THE BEATLES
Fifty years on, MOJO digs deep into Abbey Road – with the men who helped make it – and reports exclusively on the unheard outtakes that bejewel a brand new edition of the Fabs’ last masterpiece.
The last album recorded is the jewel in their crown: proof that, while they were together, the magic never left them. A brand new edition – including two discs of outtakes – reveals more: how the Fabs’ Indian summer invented the decade to come even as it elegised the one about to end. Fifty years on, MOJO celebrates the last songs they left us and previews the forthcoming reissue. But first, let’s get back, with
, to April 1969…
EORGE MARTIN WOULD WISTFULLY RECALL the sessions that began, for him at least, on April 14, 1969 – painting an appealing tableau of John, Paul, George and Ringo at their happiest and most productive after the faltering Let It Be scenario of January 1969, from which he’d been initially excluded. While Martin – The Beatles’ Mr Chips-ish producer/A&R for the vast bulk of their astonishing output – could be excused a lapse into sentimental fantasy, thebanter included on bonus discs in the forthcoming new edition of Abbey Road attests to his recollections. There’s plenty of good humour and mutual support in evidence, even during one of the many takes of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer that McCartney reputedly forced everyone to endure. “It was good,” says McCartney of a July 9 take. “It had some nice bits in it… It would be nice to have the good bits and the other bits…” A wag, John or George, pipes up: “The bad bits…”
And yet, comfortable in each other’s company as they may have appeared, The Beatles’ association was approaching its end. The Abbey Road album had been finished barely a month when Lennon, whose year had been tumultuous, stated in a meeting that he wanted a “divorce” from the band. Had it been on his mind during the recording? How could it not?
Things are never as neat and tidy as history suggests. It’s unclear, for instance, where miserable Let It Be ended and miraculous Abbey Road began. Recordings from January were being mixed (generally at Olympic in Barnes) as new songs, destined for Abbey Road, were being recorded at Abbey Road. The earliest recordings that ended up on Abbey Road weren’t made with Martin but with designated Get Back helmsman Glyn Johns at Trident Studios in Soho. At the very least it’s fair to say the material was protean and the demarcation was blurred.
What’s harder to dispute is the special richness of the album they eventually concluded on August 25, or that in its ambition, ingenuity and reach for beauty and sonic novelty it was classic Beatles. Critics at the time, however, were not so certain of its brilliance. Some thought it a bit fussy, a bit soppy, a bit gimmicky. Some wrote that The Medley which made up the bulk of its second side was pretentious, others that it was the album’s saving grace. The band’s first album recorded on Abbey Road’s new EMI TG12345 Mk 1 8-track console certainly sounded smoother and airier than previous Beatles releases. People were not yet used to rock’n’roll records sounding like this, but they would be ver y soon. Even at the end The Beatles were ahead of their time.
But The Beatles weren’t just ace studio musicians and/or once-in-a-generation sonic visionaries. It was their songs that had made them the Kings of Music, and it’s with the songs that MOJO’s celebration of Abbey Road will begin…