‘Walls’ sings history of Abbey Road
Rarely do you see Elton John – a Grammy-winning Knight of the British Empire – behaving like a bona fide fan boy.
Yet that’s precisely what happens midway through the new documentary “If These Walls Could Sing” (streaming Friday on Disney+), Mary McCartney’s touching tribute to the myriad artists, from The Beatles to Oasis, who recorded at London’s Abbey Road Studios.
John recalls a day in 1969 when he was just a young session piano player on the Hollies’ “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.” Suddenly, Paul McCartney appeared and promptly sang the recently released “Hey Jude” to the slack-jawed group.
“He probably has no idea what that moment meant to me, but hopefully now he does,” says John, visibly moved.
Message received, says McCartney, 53, daughter of Paul and Linda McCartney and sister of fashion designer Stella. “He loved it,” the director says of her father’s reaction to the clip. “And I think it meant a lot to Elton to come back here and say that.”
Those are just some of the magical moments conjured by this famous and still functioning recording studio, whose historical significance is on par with Sun Studio in Memphis, Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios in New York and Sunset Sound in Hollywood.
Much of Abbey Road’s history was a revelation to McCartney, who grew up crawling around the studio’s floors.
“I didn’t know it was 90 years old, I didn’t know any of it except for The Beatles” and Paul and Linda McCartney’s subsequent band, Wings, she says. “Part of the reason to do this documentary was just to be able to show that photo of my mom leading a pony across the zebra crossing.”
The pedestrian crosswalk that leads to the studio is famously featured on the cover of “Abbey Road,” the last album recorded by The Beatles.
And the pony would be Jet, a luxuriously maned creature that Linda McCartney decided should come to work with the family. When you’re a Beatle, you can bring a pony to work.
But trouble came to venue in the late ’70s as its financial fortunes flagged. Mary McCartney was shocked to discover that “there were serious plans to perhaps turn the place into a car park.”
Salvation came with a touch of serendipity. A film scoring studio in the area was going out of business, so Abbey Road’s director installed a projector and a screen, and invited movie directors to come visit.
Along came John Williams, who recorded the soundtrack to “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and later some of the “Star Wars” films there. Of the experience, which leveraged the London Symphony Orchestra, director George Lucas tells McCartney, “It was amazing, like opening a Christmas present.”