Abbey Road – The Beatles

Abbey Road Studios, summer 1969

On 26 September 1969, the Beatles released the last album they would record together, and the cover makes that goodbye a walk across a road. Abbey Road does not sound like a band falling apart, even with the split already coming. The voices lock. The bass, played by Paul McCartney on most of the record, is melodic enough to be a second lead. George Harrison, so long the junior songwriter in the room, offers Something and Here Comes the Sun, two songs that have lasted past the argument about who was allowed to write them. The zebra crossing on the cover, photographed by Iain Macmillan on 8 August 1969, took a few minutes and a policeman holding the traffic. The album was that summer’s work.

They recorded it mostly in April, July, and August 1969, back at Abbey Road Studios, with George Martin producing and Geoff Emerick returning to the desk. Let It Be had already been filmed and would come out later, messy and public. This one was the cleaner exit. A Moog synthesizer, new in the room, colors Here Comes the Sun, Because, and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. Come Together comes in on a slow, heavy groove. I Want You (She’s So Heavy) ends side one by simply stopping, the tape cut, the longing left in the air because the tape stops, not the singer. Ringo Starr gets Octopus’s Garden, a child’s map of peace, and it belongs here because several songs here want a smaller, quieter life.

Side two is the part Lennon would later call a pop opera and dismiss. McCartney wanted a suite: fragments stitched until they felt like one afternoon. Martin helped sew them. You Never Give Me Your Money starts the walk. Little songs hand the melody to the next little song. Then The End, where the three guitarists take turns on the solo, McCartney, Harrison, Lennon, in that order, a last polite sharing of the spotlight. The final line is almost too plain to be the last thing they recorded as a working group. The plainness is deliberate. After all the arranging, a sentence you could say to someone leaving a room.