Abbey Road Turns 50

Today we are going to look at one of the best albums of all time from one of the best groups of all time and the impact it had not just to the music scene but in pop culture as well and that album is Abby Road, the eleventh studio album by The Beatles.

The album recording session was recorded from February till August of 1969 and was released on September 26, 1969, in the UK first then a few days later in the US on October 1 of that year. The album added in a mixture of other music genres such as progressive rock, the blues, and the group also added in the use of the Moog synthesizer and Leslie speaker. After everything that had happen during the Get Back recording session and, the group knew that Abbey Road would be the last album they would work on together. Paul McCartney had this to say about wanting to work on what may be their final studio album:

“I think it was in a way the feeling that it might be our last, so let’s just show ’em what we can do, let’s show each other what we can do, and let’s try and have a good time doing it.”- Paul McCartney

During the recording sessions there were some hits such as the group were talking to each other and playing the way they wanted to play as George Harrison once said:

“We did actually perform like musicians again” – George Harrison

Soon after they finished recording Abbey Road, John told the others that he was leaving the group to create a new group the Plastic Ono Band, soon after in April of 1970 Paul announced that he was leaving the group and thus the end of the Beatles.

The music from this album is lively, at times bluesy, at other times simple yet beautiful and other times kind of odd but in a good way. Songs like Come Together, You Never Give Me Your Money, I Want You (She’s So Heavy) and Polythene Pam it sounds like they channeled the heavy blues/rock sound and it works. Other songs like Something, Oh! Darling, Octopus’s Garden, Because and Golden Slumbers they played it safe with these songs. The one song that I think was the odd one out was Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, it just didn’t fit well with the album at all and the one song that was the best song in this album was Here Comes The Sun which was written by Harrison. From beginning to end of Here Comes The Sun you can here that they were being themselves and enjoying playing with each other and with George singing at his best, its no wonder this song was universally praised by everyone.

At the end of the day, Abbey Road still holds up very well after all these years. Just recently an official music video of Here Comes The Sun was released on YouTube and it was a great way to celebrate the album turning 50. Producer and “Fifth Beatle” George Martin had this to say about Abbey Road

“It was a very very happy album. Everybody worked frightfully well and that’s why I’m very fond of it.” – George Martin, Producer on Abbey Road and Fifth Beatle