'Abbey Road' at 50

After last year's White Album commentary on this blog, you're probably wondering what I'm going to do this year for the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the last album the Beatles would ever record together, Abbey Road. I regret to report that there will not be a comparable series of commentary for various reasons, including constraints on my time, other endeavors I'm pursuing, and the fact that not every song on Abbey Road is worth going over in great detail. Remember, roughly half of the songs on Abbey Road are in the form of a long medley, because John Lennon and Paul McCartney left most of the medley songs in an unfinished state.

Of course, Abbey Road is still a monumental album, one that put rock on the pinnacle of artistic and cultural influence.  Sadly, rock and roll has gone downhill since, first slowly, then at a much more accelerated pace owing to the rise of hip-hop and the fall of practically everything else in popular music.   But I come to celebrate, not mourn, so I will be commenting on Abbey Road for its fiftieth anniversary sporadically over the next several weeks in the same casual manner that I wrote about the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper in 2017.  As I did with Sgt. Pepper's fiftieth anniversary, I plan to comment on a few of the songs on Abbey Road, the ones I consider to be the most important, and I also plan to write a little about the trivial and anecdotal aspects of the LP, including, obviously, a look at the cover.

This is not the cover, as you can gather.  It's one of many outtakes from the photo session for the record sleeve, this one showing the Beatles walking toward, not away from, the recording studio.  It - or an outtake like it - has been the source of a meme you might have seen on Facebook that reads, "WE MUST GO BACK - MUSIC NEEDS US."  

That's wishful thinking, alas, and so is the idea that a new Beatles will rise from the wasteland that is the popular music of today.  Rock's dominance of pop ended some time around the turn of the millennium, and the increased corporatization of the record (or "streaming," since not too many people bother with physical, tangible records anymore) business precludes another high-quality band that can play instruments and write songs from rising to the top when there's so much money to be made in pop mediocrity.  Hence, Ed Sheeran.  Abbey Road was the Beatles' parting gift to popular music, and as the twenty-teens stumble to a close, the dearth of fresh talent makes us appreciate it even more.

And Abbey Road almost didn't get recorded.  Between February and May 1969, a few of its songs were randomly recorded, with the Beatles and sometimes Chris Thomas, George Martin's assistant, taking the lead on guiding the recordings, although George Martin was technically the producer.  The first of these sessions was, in fact, helmed by Glyn Johns, and at Trident Studios, not Abbey Road Studios (then still called EMI Studios).  Nothing was expected to come of any of this . . . until Paul McCartney called George Martin and told him the Beatles wanted to make another album.  "Will you produce it, really produce it?"  Martin agreed, but only if the Beatles allowed him to be in control of the production the way he had been before the White Album.  "Yeah, we will," said Paul.  "Only please let's do the album."  Today, July 1, marks fifty years since the recording of Abbey Road began in earnest.  

More on this great album soon.