http://www.therockradio.com/2006/09/...bbey-road.html
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Flashback: Beatles release Abbey Road
It was on this day 37 years ago (September 26th, 1969), that the Beatles' final album Abbey Road was released. Although the Let It Be album was released the next year featuring earlier unreleased tracks, Abbey Road was the last album the Fab Four recorded together.
The album's working title had been Everest -- after a brand of cigarettes their engineer smoked -- before the group simply chose the name of the street where their recording studio was. Abbey Road spent eleven weeks at Number One and featured the double A-sided single "Come Together" and "Something," the highest-charting Beatles song written by George Harrison. Paul McCartney commented on the song in The Beatles Anthology saying, "'Something' was out of left field... It appealed to me because it has a very beautiful melody. I thought it was George's greatest track."
The group had been in the slow process of breaking up since their return from India the previous year, and struggled through 1968's White Album as well as the month-long movie shoot that resulted in 1970's Let It Be album and film. By the spring of 1969 John Lennon was drifting further away, after marrying Yoko Ono and embarking on the first of several anti-war "bed in" events. Paul McCartney was eager that the group not end on the sour note that had became the Let It Be project, and rallied the group to produce an album on par with classics like Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Renown Beatles author Bruce Spizer told us that some of the credit for the aural quality of Abbey Road has to go to the Beatles' chief engineer and their producer: "Some of that obviously was due to the great techniques that Geoff Emerick and George Martin were putting forth on these, where, y'know, the Beatles wanted a certain sound, it was their job to somehow create it."
From the opening funky groove of Lennon's "Come Together" through Harrison's classic ode to spring "Here Comes The Sun" to McCartney's mini-opera that dominated side two, the Beatles managed to put their personal and business differences aside to produce an album that rivaled, if not topped, their greatest work.
Ringo Starr recalled during The Beatles Anthology that, "I think it shows on record when we were excited: The track's exciting and it all comes together. It doesn't matter what we go through as individuals... When it gets to the music you can see that it's really cool... we all put in one thousand percent." On August 20th 1969 all four Beatles attended the album's final mix and running-order session. It was the last time all four Beatles were together in a recording studio.
The recording studio Abbey Road was built in 1929 by the Beatles' British record label EMI and named EMI Recording Studios. It was only after the album's success that EMI formally changed the studio's name to Abbey Road.
Flashback: Beatles release Abbey Road
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