Abbey Road to top charts 50 years on from release

THE Beatles’ famous Abbey Road album is on course to top the charts 50 years after it was first released.

The album, which emerged from the final recording sessions in which all of the Fab Four took part, stormed into the charts in October 1969, spending 17 weeks at number one.

Buoyed by the release of a 50th anniversary edition including unheard material, Abbey Road stole a lead of 12,000 chart sales over last week’s winner, Beatles fanatic Liam Gallagher.

The Oasis singer (47), last week scored his second solo number one album, titled Why Me? Why Not.

Abbey Road’s album cover, showing John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Sir Paul McCartney and George Harrison striding single file over the zebra crossing outside the north-west London studios, is one of the most widely recognised in music history.

In August fans of the Liverpool group flocked to the zebra crossing to mark the album’s five-decade anniversary.

Beatles lookalike band the Fab Four arrived in a replica of Lennon’s psychedelic Rolls-Royce car and fans posed for pictures on the spot during the gathering.

Elsewhere in the charts, Lewis Capaldi’s former number one album Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent climbed to number three following his recent BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge Symphony, according to the Official Charts Company.

South London collective D-Block Europe are on course for this week’s highest new entry with their new mixtape PTSD, starting at number four.