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Abbey Road is the 11th studio album released by the English rock band The Beatles. It is their last recorded album, although Let It Be was the last album released before the band's dissolution in 1970. Work on Abbey Road began in April 1969, and the album was released on 26 September 1969 in the United Kingdom, and 1 October 1969 in the United States.
Abbey Road is widely regarded as one of The Beatles' most tightly constructed albums, although the band was barely operating as a functioning unit at the time.[1][2] Rolling Stone placed it at number 14 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2009, readers of the magazine also named Abbey Road the greatest Beatles album.[3][4]
After the near-disastrous sessions for the proposed Get Back album (later released as Let It Be), Paul McCartney suggested to George Martin that the group get together and make an album "the way we used to",[5] free of the conflict that began following the death of Brian Epstein and carrying over to the sessions for the "White Album". Martin agreed, stipulating that he must be allowed to do the album his way. This would be the last time the band would record with music producer George Martin [6]. In their interviews for The Beatles Anthology, the surviving band members stated that, although none of them ever made the distinction of calling it the "last album", they all felt at the time this would very likely be the final Beatles product and therefore agreed to set aside their differences and "go out on a high note".
With the Let It Be album partly finished, the sessions for Abbey Road began in April, as the single "The Ballad of John and Yoko" / "Old Brown Shoe" was completed. In fact, recording sessions of John Lennon's "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" had already started in February 1969 in Trident studios, with Billy Preston on the organ—only three weeks after the Get Back sessions. Photos from these sessions are included in the book Get Back, which came along with the Let It Be album but not in the Let It Be film. McCartney is clean-shaven and Lennon has started to let his beard grow.
Most of the album was recorded between 2 July and 1 August 1969. After the album was finished and released, the Get Back / Let It Be project was re-examined. More work was done on the album, including the recording of additional music (see Let It Be). Thus, though the bulk of Let It Be was recorded prior to Abbey Road, the latter was released first, and Abbey Road was the last album properly started by The Beatles before they disbanded. Lennon was on hiatus from the group and working with the Plastic Ono Band during the September 1969 lead-up to Abbey Road's release, which was effectively the first official sign of The Beatles' impending dissolution.
The two album sides are quite different in character. Side one is a collection of unconnected tracks, while most of side two consists of a long suite of compositions, many of them being relatively short and segued together.
The album opener "Come Together" was a Lennon contribution. The chorus was inspired by a song Lennon originally wrote for Timothy Leary's campaign for governor of California titled "Let's Get It Together". A rough version of this can be heard in outtakes from Lennon's second bed-in event in Canada.
It has been speculated that the verses, described by Lennon as intentionally obscure, refer cryptically to each of The Beatles (e.g. "he's one holy roller" allegedly refers to the spiritually inclined George Harrison); however, it has also been suggested that the song has only a single "pariah-like protagonist" and Lennon was "painting another sardonic self-portrait".[7] The song was later the subject of a lawsuit brought against Lennon by Morris Levy because the opening line in "Come Together"—"Here come old flat-top"—was admittedly lifted from a line in Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me". The lawsuit issues posed on The Beatles was time consuming so instead of settling, they decided to buy the record company. "It was taking a long time and we didn't feel like doing the paperwork so we just bought it (the record company)" said Lennon during a playboy interview from 1980. [8]
"Come Together" was later released as a double A-side single with "Something".[9] In the liner notes to the Love album Martin described the track as a personal favourite.
The second track on the album later became Harrison's first A-side single. Basing the first line of the song on "Something in the Way She Moves" from James Taylor's 1968 Apple Records album James Taylor, Harrison wrote "Something" during the The Beatles sessions.[10] After the lyrics were refined during the "Let It Be" sessions (tapes reveal Lennon giving Harrison some songwriting advice during its composition), the song was initially given to Joe Cocker, but was subsequently recorded for Abbey Road. "Something" was Lennon's favourite song on the album, and McCartney considered it the best song Harrison had written. Frank Sinatra once commented that "Something" was his favourite Lennon-McCartney (sic!) song[11] and "the greatest love song ever written".[12] The song was released as a double A-side single with "Come Together".
"Something" became the first Beatles number one single that was not a Lennon–McCartney composition; it was also the first single from an already released album.[citation needed]
"Maxwell's Silver Hammer", McCartney's first song on the album, was first performed by The Beatles during the Let It Be sessions (as can be seen in the Let It Be documentary). Paul wrote the song after his trip to India in 1968. He wanted to record it for "The White Album" but it was turned down as 'too complicated'. [13]
According to Geoff Emerick's book, Here, There and Everywhere, Lennon said the song was "more of Paul's granny music", and refused to participate in the recording of the song. Harrison was also tired of the song. "We had to play it over and over again until Paul liked it. It was a real drag." said Harrison. Starr was more sympathetic for the song. "It was granny music" he said "but we needed stuff like that on our album so other people would listen to it". [14]
When recording "Oh! Darling", McCartney attempted recording only once a day. He said, "When we were recording 'Oh! Darling' I came into the studios early every day for a week to sing it by myself because at first my voice was too clear. I wanted it to sound as though I'd been performing it on stage all week."[15] Lennon was of the opinion that it was the type of song that he would've sung the lead on, remarking that it was more his style. On the Anthology 3 album, Lennon can be heard singing the lead on an ad-libbed verse regarding the news that Yoko Ono's divorce from Anthony Cox, her previous husband, had just come through.
Ringo Starr wrote and sang one song for the album, "Octopus's Garden", his second (and last) solo composition released on a Beatles album. It was inspired by a trip to Sardinia aboard Peter Sellers' yacht that occurred when Starr left the band for two weeks with his family during the sessions for The Beatles. While there, he composed the song, which is arguably his most successful writing effort. While Starr had the lyrics nearly pinned down, the song's melodic structure was partly written in the studio by Harrison (as can be seen in the Let It Be film), although Harrison gave full songwriting credit to Starr. (Harrison and Starr would later collaborate on Starr's solo singles "It Don't Come Easy" and "Photograph").
"I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is a combination of two somewhat different recording attempts. The first attempt occurred almost immediately after the "Get Back/Let It Be" sessions in February 1969 and featuring Billy Preston on keyboards. This was subsequently combined with a second version made during the "Abbey Road" sessions proper, and when edited together ran nearly 8 minutes long, making it The Beatles' second-longest released song ("Revolution 9" being the longest). Perhaps more than any other Beatles song, "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" reveals a pronounced progressive rock influence, with its unusual length and structure, repeating guitar riff, and white noise effects; the "I Want You" section has a straightforward blues structure. It also features one of the earliest uses of a Moog synthesiser to create the white-noise or "wind" effect heard near the end of the track. During the final edit, as the guitar riff and white noise effect continued on and on, Lennon told engineer Emerick to "cut it right there" at the 7:44 mark, creating a sudden, jarring silence which concluded side one of Abbey Road. The final overdub session for "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" would be the last time all four Beatles worked in the studio together.
"Here Comes the Sun" is Harrison's second song on the album and one of his best-known; it was written in Eric Clapton's garden in Surrey, England [16] while Harrison was absent from an Apple board meeting. The song was recorded on 7 July 1969, where Harrison sang lead, played acoustic guitar and played the Moog synthesiser; Lennon provided backing vocals and played acoustic guitar; McCartney provided backing vocals and played bass; and Starr played the drums [17]. While not released as a single, the song has received frequent radio airplay since its release.
"Because" features a Moog synthesiser, played by Harrison. The chords in the song were inspired by Ludwig van Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", in a roundabout way: Lennon said he "was lying on the sofa in our house, listening to Yoko play Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' on the piano. Suddenly, I said, 'Can you play those chords backward?' She did, and I wrote 'Because' around them."[18] "Because" features three-part harmonies by Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison, which were then triple-tracked to sound like nine singers.
The climax of the album is the 16-minute medley consisting of several short songs, both finished and unfinished, blended into a suite by McCartney and Martin.[19] Most of these songs were written (and originally recorded in demo form) during sessions for The White Album and the Get Back/Let It Be sessions.[citation needed]
"You Never Give Me Your Money" is the first song of the Abbey Road medley. It was written by McCartney and based on his feelings towards Allen Klein and what McCartney viewed as Klein's empty promises.[20] It slowly and quietly follows into "Sun King" (which, like "Because", showcases Lennon's, McCartney's, and Harrison's overdubbed harmonies), "Mean Mr. Mustard" (written during The Beatles' trip to India), and "Polythene Pam", all three contributed by Lennon. These in turn are followed by four McCartney songs, "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" (written after a fan came into McCartney's residence literally through the bathroom window[21]), "Golden Slumbers" (based on lyrics from Thomas Dekker's 17th-century poem), "Carry That Weight" (featuring chorus vocals from all four Beatles), and the climax, "The End".
"The End" is notable for featuring Starr's only drum solo in The Beatles' catalogue (the drums are mixed across two tracks in "true stereo" — in a similar way to the studio single version of Get Back). Normally, even though mixes were in stereo, the drums were mixed in mono, locked together with other instruments and often panned hard left or right in the stereo picture. Fifty-four seconds into the song, before the famous last line, which is played over piano chords, are 18 bars (or measures) of guitar solo: the first two bars are played by McCartney, the second two by Harrison, and the third two by Lennon, then the sequence repeats.[22] Each has a distinctive style which McCartney felt reflected their personalities: McCartney's playing included string bends similar to his lead guitar work on "Another Girl" from the Help! album; Harrison's was melodic with slides yet technically advanced and Lennon's was rhythmic, stinging and had the heaviest distortion. Immediately after Lennon's third solo, the piano chords of the final part of the song begin. The song ends with the memorable final line, "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make".
An alternative version of the song, with Harrison's lead guitar solo played against McCartney's (with Starr's drum solo heard in the background), appears on the Anthology 3 album.
"Her Majesty", tacked on the end, was included in a rough mix of the side two medley, appearing between "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam". McCartney disliked the way the medley sounded when it included "Her Majesty", so he had it cut out of the tape. However, second engineer John Kurlander had been instructed never to throw out anything, so after McCartney left, he picked it up off the floor, spliced 14 seconds of red leader tape onto the reel, and then spliced in "Her Majesty" onto the leader tape. The tape box bore an instruction to leave "Her Majesty" off the final product, but the next day when Malcolm Davies at Apple received the tape, he (also trained not to throw anything away) cut a playback lacquer of the whole sequence, including "Her Majesty". The Beatles liked this effect and included it on the album. Original US and UK pressings of Abbey Road do not list "Her Majesty" on the album's cover nor on the record label, making it a hidden track.
"Her Majesty" opens with the final, crashing chord of "Mean Mr. Mustard", while the final note of "Her Majesty" remained buried in the mix of "Polythene Pam". This is the result of "Her Majesty" being snipped off the reel during a rough mix of the medley. The medley was subsequently mixed again from scratch although "Her Majesty" was not touched again and still appears in its rough mix on the album.
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |  [23] |
| MSN Music | [24] |
| Pitchfork Media | (10/10)[25] |
| PopMatters | favourable[26] |
| Rolling Stone | favourable[27] |
| Sputnikmusic | [28] |
| The Daily Telegraph | [29] |
| Consequence of Sound | [30] |
Abbey Road became one of the most successful Beatles albums ever. In the UK the album debuted straight at number 1. Abbey Road spent its first 11 weeks in the UK charts at number 1, before being displaced to number 2 for one week by the Rolling Stones debuting at the top with Let It Bleed. However, the following week—which was the week of Christmas—Abbey Road returned to the top for another 6 weeks, completing 17 weeks at the top. In all it spent 92 weeks inside the UK Top 75, and 16 years later on 31 October 1987, when it was released for the first time on CD, it reached number 30. In the UK Abbey Road was the best-selling album of 1969 and the fourth best-selling of the entire 1960s, and the eighth best-selling album of 1970.
Reaction in the US was similar. The album debuted at number 178, then moved to number 4 and in its third week to number 1, spending 11 non-consecutive weeks at the top. Abbey Road spent a total of 129 weeks in the Billboard 200, re-entering the chart at number 69 on 14 November 1987 when it was released for the first time on CD. It was the NARM best selling album of 1969[31] and was number 4 on Billboard magazine's top LPs of 1970 year-end chart. Abbey Road was certified 12x platinum by the RIAA in 2001.
In June 1970, Allen Klein reported that US sales of Abbey Road were about 5 million.[32] When The Beatles disbanded, Abbey Road had sold over 7 million copies worldwide. According to EMI, its worldwide sales reached 7.6 million copies in October 1972. This was also the first Beatles' album to reach the 10-million mark in worldwide sales, in 1980. It achieved high placings (often as the highest placed Beatles album) in 'best albums in history' polls carried out between 1997 and 2006 in the US, the UK, and Australia.[3][33][34][35][36]
Abbey Road, The Beatles (partially) and Let It Be were the only Beatles albums to be recorded on professional eight-track reel to reel tape machines, rather than the four-track machines that were used for prior Beatles albums starting with the single "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in 1963 and the album A Hard Day's Night in 1964. EMI's management had not approved the use of their then-new 3M eight-track deck until shortly after the sessions for their 1968 single "Hey Jude". Also, the Moog is prominently featured, not merely as a background effect, but sometimes playing a central role, as in "Because" where it is used for the middle 8. It is also prominent on "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" (played using a ribbon strip) and "Here Comes the Sun". The instrument was introduced to the band by Harrison who, earlier in 1969, had used one to create his Electronic Sound album.
Abbey Road was also the first and only Beatles album to be entirely recorded through a solid state transistor mixing desk as opposed to thermionic valve.
One of the assistant engineers working on the album was a then-unknown Alan Parsons. He went on to engineer Pink Floyd's landmark album The Dark Side of the Moon and produce many popular albums himself with The Alan Parsons Project. John Kurlander also assisted on many of the sessions, and went on to become a successful engineer and producer, most noteworthy for his success on the scores for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
The sleeve was designed by Apple Records creative director Kosh.[37] It is the only original UK Beatles album sleeve to show neither the artist name nor the album title on its front cover.
The front cover design, a photograph of the group traversing a zebra crossing, was based on sketched ideas by McCartney[38] and taken on 8 August 1969 outside EMI StudiosonAbbey Road. At around 11:30 that morning, photographer Iain Macmillan was given only ten minutes to take the photo whilst he stood on a step-ladder and a policeman held up the traffic.[37]
In the scene, the group walk across the street in single file from left to right, with Lennon leading, followed by Starr, McCartney, and Harrison. McCartney is barefoot. With the exception of Harrison, the group are wearing suits designed by Tommy Nutter.[39] To the left of the picture, parked next to the zebra crossing, is a white Volkswagen Beetle motor-car which belonged to one of the people living in the block of flats across from the recording studio. After the album was released, the number plate (LMW 281F) was stolen repeatedly from the car. In 1986, the car was sold at auction for £2,530[40][41] and in 2001 was on display in a museum in Germany.[42] The man standing on the pavement to the right of the picture is Paul Cole (c. 1911 – 13 February 2008),[43] an American tourist unaware he had been photographed until he saw the album cover months later.[43]
The image of the Beatles on the crossing has become one of the most famous and imitated in recording history.[37] The crossing is a popular destination for Beatles fans[37] and there is a webcam featuring it. In December 2010, the crossing was given grade II listed status for its "cultural and historical importance"; the Abbey Road studios themselves had been given similar status earlier in the year.[44]
The songs on Abbey Road have been covered many times (see the song articles for more details) and the album itself has been covered in its entirety.
One month after Abbey Road's release, George Benson recorded a cover version of the album called The Other Side of Abbey Road. Later in 1969 Booker T. & the M.G.'s recorded McLemore Avenue (the location of Stax Records) which covered the Abbey Road songs and had a similar cover photo.[45]
Additionally, several artists have covered some or all of the side B medley, including Phil Collins (for the Martin/Beatles tribute album In My Life), Soundgarden, Dream Theater, The String Cheese Incident, Transatlantic, The Punkles, Tenacious D, Umphrey's Mcgee, 70 Volt Parade, Furthur.
All tracks are written by Lennon–McCartney, except where noted
| No. | Title | Lead vocals | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Come Together" | Lennon | 4:20 |
| 2. | "Something" (George Harrison) | Harrison | 3:03 |
| 3. | "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" | McCartney | 3:27 |
| 4. | "Oh! Darling" | McCartney | 3:26 |
| 5. | "Octopus's Garden" (Richard Starkey) | Starr | 2:51 |
| 6. | "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" | Lennon | 7:47 |
| No. | Title | Lead vocals | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Here Comes the Sun" (Harrison) | Harrison | 3:05 |
| 2. | "Because" | Lennon, McCartney and Harrison | 2:45 |
| 3. | "You Never Give Me Your Money" | McCartney | 4:02 |
| 4. | "Sun King" | Lennon, with McCartney and Harrison | 2:26 |
| 5. | "Mean Mr. Mustard" | Lennon | 1:06 |
| 6. | "Polythene Pam" | Lennon | 1:12 |
| 7. | "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" | McCartney | 1:57 |
| 8. | "Golden Slumbers" | McCartney | 1:31 |
| 9. | "Carry That Weight" | McCartney with Lennon, Harrison and Starr | 1:36 |
| 10. | "The End" | McCartney | 2:05 |
| 11. | "Her Majesty" | McCartney | 0:23 |
According to Mark Lewisohn,[38] Alan W. Pollack[46] and Barry Miles.[47]
| Year | Chart | Peak Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1969 | UK Albums Chart[48] | 1 |
| Country | Date | Label | Format | Catalogue number |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 26 September 1969 | Apple (Parlophone) | LP | PCS 7088 |
| United States | 1 October 1969 | Apple, Capitol | LP | SO 383 |
| Japan | 21 May 1983 | Toshiba-EMI | Compact Disc | CP35-3016 |
| Worldwide reissue | 10 October 1987 | Apple, Parlophone, EMI | CD | CDP 7 46446 2 |
| Japan | 11 March 1998 | Toshiba-EMI | CD | TOCP 51122 |
| Japan | 21 January 2004 | Toshiba-EMI | RemasteredLP | TOJP 60142 |
| Worldwide reissue | 9 September 2009 | Apple | RemasteredCD | 0946 3 82468 24 |
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| Preceded by | Billboard 200 number one album 1 November – 26 December 1969 3–16 January 1970 24–30 January 1970 |
Succeeded by |
| Preceded by Hair (soundtrack) by Original Broadway Cast |
Australian Kent Music Report number-one album 25 October 1969 – 1 March 1970 |
Succeeded by Led Zeppelin II by Led Zeppelin |
| Preceded by
Blind FaithbyBlind Faith |
UK Albums Chart number-one album 4 October – 20 December 1969 27 December 1969 – 7 February 1970 |
Succeeded by
Let It BleedbyThe Rolling Stones |
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