English life has always revolved around a North-South divide, somewhat similar to the one that Americans know and love in their own country. In the Swinging Sixties there was a UK musical divide: either you loved those southern rogues of pop The Rolling Stones, or your loyalties were with the northern 'fab four', The Beatles. Growing up in that decade I fell into the latter group of fans, although I don't think I ever really had a favourite Beatle like so many other people did. I tended to waver between the cuddly Ringo Starr and the cool John Lennon.
The first album I owned was A Hard Day's Night that I used o play on my Dansette, which was a record player a little higher up the evolutionary ladder than a wind up gramophone player, but not much. The next one was Sgt. Pepper's and the next Abbey Road. I bought it with my own money and that was no mean feat in those days for someone still a stone's throw away from their teenage years. To my young ears the sophistication of Come Together and She's So Heavy were rather too advanced for my taste but songs like Maxwell's Silver Hammer and Octopus's Garden were just great. And we mustn't forget the beguiling George Harrison composition Something. Side 1 of the album is a box of chocolates - something for everyone.
Side 2 of Abbey Road by contrast is a remarkable feast of ideas and styles cascading into each other. Just listen to Mean Mr Mustard through to the end, including Her Majesty. There's great song-writing, guitar playing, heavenly vocal harmonies, studio trickery, and everything that inspires. It strikes me that the running of one track into another so that it seems like one long medley must have been a revolutionary technique at the time. Here was the band and their legendary producer George Martin at the height of their collective creative powers. What other group could ever hope to claim the crown after this? Even the cover, with the musicians strolling across the zebra crossing near Abbey Road Studios seems to be a triumph. No wonder they released this album before the depressing Let It Be which had actually been recorded earlier.
The Beatles had suffered badly recording Let It Be in front of cameras and in the presence of Yoko Ono. They missed the civilising guidance and wise head of George Martin. Thank goodness that they didn't split then but decided to have another go at recording an album. Martin agreed to do it on the basis that it would be done in the same way as they'd done the earlier albums - just them and the studio staff, and no distractions. What he knew was that in those circumstances the magic that the band could produce would bubble to the fore, and indeed Abbey Road was just as wonderful as he knew it could be.
What is remarkable listening to the record thirty odd years later is the quality of the recording. Despite all our advances in recording technology, this album has a clarity and sense of dynamics that is so often missing these days. It is the kind of album that any engineer or produced should keep in the studio to use as a reference point to remind them of what it's all about - how to capture performances and deliver quality sound that involves the listener rather than distracting them.
I am always grateful that the Beatles made this album, taking a traditional English folksong Golden Slumbers and showing what it could be in the Twentieth century, recording the amazing vocal harmonies of Because (triple tracked), using Paul McCartney as a rock singer rather than letting him stray into his normal whimsy, playing electric guitars like they're supposed to be played just before The End, writing the sharp lyrics of Polythene Pam and She Came In Through The Bathroom Window....
OK so I really like Abbey Road. It's my favourite Beatles album.