#5 The Beatles, 'Abbey Road' (1969)

Previously #14

“And in the end/The love you take/Is equal to the love you make,” and so ends the last song on the last album by arguably the greatest band of all time, The Beatles. It also ends their run on this journey. I’m getting ahead of myself, however. Firstly, while completely true, a few of the above statements are a bit misleading. It was the last album that the band would record together, but not their last to be released. ‘Let It Be’ was released seven and a half months later. And while ‘The End’ is the last credited song on the record, there is a another one. ‘Her Majesty’ followed ‘The End,’ making it the first instance of a hidden track on an album. Originally part of the medley on side 2, McCartney requested it be removed. As per the rules of the studio, any edited material had to be left at the end of the mix. An 18-year-old tape assistant had done this and left a note for the mastering engineer with regards to the song. The mastering engineer, now located at The Beatles’ office in Savile Row, didn’t understand the note, and so mastered the album as is. Upon review, the band were surprised to hear it but thought it funny and so they left it. But back to the beginning, producer George Martin had quit during the sessions for the previous record (which became ‘Let It Be,’ produced by Phil Spector, and the only Beatles album not produced by Martin). Paul McCartney suggested to him that the band get together and make a record they way they used to He agreed to come back only on the condition that the band allowed him to produce this record his way, like he did on the earlier albums, including the strict discipline that went with it. As mentioned previously, there was major animosity between the members on ‘The White Album’ (#29) and the ‘Let It Be’ (#342) sessions. Also, the production on ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ (#24) was so over the top, that the band had become an overblown version of themselves. ‘Abbey Road’ was about going back to basics. No one knew it would be the final record, but Harrison later said “it felt as if we were reaching the end of the line.”

The set of songs opens with ‘Come Together,’ a song which would later get Lennon sued for plagiarising Chuck Berry’s ‘You Can’t Catch Me.’ Lennon wrote the lyrics (the ones he didn’t steal) during his famous “bed-in” in Montreal. Harrison continued to flourish as a songwriter, contributing the next track, ‘Something,’ amongst his best compositions with The Beatles. Frank Sinatra, who covered the song, would famously say that the song was his favourite Lennon/McCartney composition. ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,’ a McCartney composition, is one of the songs that Lennon famously referred to as “Granny Music.” He stormed out of the studio, refusing to play on it. The others felt it was too complicated. Harrison said “we had to play it over and over again until Paul liked it. It was a real drag,” while Ringo commented “It was granny music but we needed stuff like that on our album so other people would listen to it.” ‘Octopus’s Garden’ was the second and last song that Starr had contributed to a Beatles record. He wrote it on Peter Sellers’s boat after quitting the band for 2 weeks during the ‘White Album’ recording. ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy),’ the third longest Beatles song, features the great Billy Preston on Hammond organ. It’s a good old classic Blues jam, such a far cry from The Beatles of old, but the perfect representation of what they’d become. It’s a Lennon song through and through, a love song to Yoko. By this stage they were well and truly 4 solo artists collaborating like a super group. Lennon and Martin didn’t know how to finish the song, so they simply cut it. The next side starts with another Harrison composition. ‘Here Comes The Sun’ is arguably his greatest Beatles song. To be honest, it’s a tight competition. He really turned it on towards the end of their career. ‘Because’ is a Beethoven-inspired song, and the last before the medley. The 16-minute 8-part song, is actually the perfect ending to their career. For the last time as The Beatles, and the first in a long time, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr worked together as a perfect unit. Seamlessly transitioning from song to song, doing things the way they used to, allowing Martin to guide the songs. Culminating in ‘The End,’ for the first time ever on a Beatles song, each member played a solo, as if saying goodbye with their instruments. The final bow. In fact, it was the first time that Starr had played a drum solo on a Beatles song. “And in the end/The love you take/Is equal to the love you make,” that’s the message The Beatles had been conveying since day one. It’s all about love. Whatever happened with them, they would have one thing in common until the end of their lives. Only those 4 people knew what it was like to be a Beatle. And only they went through that experience. Despite everything they had been through, they loved each other regardless. ‘Abbey Road’ is an amazing album. The fact that it placed higher than ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ might be controversial to some. To be honest, they’re both masterpieces. They’re both as good as each other. They’re both classics. The Beatles had so many good records that the vote would have been split. The Beatles end with the most entries by an artist. 9 of their 13 releases made it into the list. That’s 70% of their catalogue. A pretty major achievement, but no surprise. Their music still inspires and innovates to this day. They pushed the boundaries, so hard, in fact, that it destroyed them. But thankfully, we’ll always have their music, and in the end, that’s all that really matters.

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