A STROLL DOWN ABBEY ROAD

50 YEARS SINCE IT FIRST TOOK THE WORLD BY STORM, THE BEATLES’ GAME-CHANGING 11TH ALBUM REMAINS A CORNERSTONE OF MODERN POP MUSIC. AND LATER THIS MONTH, THE ANTIPODEAN ROCK COLLECTIVE (DRIVEN BY EX- POWDERFINGER FRONTMAN DARREN MIDDLETON) ARE DUE TO GIVE I

Although it features some of their sharpest and most iconic tracks, The Beatles never banked too hard on 1969’s AbbeyRoad. Technically their final studio album ( LetItBe came out a year later, but was recorded largely in ’68), its marketing campaign was one of the band’s more lowkey – though, as the biggest name in music at the time, an assault of adverts would’ve hardly been necessary – and early reviews were largely hit-andmiss. But in the decades since, it’s been reexamined with a contemporary ear to wicked success, and has gone on to be revered as one of The Beatles’ greatest recorded efforts.

As a result of their performing years ending long before its release, The Beatles never played anything from AbbeyRoad live. Its respective members have by way of their own solo vehicles, of course, but as for the real thing… No dice. Such has made it an obvious choice for tribute acts – you don’t have to fret about doing right by an artist’s original performance of a record if that performance doesn’t exist to begin with. And later this month, the Antipodean Rock Collective (ARC) will be taking

AbbeyRoad around Australia for a string of hotly anticipated theatre shows – on which it’ll be giving the LP its own angular, rip-roaring twist (and shout).

“We’re not going to try to be The Beatles in the sense where I’ll be Paul and Davey [Lane] will be George,” says ARC member (and ex-Powderfinger legend) Darren Middleton. “Y’know, there’s a lot of tribute bands that do that, and that’s not what we’re trying to do here – in a totally respectful way, we’re going to be giving AbbeyRoad a good kick in the ass. We’re going to do it in a way that a band would play

this band’s music, y’know? Not some put-together session band format. The Beatles never played these songs live, anyway, so I guess we can do whatever the f*** we want!”

In addition to Middleton and Lane (the latter of You Am I fame), the ARC is rounded out by Mark Wilson (Jet) and Mark ‘Kram’ Maher (Spiderbait), with a handful of guest collaborators jumping aboard specially for the AbbeyRoadLive tour. “There’s about eight of us in total,” Middleton says.

“Ash Naylor will be onboard, Linda Bull’s going to be there to do some singing, we’ve got James Fleming on keyboards and Brett Wolfenden on drums… It’s a pretty massive setup.”

Given the varied corners of the Aussie rock world its respective constituents ruled over, the ARC is in prime position to give AbbeyRoad some well-deserved renovations. But while they’re all kinds of keen throw their own spin on the 17-track opus (and a second full set of other Beatles gems), Middleton makes clear that theirs won’t be a totally esoteric take on it.

“There’s definitely a balance,” he explains. “You have to be respectful to the work – because y’know, you are presenting someone else’s art – but out ethos for this project is that we want it to be a celebration; a celebration of this band that we all love, and has inspired all of us at different times and in different ways during our lives. So we want to treat [ AbbeyRoad] with respect, but we also want to have a shittonne of fun with it.”

In contrast to most typical tribute acts, too, the ARC are taking on AbbeyRoadLive with the same gravitas as any of its members’ main gigs. They’ll be taking to venues that most hot-button acts of today will pack, like Brisbane’s (recently opened) 3,300-capacity Fortitude Music Hall. It might seem ambitious at first, but the present-day relevancy of AbbeyRoad itself more than justifies the breadth of the tour. 50 years on, its production still holds up as world-class; the sounds are bold and tight and distinctly modern, and the energy that flows through its 40-some minutes – particularly the loose and luminescent second half – makes it one of those rare albums that any generation of music fan can appreciate.

“The record still jumps out of the speakers in so many ways,” Middleton rhapsodises. “It’s quite a bizarre record for The Beatles, because y’know, it was towards the end of their lifespan as a band, and there are a few songs that feel like half-finished sketches that were somehow glued together… I don’t even know how it happened for them – it’s just amazing, y’know? And everyone knows the songs and can sing along to them and all of that, but when you really dive into the finer details, they’re incredibly, incredibly well-crafted. Whether they just happened to be that way through the haze of smoke and whatever else was going on, I don’t know. But the harmonies, the guitar parts, the hooks… It’s amazing.”

Middleton’s go-to guitar for the AbbeyRoadLive tour will be his all-black Epiphone Casino – the guitar he normally wields in the ARC, but a notably fitting choice for this run in particular, as The Beatles themselves leaned heavily on the Casino to lay down the guitar tracks on the album itself.

The rest of Middleton’s rig is decidedly pared back; as he runs us down, “The key to my sound throughout a lot of these songs is a guitar pedal which is like a Leslie simulator, but it’s from a small company in America called Option 5; the pedal is called the Destination Rotation, and I had it modified so that when it changes between the fast-spinning Leslie and the slower stuff, it’s very gradual. But that pedal is on almost the whole time for me, because with the speaker on this kind of low-turn setting, it’s just… It’s just got that specialsound, y’know?

“It’s as close as you could get to actually plugging into a Leslie, which is quite unique in itself, obviously – but it’s also something The Beatles did quite a lot themselves. It’s not necessarily on every song, but that’s my secret weapon for these shows, for sure!”