Sag Harbor's David Diskin Helps To Bring The Beatles Into Living Rooms

“It was 50 years ago today …”

Well, not exactly. But almost.

On January 30, 1969, the Beatles performed their famous rooftop concert live atop the Apple building on Savile Row in London. The impromptu concert, which attracted throngs of fans on the street five stories below, was used in their film “Let It Be.” But it marked the beginning of the end for what is arguably still the most popular band in musical history. By September 1969, not long after recording “Abbey Road,” the Beatles had disbanded for good.

Some people are still heartbroken about it. Lucky for them, the Beatles are alive and well and together again, thanks to a new collection of canvas photo prints being sold by retailer Crate & Barrel. The collection launched on January 8 brings the band out of pop culture history and into living rooms via photographs and illustrations from the era in vibrant living color as well as in dramatic black and white.

Interestingly enough, the project began not in London but right here on the East End, with Sag Harbor resident David Diskin and his Bridgehampton-based design studio Artivise.

Mr. Diskin founded Artivise in 2001 with a business model designed to bridge the gap in the marketplace for affordable modern art. He began printing images on stretched archival quality canvas and developed a client base for his wall art that included large retailers such as Crate & Barrel.

After 16 years in Bridgehampton, Mr. Diskin moved production of his artwork to a 50,000-square-foot facility in South Central Los Angeles—and the rest, as they say, is history.

“I come from the design world—clothes, furnishings, things like that,” Mr. Diskin said during a recent interview at The Spur in Southampton. “I built my business in Bridgehampton from scratch and got Crate & Barrel right off the bat.”

Mr. Diskin also created the direct-to-consumer brands Modern Digital Canvas and GoodEarth Canvas to sell his work, and he notes that the field has experienced huge growth since he first opened his doors.

“All our prints are high quality, archival prints on canvas. Over the last two years, the business has changed and the price points have changed, and people have copied the business model,” Mr. Diskin said. “It’s not just Instagram vs. magazines. Our channels of acquiring customers has changed.

“We always need to evolve and change.”

Enter the Beatles. While it may seem odd that an East End company would be so instrumental (pun intended) in bringing the Fab Four to walls around the world, as is often the case in these parts, it’s really local connections that were the impetus for the project: specifically, Keryn Kaplan, a one-time Sag Harbor resident whom Mr. Diskin met because their children attended the same local summer camp.

Mr. Diskin explained that Ms. Kaplan was part of the principal management company that ran U2’s operation, and she was instrumental in also introducing him to Lori Lambert, an East Hampton resident who, for years, worked with Sony Music Entertainment and major recording artists such as Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse and Prince.

“In working with them, I realized there’s so much imagery in rock ’n’ roll that hasn’t been monetized,” Mr. Diskin said. “Everyone loves that imagery. We wanted to see if we could find a way to bring those images to people in a strong way with positive iconography. So that’s what we did.”

Their first foray into music prints came in 2017 with the Ziggy Marley collection—designs inspired by his “We Are The People” tour. The Beatles launch followed and is a project that grew out of Ms. Kaplan’s and Ms. Lambert’s relationship with Apple Corps LTD, the multimedia corporation founded by the Beatles back in 1968.

“The music aspect comes from friendships and partnerships,” Mr. Diskin said. “It’s all synergy. I have a good relationship with Crate & Barrel, and they saw the value in the Beatles. It’s the legendary number-one name in music, and they’re a great partner—a premium marketer with a clientele leaning more toward that generation.”

When asked how the prints are selling just a few days into the launch, Mr. Diskin responded, “They’re already doing well. With so much Beatles talk with Paul McCartney and all the things he’s doing, it was the right time to do it.

“The theme is ‘Come Together,’ which we really thought was timely for what’s going on now and generationally speaking,” Mr. Diskin added. “I think Apple is happy with how it came off. The Beatles are part of their lives and they’re happy how it celebrates the time period. It’s important for Apple.”

In creating the Beatles collection, Mr. Diskin and his team were able to work directly from Apple’s photo archive, which has been scanned and digitized. The final 21 images chosen for the series were printed on stretched canvas and framed in black.

In addition to album art from “Yellow Submarine,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Revolver,” the series also includes portraits, some rarely seen, of The Beatles dating from their earliest clean-cut days right through to their bearded, long-haired years in the late 1960s.

“Most of them are from promotional photography shoots,” Mr. Diskin explained. “They’d hire a photographer and have a ‘Mad Day Out’ and shoot it. The original purposes could have been for album covers or use in press releases.”

Among the images being sold is a black-and-white shot of the band at Tittenhurst Park, the estate of John Lennon and Yoko Ono near Ascot, England. The photograph was taken in 1969 during the Beatles’ final photo session. Another image from July 1968 shows the band standing amid tall, colorful hollyhocks on the grounds of St. Pancras Old Church.

Because the prints are decorative items, Mr. Diskin explained that in selecting which images to use, he looked for compositions with a strong graphic sensibility. The prints range in price from $200 to $650.

“They’re all large scale and have never been done before,” he said. “We really were just looking at the visual of it and the impact. From an overall choice, we were thinking about making sure the images also covered the full time period.”

Mr. Diskin recalls the era well. He grew up in Alberta, Canada, near the Montana border and had three older brothers who listened to the Beatles. He remembers the day his brother came home with the new “Sgt. Pepper’s” album, and the day “Let It Be” came out. He has an interest in Eastern philosophy, which, he noted, is what George Harrison was all about.

“I am a huge Beatles fan. My life was marked by Beatles events,” Mr. Diskin said. “The Beatles’ evolution was all about positive energy. Ringo said he was happy that it was all about love, and this collection is resonating that energy.

“It’s like sacred material. We take pride in the quality of the product and the way we display it. It’s an important cultural thing that’s been part of pop culture for so long … now it’s legend.

“You can bring it into your home and feel good.”

In addition to the Ziggy Marley and Beatles collections, Mr. Diskin has also created wall art prints celebrating imagery from the well-known jazz label Blue Note Records as part of their 80th anniversary (available on bluenote.com), and Jimi Hendrix imagery (available at authentichendrix.com).

“The music industry is looking to multiply the revenue streams. It’s a different business than it was. How do we make this inventory valuable?” Mr. Diskin asked. “Bringing the album home from the record store was a big part of visual life. You’d live with it in a tactile way. It’s the same thing with this artwork. I think it’s part of all cultures, whether it’s music, religious or sport iconography, there’s a need to connect with it in a meaningful way.”

“I found being in our business for so long, I would say art is about the heart,” he added. “If it’s in your house, it needs to have some meaning or emotional connection.”

As a side note, through his friendship with Ms. Kaplan, Mr. Diskin has not only created the Beatles collection for Crate & Barrel, he has also gotten to know music producer Glyn Johns who was the recording engineer on “Let It Be” and also worked on “Abbey Road.”

“He was the first person to record the Rolling Stones. He also recorded the Kinks, the Who, Steve Miller Band and the Eagles,” Mr. Diskin said. “Glyn is this legend and wrote a book called ‘Sound Man,’ and now we want to make it into a documentary.”

Mr. Diskin is planning to be an executive producer on the film, which will include interviews with many of the music artists that Mr. Johns worked with over the years. Mr. Johns has endless stories, he noted, including a very interesting one about the Beatles and that famous rooftop concert.

“We talked about ‘Let It Be,’ and Glyn said the idea originally was to record it as a live album because they played so well together.”

In the end, producer Phil Spector remixed the album in the studio, but when the idea was still to record it live, Mr. Diskin claims that it was Mr. Johns’s idea to take the band to the roof of the Apple building.

“He took Ringo up there and said, ‘What do you think?’” Mr. Diskin recalled. “Ringo said, ‘Don’t you think the cops will come?’ and Glyn said, ‘Exactly.’”

Now, that’s the stuff of rock ’n’ roll legend.