The Beatles - Abbey Road

Released - September 1969

Genre - Rock

Producer - George Martin

Selected Personnel - John Lennon (Vocals/Guitar/Piano/Keyboards/Percussion); Paul McCartney (Vocals/Guitar/Bass/Piano/Keyboards/Percussion); George Harrison (Guitar/Vocals/Bass/Keyboards/Percussion); Ringo Starr (Drums/Percussion/Vocals/Piano); George Martin (Keyboards); Billy Preston (Organ)

Standout Track - Come Together

Over the course of a few years, the Beatles had gone from being sensationalised purveyors of simplistic romantic pop songs to tireless innovators and pioneers in the studio, pushing rock music into new territory and using their already monstrous celebrity status to make their innovations appealing to the mass market. By the end of the 60s, though, things were drawing to a close. The death of their longtime manager Brian Epstein in 1967 had created tensions within the band and introduced problematic disagreements to their process of working and recording. Similarly, Lennon's marriage to avant-garde artist Yoko Ono had exacerbated those tensions further, as had his continued immersion into the art scene Ono worked in. The band's follow-up to the hugely popular Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had been 1968's The Beatles (usually referred to as "The White Album"), another historic example of the double album that could easily have been trimmed to half its size. While it contains a handful of their best songs (including McCartney's gorgeous "Blackbird," my dad's favourite Beatles song), it's generally a bit of a sprawling mess, while the next attempt at recording an album had been a disaster with all the band members pulling in different directions. (The result would be released as Let It Be in 1970, after the band had formally split up). Abbey Road was the result of an attempt by Lennon and McCartney and producer George Martin to make a record in collaboration with one another like they used to, and was made with a certain sense of finality behind it. Although Let It Be saw the light of day later, Abbey Road is the band's great swansong, and it's fitting that it's also their best work.

Mind you, tensions were not entirely resolved for these recording sessions. Lennon later complained about his resentment of McCartney's "granny music" that he insisted on including (a complaint that's actually fair to make of the atrocious "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"), and was even less keen on McCartney and Martin's insistence on making the second half of the album a multi-part suite, preferring to focus most of his attention on the more traditional separate songs of the first half. Working counter-intuitively, let's start with that closing medley, which will always have the distinction of effectively being the climax to the Beatles' recording career. For me, it's never quite managed to convince me. Once again, the prog fan in me should have no problem with song suites and multi-part medleys, but this one just doesn't quite feel like it works. It doesn't help that the songs it consists of weren't written with any intention of being meshed together, but rather were unfinished fragments of attempts at longer songs, so a number of them feel like they don't quite manage to make a point and then segue into something else that feels unconnected. There are exceptions - "Golden Slumbers" is a beautiful song and is crying out to be longer, and "Sun King" has a brilliant laziness to it, its guitar harmonies inspired by the hit Fleetwood Mac instrumental "Albatross." "The End" is also notable for featuring the only drum solo Ringo ever contributed to any Beatles song, and it's not even that bad.

Ringo's other great contribution is "Octopus's Garden," which he perhaps wrote as an attempt to equal the childlike singalong nature of "Yellow Submarine" on 1966's Revolver, on which he also sang lead vocals. It's often dismissed as a stupid song, but that's its unique charm. I've been reliably informed by a good friend that if there's a single song that sums up my character more than any other, it's "Octopus's Garden," so for this reason alone it's very dear to me. In general, the separate songs are far stronger here. The swampy blues stomp of Lennon's opener "Come Together" is the coolest thing the band ever recorded, while George Harrison, despite having never been a particularly prolific songwriter for the Beatles, suddenly contributes two of their very best songs, the achingly beautiful "Something," described as the greatest love song of all time by none other than legendary crooner Frank Sinatra, and the delightfully lovely "Here Comes The Sun," still the go-to song to represent optimism and bright things around the corner to this day.

I've always found the vocals to be one of the main weak points of most of the Beatles' work, with Lennon and McCartney's voices being frequently interchangeable and neither ever really making a huge emotional connection with the song. But here, on their final album, McCartney really comes into his own as a singer, with his impassioned,, rasping performance on the gritty "Oh! Darling" one of the album's highlights, and his passionate roar on "Golden Slumbers" sending chills down the spine. It's also worth mentioning "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," which develops from a standard blues number into a lengthy fadeout defined by a repetitive, heavy guitar riff and menacing wind noise. These unusual features see the band briefly dabbling in prog rock, a scene which was just about to explode in 1969 and, indeed, which had seen its first roots in the psychedelic strangeness pioneered by the band two years earlier.

Abbey Road, despite a few misses, is a splendid album and offers an opportunity to reflect on the career and work of the Beatles as a whole. As a kid, their early songs were among my favourite music because as a kid undemanding pop is all you want. As I got older I began to look for music that excited me more and I grew tired of them until I discovered their later work, from Revolver onwards, and developed a newfound respect for them, but there's still no Beatles album that I'd say is a solid classic from start to finish, though Abbey Road comes very close. Overall, I think the enormous cult of obsession that surrounds their work is mostly justified given their huge significance in revolutionising popular music and the way it was perceived, but I also think they've become sensationalised to the point of the hype meaning very little, and it casts an unfair shadow over so much other great music from the era that is destined to go unheard by most simply because it's not by them. Not all their music was consistently brilliant, but because they were the people making the big changes and selling all the records they've emerged as the band everyone remembers. It's not that I dislike them, quite the opposite, but I do grow tired of "Greatest Albums of All Time" lists that develop a grim predictability in their upper echelons as three to five Beatles classics appear in the top ten. Abbey Road is a fitting swansong and tribute for a great band that changed music forever, but as they now went their separate ways it opened up a space for a number of great artists doomed to forever be in their shadow.

Track Listing:

All songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney except where noted.

1. Come Together

2. Something (George Harrison)

3. Maxwell's Silver Hammer

4. Oh! Darling

5. Octopus's Garden (Ringo Starr)

6. I Want You (She's So Heavy)

7. Here Comes The Sun (George Harrison)

8. Because

9. You Never Give Me Your Money

10. Sun King

11. Mean Mr. Mustard

12. Polythene Pam

13. She Came In Through The Bathroom Window

14. Golden Slumbers

15. Carry That Weight

16. The End

17. Her Majesty