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Though I am an avid Beatles fan, the articles in this series are the result of research and fact checking rather than personal insight or actual interviews - so this is more of a report and not an editorial by any means. For more information, please visit www.beatlesbible.com - a site where you'll find a wealth of information about The Beatles, from their earliest days to their final recording sessions in 1970.
This series will run every Monday evening for 12 consecutive weeks in an effort to comprehensively cover the entire Beatles' canon with a focus on one particular song each week. Each Monday evening we will play an entire Beatles' album in it's entirety to coincide with this feature.
You can listen to the Beatles' album Abbey Road, which includes the side two Medley, in it's entirety beginning at 5:30 PM CST and again at 11PM CST on Jivewired Radio. To listen, activate the radio player in the right sidebar, or follow this link to launch Jivewired Radio in a new window.
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Day Twelve: The Abbey Road Medley
"And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."
-- Lennon-McCartney, The End
After the near-disastrous sessions for the proposed Get Back (released as Let It Be) album Paul McCartney suggested to George Martin the group get together and make an album "the way we used to," free of the conflict that began with the sessions for The Beatles (aka The White Album). Martin agreed, stipulating that he must be allowed to do the album his way. In a sustained attempt to cover the cracks that were becoming increasingly visible in their personal and musical relationships, they reconvened for Abbey Road.
In their interviews for the Beatles Anthology series the surviving band members stated they knew at the time this could very likely be the final Beatles product and therefore agreed to set aside their differences and "go out on a high note."
"I was quite surprised when Paul rang me and said 'We're going to record another record, would you like to produce it?' And my immediate response was 'Only if you'll let me produce it the way we used to.' And he said, 'We want to do that,' and I said 'John included?' to which he said. 'Yes, honestly.' "
-- George Martin, The Beatles On Record
The result was an album dominated by a historical song cycle on side 2, in which such fragmentary compositions as You Never Give Me Your Money, Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, She Came In Through The Bathroom Window and Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End segued impeccably into a convincing whole.
"I think before the Abbey Road sessions it was like we should sort of put down the boxing gloves and try and get it together and try and make just a really special album."
-- Paul McCartney, The Beatles On Record
Abbey Road is the twelfth and final studio album recorded by The Beatles, though it was the eleventh released. Let It Be was the last album released shortly after the Beatles' dissolution in 1970. Abbey Road was released on September 26, 1969 in the United Kingdom, and October 1, 1969 in the United States.
Abbey Road is regarded as one of The Beatles' most tightly constructed albums, although the band was barely operating as a functioning unit at the time. Rolling Stone magazine initially gave the album a mixed reception: Their November 15, 1969 issue features two very different reviews—a strongly negative one from Ed Ward, who particularly criticized its overproduction, and a rave review from John Mendelsohn.
Abbey Road became one of the most successful Beatles albums ever. In the UK the album debuted and spent its first 11 weeks in the UK charts at #1, before being replaced for just one week to #2 by the Rolling Stones release Let It Bleed. However, the following week Abbey Road returned to the top for another 6 weeks, completing 17 weeks at the top.
Along with the rest of the Beatles' canon, The Beatles was re-released on CD in newly re-mastered stereo and mono versions on September 9, 2009.
On November 13, 2012 The Beatles released a full vinyl box set of their entire canon, manufactured on 180-gram, audiophile quality vinyl with replicated artwork.
Written by: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr
Producer: George Martin
John Lennon: harmony vocals, rhythm guitar (1965 Epiphone E230TD(V) Casino)
Paul McCartney: lead vocals, bass guitar (1961 Hofner 500/1)
George Harrison: lead guitar (1968 Fender Rosewood Telecaster)
Ringo Starr: drums (1968 Ludwig Hollywood Maple)
Get it at:
Amazon | iTunes
01. Come Together
02. Something
03. Maxwell's Silver Hammer
04. Oh! Darling
05. Octopus's Garden
06. I Want You (She's So Heavy)
07. Here Comes The Sun
08. Because
09. You Never Give Me Your Money
10. Sun King
11. Mean Mr. Mustard
12. Polythene Pam
13. She Came In Through The Bathroom Window
14. Golden Slumbers
15. Carry That Weight
16. The End
17. Her Majesty
When the Beatles disbanded, Abbey Road had sold over 7 million copies worldwide. According to EMI, its worldwide sales reached 7.6 million copies in October 1972. This was also the first Beatles' album to reach the 10-million mark in worldwide sales, in 1980.
In 2001 VH1 named it the 8th greatest album ever and in December 2003, it was named the 14th best album of all-time by Rolling Stone magazine.
"The second side of Abbey Road, you know I think for me, is one of the finest pieces we've ever put together."
-- Ringo Starr, The Beatles On Record
The two album sides are quite different in character. Side one is a collection of single tracks, while side two consists of a long suite of compositions, many of them being relatively short and segued together. The main impetus behind the suite approach was to incorporate the various short and incomplete Lennon and McCartney compositions the group had available into an effective part of the album. Side Two of The Beatles' Abbey Road crystallizes many of the aspects that made them the greatest rock band of all time.
"We had lots and lots of bits of things; John had a bit of a song called 'Polythene Pam', and we needed a way to tie them all together. So we hit upon the idea of meddling them all, which gave the second side of Abbey Road a kind of sort of, like an operatic sort of structure, which was quite nice because it got rid of all of these songs in a nice way."
-- Paul McCartney, The Beatles On Record
Abbey Road - Side II
1. Here Comes The Sun - This is Harrison's second song on the album and one of his best-known songs, written in Eric Clapton's garden while Harrison was "sagging off" from an Apple board meeting, which he considered tedious. It was influenced by the Cream song Badge, which was co-written by Clapton and Harrison.
2. Because - This features a Moog synthesizer, played by Harrison and also features three-part harmonies by Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison, which were then triple-tracked to sound like nine singers. The results of this have been compared in sound to the Beach Boys.
3. Medley Part I
a. You Never Give Me Your Money - The first song of the Abbey Road medley. It was written by McCartney and based loosely on The Beatles' financial dealings with Allen Klein as well as the financial issues with Apple.
b. Sun King - The working title was Here Comes the Sun King, but was shortened to avoid confusion with the song Here Comes the Sun. At the end of the song, the music stops abruptly and a Ringo Starr drum fill leads into the next track.
c. Mean Mr. Mustard - Written in India, Lennon said that the song was inspired by a newspaper story about a miser who concealed his cash wherever he could in order to prevent people from forcing him to spend it. On reflection, he didn't think highly of the composition, describing it in Anthology as "a bit of crap I wrote in India."
d. Polythene Pam - This song is linked with the previous song musically, as the two run together without pause. The two songs are also linked lyrically, where it is mentioned that Mean Mr. Mustard has a sister named Pam. Originally, that line "his sister Pam..." in the song was "his sister Shirley...", but Lennon would change the line to contribute to the continuity of the Abbey Road side two medley. The song Her Majesty was originally set between Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam.
e. She Came In Through The Bathroom Window - McCartney said the song was inspired by Apple scruffs (dedicated fans who hung around outside the Abbey Road studio and the homes of the Beatles), who broke into McCartney's St John's Wood home. Diane Ashley, one of the group, said, "We were bored, he was out and so we decided to pay him a visit. We found a ladder in his garden and stuck it up at the bathroom window which he'd left slightly open. I was the one who climbed up and got in." She then opened the front door to let the others in, and they stole a number of photographs.
4. Medley Part II
a. Golden Slumbers - This is based on the poem Cradle Song by Thomas Dekker and written in a lullaby style. McCartney saw the sheet music for Dekker's lullaby at his father's home in Liverpool, left on a piano by his stepsister Ruth McCartney. McCartney could not read music at the time and was unable to read the score, and so he created his own melody and arrangement.
b. Carry That Weight - Music critic Ian MacDonald interpreted the lyric as an acknowledgment by the group that nothing they would do as individual artists would equal what they had achieved together, and they would always carry the weight of their Beatles' past. McCartney said the song was about The Beatles' business difficulties and the atmosphere at Apple at the time. In the film Imagine: John Lennon, Lennon says that McCartney was "singing about all of us."
c. The End - Notable for featuring Starr's only drum solo in The Beatles catalog. Starr disliked solos, instead prefering to cater to the vocals and other instrumentation. The End was initially intended to be the final track on Abbey Road, but it is followed by Her Majesty. McCartney said, "I wanted [the medley] to end with a little meaningful couplet, so I followed the Bard and wrote a couplet."
d. Her Majesty - According to sound engineer John Kurlander, McCartney said, "I don't like 'Her Majesty,' throw it away." Kurlander cut it out, but said, "I'd been told never to throw anything away, so after he left I picked it up off the floor, put about 20 seconds of red leader tape before it, and stuck it onto the end of the edit tape." When McCartney heard Her Majesty in its new position and with the 20-second dead air lead, he liked it and decided that it should remain on the album. "Typical Beatles," McCartney would later add, "all accident."
No other tracks, however, on Abbey Road or any other Beatles’ album, capture this sense of closure and farewell more than the last two, The End/Her Majesty. Together, they form a fascinating reverse image of the other. The structure of the entire medley is such that it builds towards the end so that it is impossible not to consider The End as the penultimate track and as the final message of the Beatles. And what a message it is: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” Simple, elegant, deep.
However... The End is not, in fact, the end, thanks to the aforementioned mistake. That role lies instead with Her Majesty, and its final message, which is really no message: just a silly little song with a silly little lyric, simple production value, few instruments, a single voice... and, to top it all off, it ends on the wrong note.
Some interesting facts about Abbey Road and the medley:
- Abbey Road was the first and only Beatles album to be entirely recorded through a solid state transistor mixing desk as opposed to a thermionic valve.
- One of the assistant engineers working on the album was a then-unknown Alan Parsons. Parsons went on to engineer Pink Floyd's landmark album The Dark Side Of The Moon and produce many popular albums himself with his band The Alan Parsons Project.
- The man standing on the pavement in the background of the photo of the band crossing Abbey Road that became the album cover is Paul Cole, an American tourist. Cole was unaware he had been photographed until he saw the album cover months later.
- The loud chord that occurs at the beginning of Her Majesty is the ending, as recorded, of Mean Mr. Mustard. The song ends abruptly because its own final note was left at the beginning of Polythene Pam, as the original concept called for Her Majesty to be placed between the two.
- The End features the sound of McCartney, Harrison and Lennon sparring on lead guitars, taking it in turns to perform two-bar sequences over the "Love you, love you" backing vocals. Lennon described it in his 1970 interview with Rolling Stone: "There's a nice little bit I played on Abbey Road. Paul gave us each a piece, a little break where Paul plays, George plays and I play."
- Carry That Weight unusually features vocals from all four Beatles - fittingly, as the chorus anticipated the shadow that the group would cast upon their subsequent solo years.
- Mean Mr. Mustard was originally considered for inclusion on the White Album, although it wasn't recorded in the studio until 1969.
- On the song Sun King, part of the song's middle section was reversed and retitled Gnik Nus on the 2006 album Love. The song's guitar intro also appeared at the close of Octopus's Garden on the same album.
- The crossfade from You Never Give Me Your Money into Sun King is an assembled collection of tape loops containing the sounds of bells, birds, bubbles and insects.
"It was a very, very happy album. Everybody worked frightfully well and that's why I'm very fond of it."
-- George Martin, The Beatles On Record
"We didn't know, or I didn't know at the time that this was the last Beatles' record we would ever make, but, it felt a kind of bit like we were reaching the end of the line collectively."
-- George Harrison, The Beatles On Record
"I think I was in a way that it might be our last, so why not just show them what we could do. Let's show each other what we could do, and let's try to have a good time doing it."
-- Paul McCartney, The Beatles On Record
It is inconceivable that any group in the future can shape and influence a generation in the same way as these four individuals. More than 40 years later, the quality of the songs is such that none show signs of sounding either lyrically or musically dated.
"Keep that one! Mark it fab."
-- Paul McCartney
Previous In This Series: Day Ten: Hey Jude
Visit The Beatles Bible!
Sources: The Beatles Bible; Many Years From Now - Barry Miles (author); Beatles Interview Database; The Beatles Recording Sessions - Lewisohn, Mark (author); Whitburn, Joel (2007), Billboard Top Pop Singles 1955-2006. Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin; Playboy Magazine; Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties, Ian McDonald (author); The Compleat Beatles Vol. 2, Milton Okun (author); Apple Records; Oldies Music Guide, Robert Fontenot (author); The Beatles On Record, BBC Televison; What Goes On, The Beatles' Anomalies List; The Beatles, Hunter Davies (author); The Beatles Let It Be Documentary, January 1969; The Washington Post Archives;