" echoing from the sound system, fans - many in tears - gathered to remember George Harrison at Liverpool's Cavern Club, where it all began.
As flags flew at half-mast citywide and hundreds more fans queued to record their grief in books of condolence, tributes poured in to Radio Merseyside.
It was a similar story across the Atlantic. Fans began to gather before dawn at New York's Strawberry Fields, the Central Park memorial to John Lennon, who was murdered nearby.