THE BEATLES
Abbey Road APPLE CORPS 10/10
Streets ahead: 50 years on, Abbey Road remains the greatest farewell in pop history.
ON the morning of August 8, 1969, the photographer Iain Macmillan took precisely six pictures of the four Beatles walking in single file across the zebra crossing opposite EMI Studios for the sleeve of the band’s 11th, and final, studio album. However, what seemed like a penny-pinching alternative for an album tentatively entitled ‘Everest’ – named in tribute to sound engineer Geoff Emerick’s favourite brand of cigarette, with a potential cover shoot in the Himalayas – was in fact all part of a carefully constructed plan. The photograph, like the album itself, was designed to show the band walking away from the studio in which they had spent so much of the previous seven years.
“I think in a way it was the feeling that it might be our last, so let’s just show ’em what we can do,” recalled Paul Mccartney of mind-bogglingly productive sessions convened to clear the air in the wake of January 1969’s fractious recordings for Let it Be. “Let’s show each other what we can do and let’s try and have a good time doing it.”
Fifty years on, Abbey Road remains both The Beatles’ biggest-selling album – 17 million sales and counting – and their most realised and cohesive work. While Sgt Pepper strained for significance and – let’s face it – the ‘White Album’ was little short of schizophrenic, Abbey Road captures the Fab Four at their most mercurial. It’s the sound of John at his raunchiest, George at his most soulful and Paul at his most melodic, all climaxing with a 16-minute song suite which, as well as directly addressing their own legacy in “Carry That Weight”, hinted at Lennon and Mccartney’s future directions.
No surprise, then, that these lavish 50th-anniversary editions do everything in their power to remind us that Abbey Road remains the greatest farewell in pop history. Both the CD and vinyl versions come with a 100-page, 12-inch hardbound book featuring a foreword from Mccartney, while the 23 demo and session recordings – mostly unreleased – come with a brand-new 5.1 mix by Giles Martin. Rather than embellish the analogue eight-track master tapes, Martin applies the sonic equivalent of window cleaner, burnishing the original mixes to a surround-sound gleam. So George Harrison’s arpeggio guitar parts on “Here Comes The Sun” come with added sparkle, while Ringo’s drums throughout have a blinding clarity which suggests they were recorded this morning (Starr himself flagged up the improved percussive sound in April). Such digital hyper-realism can be off-putting for those used to the comforting crackle and hiss of vinyl. Lennon’s lead vocal is so front and centre on “Come Together” it feels like he’s belting it out in your living room, and there’s a nagging sense that some of the original’s analogue warmth has been sacrificed on the altar of modernity (in Martin’s defence he sees these hi-tech reinventions as a means to reboot The Beatles’ music for the download demographic).
So what of the new stuff? It’s been 22 years since Macca suggested that any further attempts to raid the Apple vaults should be called ‘Scraping the Bottom Of The Barrel’, yet while there’s very little here of the calibre of the ’90s Anthology series, there’s plenty to savour. A ferocious version of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” recorded at Trident Studios in Soho in February 1969 is the standout thanks to an electrifying Hammond organ solo from Billy Preston, while a Mccartney demo of “Goodbye” – recorded for Mary Hopkin – and an edit of the Side Two medley entitled “The Long One”, which sees “Her Majesty” spliced between “Mean Mr Mustard” and “Polythene Pam”, will delight completists. A swaggering 1969 studio demo of “Come And Get It”, meanwhile, makes you think that Abbey Road’s loss was clearly Badfinger’s gain.
The most spine-tingling moments, however, come when the listener gets
to eavesdrop at the studio door. When producer Glyn Johns is forced to explain to Lennon during a session at Trident that their next take will have to be the last of the evening owing to a noise complaint, you can almost hear the crackle of tension (“What are they doing here at this time of night?” retorts the tightly coiled Beatle). Equally, when a bristlingly aggressive take of dadaist classic “Come Together” collapses, Lennon ad-libs, “He’s got teenage lyrics!”, suggesting that even in his late-beatle pomp, the singer’s insecurities still lay just below the surface.
Ultimately, this first ever remixed and expanded version of Abbey Road (as opposed to the remastered 2009 reissue) acts as a timely reminder of The Beatles’ brilliance. That totemic sleeve, meanwhile – parodied by everyone from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Kanye West – continues to cast a spell over generations of musicians who secretly know the Fab Four’s myriad achievements will never be equalled. It’s no coincidence that Canadian rapper Drake, who recently surpassed The Beatles’ record for the most Billboard Chart hits, celebrated with an Abbey Road tattoo. See you in 50 years, Drake?
As John, Paul, George and Ringo surely knew as the shutter clicked six times on that iconic September day exactly 50 years ago, Abbey Road is the sound of The Beatles walking into history. Extras: 8/10. See panel above.