The Last Album.
Nobody calls Abbey Road a concept album, but by now, I think it’s become one anyway. The concept?
The Last Album.
They might as well have given it the title The Last Album. Too similar to The White Album? I guess Cream beat them to it by titling their last album Goodbye. But Abbey Road doesn’t merely feel like the last Beatles album. It feels like the Last Album, period. That’s it, we’re done, no more albums needed, from anyone, ever.
Ignore the fact that it’s not even, technically speaking, the Beatles’ last album. Ignore the fact that, while recording the album, the four members of the Beatles were not staring portentously into each other’s eyes at the start of each take, pronouncing to each other, “We are recording our last album.” Ignore the fact that, weeks after the album’s completion, the Beatles considered, in admittedly tense discussions, that they might just make another album.
No one cares. It is The Last Album.
It’s hard for me to listen to Abbey Road and imagine it as anything other than the last Beatles album. It oozes Last Album from every pore. Maybe the music was telling the band something that they didn’t consciously know themselves. It sounds nuts, that they didn’t know. But in subsequent interviews, the ex-Beatles admitted that they didn’t go into the sessions with the specific intention of making a swan song. Instead they said things like, “We all kinda knew.” “We all kinda knew?” What the hell is that? Honestly, it might have been smarter on their part if they’d just lied to us.
Can you imagine the Beatles making another album after Abbey Road? It would have been like George Lucas making more Star Wars movies after Return of the Jedi. “And in the end, the love you take … oh hey, here’s one more album!” What would it have even sounded like? Trying to make another album after Abbey Road might have been the stupidest idea of all time.
*****
There’s something I’ve always wondered about. For roughly six months there, from October 1969 to April 1970, before the break-up went public, Abbey Road was simply the next Beatles album, not the last Beatles album. That’s like not knowing Revelation is the last book of the Bible. The “last album” is all I’ve ever known it as. If Abbey Road isn’t the last Beatles album, then what the fuck is it?
An album that was far from a commercial flop, certainly: it hit #1 in the US for 11 weeks and the UK for 17 weeks. But if listeners didn’t know Abbey Road was their last album, I wouldn’t blame them for having found some of the material, especially on side one, light and inconsequential. “We’ve waited 10 months … for this?”
A while back, I watched a video from a favorite YouTube channel called “Yesterday’s Papers” which dug up a contemporaneous article from Melody Maker that features Roger Chapman of the band Family listening to side one of Abbey Road a week before its official release, and sharing his first impressions with the paper. Get a load of this:
“Come Together”: “I don’t know – the Beatles are doing Humble Pie now. This sounds very moody for the Beatles.”
“Something”: “And I’ve heard this tune ‘Something’ before somewhere. In the past the Beatles have been able to borrow things and put themselves into it. This is a bit too obvious though.”
“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”: “And ‘Maxwell’ doesn’t really make it for me. This is really a drag, because I really dig the Beatles. This is an inferior version of ‘When I’m 64.’ Shall we try another track?”
“Oh! Darling”: “Oh! Darling” doesn’t make it at all. They’d better turn up with something good soon.”
“Octopus’s Garden”: “It’s Ringo. Ha ha! If another group did this, it would be a complete washout. No, I can’t get into this at all. Let’s hear the next one.”
“I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”: “I know this one, it sounds like ‘Coming Home’ by Mel Torme.
Ever since their last album, the Beatles have been making records as if it’s something they have to do because they are the Beatles. Maybe the whole thing has got beyond them. If this album had been by anybody else, it would have been a complete washout. The Beatles have been a major influence on the whole music scene, but I don’t see them being an influence anymore.
There you have it. The Beatles’ time as an influence was done all right. Roger Chapman, or shall I say, Nostradamus Chapman? The major influence on post-‘60s popular music was clearly going to be the band Family and its singer Roger Chapman.
But you know what? Although I detect some artistic envy, and a secret wish that his competition would fail, I kind of understand. “Oh! Darling”? Basic ‘50s doo-wop. “Octopus’s Garden”? That’s like three chords, and George gave Ringo two of them. “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”? Not exactly “Eleanor Rigby” on the lyrical front here. No, it’s the emotional subtext of the album being the band’s last dance, and the intensity imbued in the instrumental arrangements and the production nuances, that elevate what might have been otherwise straightforward material into something poignant and autumnal. What makes it hard for other albums to compete with Abbey Road is that other albums don’t have the weight of the entire Beatles catalog behind them.
I would also like to point out to Roger Chapman that he hadn’t listened to side two yet.
*****
By the time I first heard Abbey Road in December 1991, I had a lot more context than Chapman did, although my initial experience with the album’s songs was also a strange one.
Thanks to KFRC’s “Beatles A to Z Weekend” (as discussed in my White Album essay), I first heard the majority of the album’s tracks in a completely scrambled order – and this wreaked havoc on the medley especially. Now, I don’t know who was running the show at the radio station, but when they decided to play every Beatles song in alphabetical order for four days straight, they seemed to be making up their rules on the fly. For instance, they played “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “With a Little Help from My Friends” as one song (when “With a Little Help from My Friends” really should have been played between “Wild Honey Pie” and “Within You Without You”) but chopped up the Abbey Road medley all to hell. And they didn’t chop it up with the greatest of finesse, either. While “Carry That Weight” received a proper fade-out before colliding with “Chains,” “Mean Mr. Mustard” came to a sudden, context-less halt, before the baroque fingerpicked acoustic guitars of “Michelle” appeared, and “Polythene Pam” turned dead silent before, one second later, the clippety-clop rhythm of “P.S. I Love You” followed (and shouldn’t “P.S. I Love You” have preceded “Paperback Writer” anyway?).
Overhearing this and realizing I was unaware of the sacrilege that was occurring, my father spoke up: “No, no, no, that’s supposed to go into the next song on the album. They’re messing the whole thing up. You really shouldn’t be listening to it like that.” Listening to what like what? It all sounded fine to me. But even a man who hadn’t heard Abbey Road since his freshman year of college in 1970 and had never once played it, or any other Beatles album, to his son was disturbed by what was going on. So, two weeks later, he bought me the cassette, we sat in the car and listened to side two, and he said, “See? You see how it’s supposed to go?” I may not give him credit for many things, but I’ll give him credit for this.
The acquisition of that cassette in the winter of ‘91-‘92 coincided with a burst of my involvement with the Boy Scouts, which means that my memories of discovering Abbey Road have merged in my mind with memories of discovering a love for camping, and it’s hard to distinguish the two. Hearing Abbey Road now, I think of smelly tents, and redwood forests, and hot chocolate burning my tongue, and trying to light a fire while it’s raining, and trying to fall asleep in a sleeping bag that’s not quite warm enough. The album’s pastoral elements (“Here Comes the Sun,” “Octopus’s Garden,” “Because,” “Sun King”) made it a nice fit for the outdoors. Even the trees on the album cover seemed to give it a woodsy quality. Sgt. Pepper doesn’t work as well in the forest. Maybe it’s ironic that the album the Beatles made while their gang was dissolving served as the soundtrack to my own (much younger and not as exciting) gang forming.
*****
Why did the Beatles break up?
Why is the sky blue? Where do babies come from? Why did Napoleon/Hitler invade Russia? Which god is the true god?
Sorry, got carried away there. But as someone who is usually regarded as the biggest Beatles scholar of whichever room I happen to be in, it often comes my way. To a newbie, the breakup makes no sense. They were at the top of the game, the peak of their popularity. Why the hell would you break up?
In some ways, it’s a question that can’t be answered.
Which hasn’t stopped people from trying. Including me, right now.
Some will dive into long-winded, footnote-laden exegeses discussing a combination of: Yoko Ono, Allen Klein, Brian Epstein, Phil Spector, Apple Corps., John getting fed up with his songs (“I Am the Walrus,” “Revolution,” “Don’t Let Me Down”) continually being relegated to b-side status, George getting fed up with his songs being relegated to unrecorded status, and everyone getting fed up with Paul’s pushy, controlling nature. But they try to answer the question as if one single person or event holds the key. Whenever I’m asked, I tend to get more elusive. I go for the uninformative yet melodramatic.
The Beatles broke up … because the world wouldn’t let them continue to exist.
Ironically, it was their own greatness that did them in. The world simply loved them too much.
In other words, I blame the fans.
For John Q. Baby Boomer, the Beatles were the gift that kept on giving. Everything they ever released was awesome, and yet awesome in a new, unexpected, and strangely satisfying way, without fail.
Did these fans do anything to earn or deserve this gift? Not as far as I can tell. And yet, when they realized that this gift was going to cease being delivered to them, did they say, “Thank you, Beatles, thank you for giving us this wonderful gift which we neither earned nor deserve”?
No. No, they did not.
Instead, they said, “How DARE you, Beatles, how DARE you fail to subsume your own wishes and desires in order to fulfill my own pathetic needs and wants. How DARE you.” Beatles fans were like Lennie in Of Mice and Men: In their overpowering, if sincere and instinctive, love for their object of affection, they smothered it to death.
For a proper contrast, take the Rolling Stones. Yes, the world loved the Rolling Stones, but not enough to smother them to death. The Rolling Stones are, as I type this, in defiance of all known laws of physics, apparently still together? You know why I think they were able to manage this? Because the fans gave the Rolling Stones so much more leeway. Brian Jones dies? Fine, just get a new guy. Mick Taylor leaving? Fine, just get someone else. Bill Wyman retiring? Huh, didn’t realize he was even a member of the band. I’m sure a couple of fans were upset at these changes in personnel, but you get the idea.
Now imagine the Beatles trying to swap out a member. Fans would have unleashed a deafening, fire-breathing roar that would have made Godzilla’s sound like a butterfly fart. The human race would never have given the Beatles the flexibility to do this. For them, the Beatles had to be THOSE FOUR EXACT GUYS or the whole enterprise would have been a farce.
On a similar note, imagine the Beatles announcing a hiatus. The Stones have done this many times, such announcements usually inducing yawns among all but hardcore fans. But the Beatles announcing a hiatus? Panic in the streets. Armageddon. World War III.
What’s interesting is that, inevitable as it may have seemed, the breakup was unplanned. They never sat down together and decided to break up; they just started publicly bickering with each other. I think what happened was that, by 1969, they were attempting to take a hiatus, but quickly realized that the world wasn’t going to let them do that, so they had no choice but to break up good and proper.
You think you wanted a ‘70s Beatles reunion? Are you sure about that? I’ve come to the conclusion that such a reunion, despite being possible in theory, would have been impossible in reality. If fans had cared a little less about a Beatles reunion, then perhaps these four old chums might have been able to participate in a couple of casual, low-key, one-off projects. But no, everyone would have treated it like the second coming of Jesus (a figure who they were already more popular than anyway, so why bother?).
In other words: You wanted it so badly, Beatles fans, that you couldn’t have had it.
But people didn’t really want it anyway, even if they thought they did. I used to be one of those people, but I was twelve, and an idiot. In those pre-part-time Buddhist days, I used to think of the Beatles’ break-up as something sad and regrettable, a tragic outcome that, if I’d had a magic wand, I would have somehow rectified. I had little time for the solo material. But after having embraced part-time Buddhism, and after having made and lost friends in my adult years, I’ve realized that the breakup of the Beatles was the correct outcome – even the best outcome. As the man said, all things must pass. Not to mention that the sound of all those tangled emotions on display, and of four gods becoming human, is rewarding in its own way.
In the booklet for the 50th anniversary edition, I think David Hepworth puts it nicely:
Time has been kind to Abbey Road. One of the reasons time has been kind to it is that the subsequent 50 years have not thrown up a great deal that is superior to it. That was something we didn’t know at the time. Nor did we know that Abbey Road was, give or take the eventual release of Let It Be, going to be their swansong. When that became clear, there were a variety of reactions. There were some Ultras who felt that the Beatles were such a part of our lives that the four people who actually were the Beatles had no right to bring the Beatles to an end. Most of us were just happy that they’d had such a good run. Most of us didn’t think it was worth extending that run if it was to be at the price of making any of them miserable.
Precisely. Be glad you got what you did. The proper stance regarding Abbey Road isn’t to lament that the Beatles broke up and screwed us out of more albums, but to appreciate that Abbey Road exists at all. In other words: what’s astonishing isn’t that the Beatles broke up after making Abbey Road. What’s astonishing is that they didn’t break up before making Abbey Road.
Drama, and pressure. You think you deal with a lot of that in your life? Imagine being the Beatles. As George put it in the Anthology, “They gave their money and they gave their screams, but the Beatles kind of gave their nervous systems, which is a much more difficult thing to give.” Different sources paint different pictures, but by early 1969, as I understand it, things had gotten kind of ugly. They’d kind of had it with each other. You know what the last album of a band that’s had it with each other should sound like? It should sound like Let It Be. Sometimes you get something worse, say, a Mardi Gras or a Cut the Crap. A band on its last legs usually sounds like it’s on its last legs.
Abbey Road doesn’t sound like a band on its last legs.
Abbey Road defies logic. It defies reason. Many years ago, I was explaining this to a friend of mine one night, essentially saying a variant of what I’ve said above. After I paused, he summarized my observations for me:
“Their shambling corpse …. made the greatest album of all time.”
“Exactly!”
Every note of Abbey Road is like an extra gift that the universe has somehow given us. It didn’t have to be here. It wasn’t destined to exist. No one decreed that it would be so. But the universe reached down its music-loving arms, grabbed the Beatles by the throat and said, “There will be ONE MORE ALBUM. WHATEVER IT TAKES.”
*****
I can give a simpler answer to the question, “Why did the Beatles break up?”
The Beatles broke up because John Lennon quit the Beatles.
And John Lennon quitting the Beatles would pretty much finish off the Beatles. But I guess this raises a follow-up question: Why did John Lennon quit the Beatles?
I don’t know, man. John was an impulsive bastard. Fans act like John had some kind of “master plan,” but he didn’t really think too far ahead.
John didn’t like being told what to do. I suspect he resented the entire planet telling him, “You must stay in the Beatles and stay the Beatle version of John, forever.” “Oh, you all want me to never grow up and just sit here in my suit and moptop haircut satisfying your bottomless thirst for Beatles songs? Well fuck you. I’ll be whoever the fuck I want to be! I’ll gather up your dreams and spit on them!” The guy was a rebel, an anti-authoritarian. “You all hate Yoko? Well that just makes me want to showcase her unique vocal prowess even more prominently. You all want me to keep writing songs with Paul? Write your own God damn songs with Paul.” Billions of people the world over may have considered themselves Beatles fans, but John Lennon apparently wasn’t one of them.
Neither was George Harrison. Let’s call this Reason 1B to John’s Reason 1A. Another quote from George in the Anthology: “It was quite obvious that the Beatles became … you know, the thing that it started out being, it gave us a vehicle to be able to do so much, when we were younger and then we grew right through that, but it got to a point where it was stifling us, there was too much restriction, you know, it had to self-destruct.”
There’s a hilarious but telling scene in the bonus footage of the Anthology DVD, where Paul, George, Ringo, and George Martin are sitting around a console in Abbey Road Studios in 1995, listening to tapes of various tracks from the archive. When Martin starts playing an early take of “Golden Slumbers,” George asks, “Which album is this?” After the other three chuckle, Paul deadpans, “Foremost Beatle expert, George Harrison.” I’ll tell you one guy in that room who remembers which album “Golden Slumbers” is on. He probably thinks about it five times a day. But for George, the Beatles were something to put behind him. He didn’t enjoy thinking about it.
I feel bad for John and George in a way, because they never had the opportunity to just be Beatles fans. Maybe we got the better end of the deal.
Deciding to prioritize his Japanese conceptual artist girlfriend over the Beatles starting in mid-1968 was John’s initial, passive-aggressive attempt to quit the Beatles – a telling gesture, but not necessarily the dagger to the heart. If you’re looking for the one specific decision that led to the break-up, my vote goes to John, George, and Ringo choosing Allen Klein as the Beatles’ new manager over Paul’s vehement objections. But it wasn’t about Allen Klein per se; it was about breaking their own rule.
See, throughout all the madness, the whirlwind ups and downs of their roller coaster career, the Beatles had always had one rule: all decisions were unanimous. If one member said no, then all four said no. A lot of crazy shit went down during their chaotic seven-year run, but that one rule came in handy.
Until it didn’t. In a two-person partnership, such a rule can drive a pair insane; imagine that rule in a four-person partnership. This is why part of me finds it a divine miracle the Beatles stayed together as long as they did. How many times do you think one of them reluctantly agreed to go along with an idea that he detested (off the top of my head: pose for the Butcher cover; travel to a meditation compound in India; include “Revolution #9” on the White Album) in order to keep the peace? You can stomach those things for a while. But after six or seven years, all those little instances where you had to cave in for the sake of maintaining unity … it piles up and piles up until, one day, bang bang, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer comes down upon your head.
When the Beatles realized, in the wake of Brian Epstein’s death, that they simply weren’t up to managing themselves, John decided, after one quick meeting in January 1969, that Allen Klein was his man (proclaiming he had a “gut feeling” about it). And as far as George and Ringo were concerned, if John liked him, then they liked him too. Why sit around and second-guess yourself? Boom, done. But Paul had … heard some things. He had some concerns. He wasn’t ready to get on board so quickly.
And this was the point where I think John, George, and Ringo, unconsciously if not consciously, decided to break up the Beatles. In his book You Never Give Me Your Money, Peter Doggett describes a conversation between Ringo and a lawyer: “The lawyer also advised Starkey, as he had his colleagues, that it was possible – more than possible, in fact – that McCartney would choose not to sign the deal. Starkey told him that wasn’t a problem: he, Lennon, and Harrison wanted the American [Klein] to manage them, and McCartney could look after himself.”
I mean, good on Ringo for standing his ground and refusing to kowtow to Paul, but on the other hand … the only way for Paul to “look after himself” would be to be in a different band. What happened to that whole unanimity thing? One member was adamantly objecting to the choice of manager, but the other three decided they didn’t care anymore. It was basically their way of saying, “Well, leave the group then.” In May 1969, Klein prepared a contract. Paul refused to sign it. The other three signed it anyway. From Doggett:
By this time Klein was at a London airport, where he was about to board a plane for New York under the impression that the negotiations were over. He was paged and called to a phone, where he heard Lennon tell him, “Paul’s making trouble. You have to come back to Olympic.” … McCartney told his colleagues that he would present them with an alternative document to sign on Monday, and the other Beatles agreed that if they preferred his version, they would sign it. But, with the innocence of rich young men, they insisted that the document they had already signed should be ratified by the Apple board. McCartney objected, and was told, “Well, we’ll do it without you.” “They couldn’t,” he insisted years later, but the minutes of the board meeting that followed proved otherwise. Officially only three directors were required to form a quorum, and just before 8 p.m. on 9 May 1969 [Neil] Aspinall, Lennon and Harrison signed a resolution noting that the agreement with Klein had been ratified, and was now binding on the Beatles, their company, and their new manager. With a final fierce exchange of words, the Klein faction exited the studio, leaving McCartney to face the reality of his separation. He wandered through the Olympic complex and stumbled across the American rock musician Steve Miller. After McCartney had poured out his troubles, Miller suggested that work might distract him from his rage. So McCartney thrashed his drums while Miller recorded a song with the symbolically appropriate title of “My Dark Hour.”
This presumably explains Steve Miller’s guest appearance, decades later, on Flaming Pie, in case that had ever confused you. But when Paul said, “They couldn’t,” despite Doggett suggesting that the action was legal, I think Paul’s comment was correct. They couldn’t sign that document and expect the Beatles to stay together. The document wasn’t titled “The Beatles Are Officially Breaking Up,” but it might as well have been. Paul knew what it meant. It was three against one, and three against one broke the rule.
But he sucked it up for as long as he could. Because, unlike John and George, he enjoyed being in the Beatles. He didn’t want to quit the Beatles. The Beatles were the greatest band in the world. Why would you want to quit the greatest band in the world?
*****
Anyone else watch Get Back? That Peter Jackson thing? Funny, when it first came out, all my friends were falling over themselves, begging me to see it, ranting and raving, “It’s like you can see what the Beatles were actually like!” and “You’re watching them compose songs right in front of your very eyes!” I snidely pointed out to them that I had seen footage of the Beatles before, and that all this footage Peter Jackson had supposedly “found” had already formed the basis of a feature film that I had, in fact, viewed several times.
Then a buddy loaned me his password to Disney+. Well, at that price, why not?
I couldn’t tear myself away.
Two specific observations from my viewing of Get Back that I haven’t heard anyone else mention since its airing:
1. The entire time we observe the Beatles in January 1969, jamming, bickering, horsing around, smelling Ringo’s farts, giving Glyn Johns a hard time, etc., do you know what the number one album in the UK, the US, and approximately 20 other countries is? From the first shot of the film to the last, do you know which album is the best-selling album in the world? The White Album, by the Beatles. And how many times do the Beatles, or anyone else on camera, mention the White Album, during the whole nine-hour documentary? Maybe twice, if that.
They don’t care.
Imagine any other band releasing a global number one album, and being filmed the entire month that album happens to be at number one. It would probably come up in conversation more than twice, wouldn’t it? But the Beatles? They’re over it. They expected it. They’ve moved on. It’s old news. They probably weren’t all that impressed with it to begin with. They’re too busy working on their next project, or breaking up, or both. You have to admire it.
2. Here, in this documentary, is the biggest band in the world. Do they waltz into the studio followed by a massive entourage of bodyguards, chauffeurs, and lackeys carrying crates of champagne and caviar? If so, I missed it. As far as I can tell, they’re driving themselves to the studio like they’re members of some local bar band, not the Beatles. They eat Marmite sandwiches and biscuits. They have one roadie: Mal Evans. Imagine a documentary of Jay-Z and Beyonce. It wouldn’t look like this. The Beatles’ day-to-day lives seem kind of ordinary. Despite all the clashes of ego, one doesn’t get the sense that these four laughably famous people were strutting around with an air of self-importance. I watch Get Back and I think, “I could be in this band.”
That’s the thing about the Beatles. They’re so easy to relate to. I heard so many aspiring musicians say that Get Back inspired them to make more music. “They’re the freaking Beatles, and yet … it was like I was watching a documentary of my own band. We had the one guy who was obsessed with his girlfriend all the time, we had the one guy who was starting to write more songs and everyone was ignoring him and he felt like quitting, we had the one guy who was trying to take charge and boss everyone around … it was uncanny.” They’re the ur-text.
Another reason it’s easy to relate to the Beatles while watching Get Back is because, a lot of the time, I wouldn’t say they sound very good. They certainly don’t sound like they do on Abbey Road. Can someone tell me why George spends half the sessions playing his guitar with a sickly-sounding wah-wah effect? Was he surreptitiously attempting to sabotage everything? It’s nice that, 50 years later, we’ve been given access to copious amounts of footage of the Beatles recording an album. It’s just footage of the wrong album. The one time they agreed to film themselves in the studio was arguably their least inspired period in the studio. Oh, I have friends who prefer Let It Be over Abbey Road, but I just ignore them. (The Beatles: a band so great, they made two last albums?)
On the other hand, since Get Back shows them already working on “Something,” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” “Oh! Darling,” “Octopus’s Garden,” “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window,” “Golden Slumbers,” and “Carry That Weight,” maybe it is a documentary of them recording Abbey Road. Just not the good versions.
What Get Back showed, to me, is this: the Beatles’ idea to return to a live band aesthetic, after having potentially gone overboard with the studio recording approach, was a good one, but it ignored a key detail: as a live band, the Beatles were out of practice! Forget that they hadn’t toured since 1966; they hadn’t even performed in conditions conducive to decent live ensemble musicianship since, like … early 1963? And then they suddenly hoped to roll into the studio, press record, and lay down their master takes live, like they were Neil Young and Crazy Horse? Yeah, I don’t think so.
It’s one thing to declare you’re getting back; it’s another thing to turn back time. For this band, I think that ship had sailed. John and Paul might have found a happier medium between a more stripped back approach and a touch of studio craftsmanship on their early solo albums.
The thing is, there are plenty of tracks on Let It Be I would place among my favorite Beatles songs. It’s just that they’re the tracks the Beatles and George Martin tinkered with afterward, not necessarily the tracks that were performed live and left as is. “I Me Mine”? A hot little number, but you know what helped? George, Paul, and Ringo recording it in January 1970 the same way they’d been recording every Beatles song since Rubber Soul: laying down the basic track, then adding tasteful, energetic overdubs. “Across the Universe”? Love it, but the nucleus of the Let It Be version stems from February 1968. “Let It Be”? On the album mix, George really lets it rip during that guitar solo … a solo he recorded in January 1970.
Playing live in 1969, the Beatles sounded like a tight little band. Playing in the studio in 1969, they sounded like omnipotent gods. I think they needed the homey, deadline-free confines of their longtime security blanket, EMI Studios (not yet called Abbey Road Studios) to bring out the fire. “Polythene Pam,” “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” “The End” – is it just me, or do these songs rock harder and teem with more vigor than the songs from the rooftop concert? Get back, you say? How about get back to doing what you did better than anyone: screw around in the studio and take your freaking time?
*****
Thankfully EMI and Capitol Records quit messing with the intended track listing and running order of Beatles albums after Revolver, right?
About that. They quit messing with the running order, if your medium was vinyl. If your medium was cassette, then oh my goodness. Would you have liked a version of Revolver where the first track was “Good Day Sunshine”? A version of A Hard Day’s Night where the first track was “I Should Have Known Better”? Then welcome to my world. Beatles albums on cassette were a free-for-all.
The cassette version of Abbey Road, by comparison, kept the running order mostly intact, aside from one notable rearrangement: it swapped the positions of “Here Comes the Sun” and “Come Together.” In other words, the album opened with “Here Comes the Sun,” while side two opened with “Come Together,” and the rest of the running order resembled the LP.
My younger readers, who may have never owned a cassette in their lives, are asking “Why the hell would they do this?”
Math.
See, on vinyl, side one of Abbey Road runs to 24:53, while side two runs to 22:10. This would have meant that, if the cassette had mimicked the vinyl track listing, it would have featured almost three minutes of silence at the end of side two, and that would have been a giant hassle to fast-forward through. Ah, but with one simple switch of “Here Comes the Sun” and “Come Together,” both sides of the album managed to come out to precisely 23:30.
And let me tell you, this was precise. My Walkman sported a “reverse” switch, and when I pressed it the very moment “Her Majesty” ended, I would hear the opening acoustic strum of “Here Comes the Sun” a split-second later. Same with “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and “Come Together.” It was timed to perfection.
Except it completely fucked with the band’s intended running order.
Mainly, placing “Here Comes the Sun” at the start of side one put the two George songs right next to each other. At the start of the album. Which seems like a bad idea. I mean, great, so they evened out the lengths of the two sides, but … so what? Was it really worth dicking around with the running order of one of the most flawlessly sequenced albums ever just so that there wouldn’t be three minutes of silence at the end of side two? One could call it, at the very least, a dumb idea, at worst, blasphemy.
Also, I think I prefer the album this way.
Excommunicate me right now, but before you pass sentence, allow me to explain.
It happens to everyone. No matter how hardcore of a fan you are, at some point, you get sick of certain Beatles songs. Upon my first 306 listens, I adored “Come Together” as much as any of those songs, but one day, I must have hit my limit. If you called it your favorite Beatles song, I would respect that. Do I feel the need to put it on in the privacy of my own home? These days, not too often. Guess I’ve received my fill of walrus gumboots and spinal crackers. So, whenever I listen to a “proper” copy of Abbey Road, I find myself thinking, “Oh, right, it starts with this turgid, bluesy thing that I’m kinda sick of.”
But here’s the funny thing. When I listen to the version of Abbey Road as I knew it, the version I grew up with, where “Come Together” starts side two, I like the song again. I don’t mind it at all. It sounds pretty tasty in that spot. Coming after “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” it plays more like a low-key mood changer than an album tone-setter. It’s like, “Here’s John again, after he’s calmed down a bit.”
The bottom line is, I don’t think John was the right Beatle to kick off Abbey Road with.
By the time the album was being recorded, John had mentally checked out of the Beatles, and was mostly hanging around as a favor, although the song credits hide this well. At a surface glance, the writing appears to be evenly divided between John and Paul, but dig a little deeper, and a more muted picture of John’s involvement emerges. He was also in a serious car accident that kept him out of the sessions for several weeks, but given his feelings toward the band at the time, I doubt he was particularly bothered by this. “Good, let them record their own fucking songs without me!” is how I imagine he would have put it to Yoko, in between snorts of heroin and sips of tea.
John is entirely absent from the recordings of “Here Comes the Sun,” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” “Golden Slumbers,” and “Carry That Weight,” and barely plays on “Something” and “Octopus’s Garden,” and I think those tracks turned out pretty good. “Mean Mr. Mustard” and “Polythene Pam” were half-songs lying around from the Rishikesh days. The only composition written by John for Abbey Road that I think fits in with the poignant, autumnal ethos of the album is “Because.”
This is not to knock his contributions, but to point out that there might have been one Beatle who wasn’t terribly into the concept of making The Last Album, because he wasn’t all that upset about the band breaking up to begin with. Unlike George, who, despite sharing John’s sentiments about the break-up, said of Abbey Road, “I remember liking the record and enjoying it,” John spent the rest of his life complaining about the album, insinuating that it would have been better to release the Glyn Johns mix of Get Back first:
I had thought it would be good to let the shitty version out because it would break the Beatles, break the myth. It would be just us, with no trousers on and no glossy paint over the cover, and no hype: This is what we are like with our trousers off, would you please end the game now? But that didn’t happen. We ended up doing Abbey Road quickly, and putting out something slick to preserve the myth.
So sad. I feel terrible. You know why Abbey Road pissed John off? Because it made his post-Beatles life that much harder. If the band had ended with a thud, everybody would have left him alone. Instead, he had to put up with ten years of random assholes on the street asking him, “So when are you gonna get back together?”
This is part of the reason why “Come Together” has always sounded odd to me as the opener, because I find it a less fitting introduction to Abbey Road’s unofficial concept of “Yes, things have been getting ugly, but somehow, by the skin of our teeth, we’re going to make one last transcendent piece of music before the whole enterprise crumbles into dust and legal fees” than “Here Comes the Sun.” Even though George was equally glad the band was breaking up, unlike John, he understood the assignment. If Abbey Road is the four Beatles declaring a delicate, momentary truce in order to go out gracefully, “Here Comes the Sun” is the sound of that truce.
Listen to the journey the shy, hesitant Moog synthesizer makes during the bridge. At first, it pokes its dew-smothered branches into the frame from the left channel, like a trembling stalk unsure if it’s safe to pop above ground after the wildfires and floods (AKA the Get Back sessions) have scarred its habitat. It emits these low, fat notes, like it’s stuck in the dirt, barely able to sniff this rumored “sun,” then climbs another octave in the second bar, gaining thickness and strength, then climbs a third octave, now brimming with health and confidence, making itself heard even over the handclaps, until by the last bar of the bridge, it’s dancing so high up in the air, it’s practically laughing at the rest of the shrubs below, finally catching the rays it needs to thrive, while nevertheless still sounding fragile enough that I worry one gust of wind would snap it in two.
The beauty of “Here Comes the Sun” strikes me as a frail, uneasy beauty, one that could be crushed under the weight of external threats at a moment’s notice, and yet the frail, uneasy beauty manages to hold for three minutes and five seconds. Despite sporting some of the most unorthodox time signatures ever featured in a folky ballad (apparently it can be transcribed as either 11/8 + 4/4 + 7/8 or 11/8 + 15/8, but who’s counting?), its potentially jarring rhythmic shifts feel not only natural, but radio friendly. The fragile magic holds out just long enough for George to unleash a final, unaccompanied acoustic flourish using the chords from the bridge.
In other words: It’s been a dark, cold, lonely winter, but the Beatles are going to create that one last album, damn it, even if it kills them. And it’s going to be an uplifting, hopeful one. That’s the spirit I want my opening track to embody. Contrast this with “Come Together,” which embodies the spirit of … a failed Timothy Leary campaign theme song? In his book Tell Me Why, author Tim Riley suggests that “Come Together” is a warped Lennon self-portrait in the vein of “Help!” or “Strawberry Fields Forever”:
The references to his Bag press stunts with Yoko, now his constant companion (his “sideboard”), and his notorious abrasive humor (“spinal cracker”) lead illogically to the claptrap humor of “feet down below his knees.” The last line cuts through the myth and conveys a real sense of inner pain: the “disease” he carries is his own overbearing self-consciousness, his ever-present sense of insecurity and longing.
Sounds good to me, yet it only reinforces my feeling that a song so John-centric is a less-than-perfect opener for an album focusing on the group as a whole. Yes, it’s odd having the two George songs open the album, but it’s almost like the answer to an intriguing thought experiment. Q: What would the Beatles sound like if George Harrison were their front man? A: They would sound like the greatest band of all time.
Another benefit to the cassette’s sacrilegious switch: under this running order, the album starts with two George songs, winds through two Paul songs, a Ringo song, and three John songs, and then Paul takes us home with the medley, John getting a three mini-song cameo in between. This way, it’s like each Beatle gets his own “turn” at the steering wheel. With the correct order, what do you get? You get a ghastly mess.
I doubt I’m alone. That cassette was around for decades. I saw it in the cars of friends’ parents, in the houses of friends’ parents, and I didn’t hear any of them complain about their tampered copy of Abbey Road. Not everybody’s a stickler for detail, I guess. My friends’ parents probably didn’t notice the three extra songs on their CD copy of Revolver.
But I got used to that running order. I bonded with it. I saw my own past, present, and future in it. When I got an old vinyl copy of Abbey Road in college, I found myself barely playing it, and it took me some time to figure out why. The track listing was all wrong. It was like someone releasing a version of Tommy with “Do You Think It’s All Right” as the album opener and “Overture” as the first track on side three.
Plus, putting George’s two gems back-to-back feels like the Beatles rubbing their abundance of riches in everybody’s faces: “We’re so far ahead of you that even our baby brother’s songs are kicking your ass.” Granted, the prickly, arpeggiated electric harpsichord that opens “Because” does sound nice when following the acoustic denouement of “Here Comes the Sun,” but my ears still expect the inaugurating drum roll of “Something” shortly afterward. It’s like one kind of sumptuous followed by another kind of sumptuous. They’re two different shades of leaf on the same tree in autumn.
“Something” could have also been titled “Paul’s Greatest Bass Playing Ever.” Do yourself a favor: play “Something” and only listen to the bass line. Ignore all the other stuff (though I like all the other stuff). That bass line is where the gold lies. This is how you do intra-band tension the right way. It’s like George walked in and said, “Fuck you Paul, here’s the most tender, smooth, emotive, concisely structured ballad you’ve ever heard in your life,” and then Paul walked in and said “Hey, fuck you George, here’s the most melodic, tasteful, imaginative bass playing you’ve ever heard in your life.” Who won the battle?
We all did.
Do yourself another favor: check out George Martin’s isolated string arrangement, recently released on the 50th anniversary edition. In his AllMusic song review, Richie Unterberger describes it as “rather gushing,” perhaps comparing it unfavorably in his mind to Martin’s jarring, aggressive arrangements for “Eleanor Rigby” or “Strawberry Fields.” But what was buried and a bit bland on the original album mix gains some teeth in full stereo in the isolated mix, sounding like something Paul Buckmaster would have come up with for an early Elton John album. Weirdly, what it reminds me of the most is the reprise of “Wasted Time” on Hotel California. Hard to believe this was sitting in the can for 50 years. It’s like somebody restored a Rembrandt and found another Rembrandt underneath.
*****
I’m amused by how much some people hate “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” I mean HATE it. They think this song is the antichrist. They talk about it like it’s Hitler, Idi Amin Dada, and Vanilla Ice all rolled into one.
The haters probably feel like they’ve been given free license to hate it by John and George, who both expressed their dislike of it, complained about having to perform 6,000 takes of it in the studio (John doing this even though he didn’t play on it), and derisively referred to it as “Paul’s granny music.”
Good for them.
Check out the song’s Wikipedia page – but bring a shield to protect you from the all missives fired by writers claiming how “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” smashed to bits not only the integrity of Abbey Road, but of the entire Beatles catalog, with its mere existence:
Ian McDonald: “This ghastly miscalculation – of which there are countless equivalents on [McCartney’s] garrulous sequence of solo albums – represents by far his worst lapse of taste under the auspices of The Beatles … Thus Abbey Road embraces both extremes of McCartney: the clear-minded, sensitive caretaker of The Beatles in ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ and the Long Medley – and the immature egotist who frittered away the group’s patience and solidarity on sniggering nonsense like this.”
Jonathan Gould: “The sorriest aspect of ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ is thus the way it demonstrates how Paul’s workmanlike tendency to build on his past successes had caused him to translate the genuinely charming novelty and subversive parody of ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ into a personal subgenre of glibly clever songs that had devolved in the two years since Sgt. Pepper into a form of musical schtick.”
John Bergstrom: “In 2009, PopMatters editor John Bergstrom concluded his list “the worst of the Beatles” with the song. He said that while McCartney had previously created “some borderline-schmaltzy, music hall-inspired songs,” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” was “where even the secret admirer of ‘Rocky Racoon’ must draw the line.” Bergstrom described it as “Unnervingly ‘cute’, unrelentingly obnoxious, too literal-minded by half” and “the single Beatles song out of nearly 200 that is basically unlistenable.”
You hear that big, fat raspberry noise? That’s me, after reading the above comments. These guys all need to take that stick out of their butts and learn how to laugh at life a little bit. Maybe I’m off my rocker, but I find “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” kind of profound. It’s right in my part-time Buddhist wheelhouse. Notice how the comments that knock it fail to engage with its underlying message.
To me, the saving grave of the song is that it’s about a serial killer. So while it might seem cute and cloying on the surface, there’s a dark heart beating underneath. Sure, it’s cute and cloying … except that he’s a serial killer. People talk about it like it’s “Ebony and Ivory.”
Maybe I’m just a sucker for black humor. And like many of Paul’s “funny” songs, it’s not empty humor, but humor with a philosophical purpose: you never know when that hammer’s going to come down. As Paul explained, “It epitomizes the downfalls of life. Just when everything is going smoothly – ‘Bang! Bang!’ – down comes Maxwell’s silver hammer and ruins everything.” No matter how much you try to guard against it, suffering is always going to find you.
I also first heard the song when I was twelve. It went right over my head until about the fourth or fifth listen, and then I felt like I was in on a dirty little secret. To me, this song ruins nothing. Is it my favorite Beatles song ever? No. But I enjoyed it when I was twelve, I enjoyed it when I was twenty-two, I enjoy it still. All you haters can go suck on my silver hammer.
Let’s see, what other Abbey Road songs did John make obnoxious comments about? Oh, that’s right, “Oh! Darling.” This quote never fails to induce an eyeroll: “‘Oh! Darling’ was a great one of Paul’s that he didn’t sing too well. I always thought that I could’ve done it better – it was more my style than his. He wrote it, so what the hell, he’s going to sing it. If he’d had any sense, he should have let me sing it.”
Uh-huh. I’m no expert on vocal technique, so allow me to paste a few excerpts from the message board under the song’s entry on the Beatles Bible:
John could never have sung this in this key. It was simply out of his range. (Paul barely makes it either, but just, which is part of the fun here!)
John’s range was not nearly as good as Paul’s. While John probably could have hit the verse notes, tho it might have been a strain, there is no way at all that he could have even hit the chorus notes, let alone sing them well as Paul does.
Paul’s ability to go from soft lows to savage highs and yet be still in control and not screaming is what makes his voice perfect for this song.
Yeah. Nice try, John. Would it have been interesting to hear John give it a go? Sure. Would it have been interesting to hear Elvis sing “Stairway to Heaven”? Sure. Doesn’t mean it would have been better.
Again, I think it’s the stakes of the band’s break-up that elevate what could have been a retro stylistic exercise into something almost too emotionally intense for comfort. “When you told me you didn’t need me anymore/Well you know, I nearly broke down and cried”? Sounds like John telling Paul a certain something. You know what I hear in Paul’s performance? I hear a man channeling his fear, disgust, and desperation into his singing. But unlike John, Paul still has the ability to reassert self-control. At the end of the bridge, when all the instruments drop out, there’s that moment where his voice bounces around in the reverb, like he’s Wil E. Coyote and he ran too far off the edge of the cliff, with nothing under him. I can almost hear him look down, think “Oh shit, I’ve gone too far,” and then slip back onto land with that pirouette of “DIE-aye-uh-aye.” I will credit John, however, for providing that mean, barking guitar (at least according to the 50th anniversary edition booklet).
What goes for “Oh! Darling” goes double for “Octopus’s Garden.” Or should I say, what goes for “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” goes double for “Octopus’s Garden”? It’s the other Abbey Road track everybody loves to hate, often calling it a lame rewrite of “Yellow Submarine.” I remember being 15 years old and reading these comments from Mark Hertsgaard in A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles:
[George’s] zippy opening guitar solo in particular helps create the impression that there is more to this slight song than there actually is. Paul’s merrily clanking piano and the soaring background harmonies he and George contribute further the illusion. Here was another of the Beatles’ secrets on display: the way the group covered up the shortcomings of its various members. After all, how many other marginal singer-songwriters could rely on Paul McCartney and George Harrison to sing backing harmonies for them?
Ah, those tricky Beatles – tricking us into thinking a crappy song is actually good. But this viewpoint assumes its compositional qualities are supposed to be the main source of its appeal. Again, ignore the backstory at your own peril. I’ll take “Octopus’s Garden” over “Yellow Submarine” because of the deeper purpose it served for Ringo. From Beatles Bible: On 22 August 1968 [Ringo] temporarily walked out of sessions for the White Album after becoming disenchanted with the increasing tensions within the group. He took his family abroad for a boating holiday, returning to Abbey Road on 5 September.
Ringo elaborated in the Anthology:
I wrote ‘Octopus’s Garden’ in Sardinia. Peter Sellers had lent us his yacht and we went out for the day… I stayed out on deck with [the captain] and we talked about octopuses. He told me that they hang out in their caves and they go around the seabed finding shiny stones and tin cans and bottles to put in front of their cave like a garden. I thought this was fabulous, because at the time I just wanted to be under the sea too.
In other words, this was Ringo’s own creative way of dealing with the break-up. “We could be so happy you and me/No one there to tell us what to do”? Gee, I wonder who in Ringo’s life sat around and told him what to do (*cough* Paul). Seen in this light, “Octopus’s Garden” is Ringo’s “Here Comes the Sun,” where he’s longing for a reprieve from the ever-present interpersonal animosity and finds it, at least momentarily, in the natural world. To my ears, it’s this autobiographical element that gives “Octopus’s Garden” a psychological gravitas “Yellow Submarine” lacks. Simple? Sure. Slight? Eh, not considering the context, which I say makes it fit right in with the album’s unofficial concept of trying to find solace and transcendence amid the pain and uncertainty of the journey’s end. The hard truth is that you don’t get to live in an octopus’s garden. Instead you get saddled with decades of alcoholism. But maybe a marriage to a Playboy model balances that out?
John went the opposite direction with his spouse, although she did pose naked on Two Virgins, if anyone is curious how her porn career might have gone. Say what you want, but that naked body inspired some great material. Exhibit A: “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).”
One day in high school, a couple of friends and I were listening to Abbey Road, chewing the fat, sharing our thoughts, etc., and when “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” came on, my friends dissed the three-minute outro. “Nothing really happens, it goes on too long, it’s just self-indulgent.” Wait, what? I didn’t know anybody thought this way. The three-minute outro is its whole raison d’être. Stare long enough into the three-minute outro, and you’ll speed past galaxies and star clusters like Dave at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, until the sound abruptly drops out, and suddenly you’re in an 18th century bedroom and you’re 80 years old knocking over a wine glass.
There are two unexpected moments in “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” The last one gets all the love, but I’d like to draw your attention to the first one. See, humans anticipate events based on patterns. This ability helps us navigate our way through the world. “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” appears to follow a certain pattern: Whenever John sings “She’s so …,” an arpeggiated guitar riff enters, which is soon accompanied by frenetic organ from Billy Preston and John and Paul harmonizing a drawn-out “heav-aaaaaay.” This happens twice in the song. But when this appears to be happening a third time, with the instrumental build-up growing particularly intense, and John letting out a blood-curdling “Yeaaaa-eaaaah!,” John sings “She’s so…,” and the guitar riff enters … but the organ doesn’t follow. Nor does the “heav-aaaaay.”
That’s … weird.
Weren’t things about to get crazy? Instead, the music calmed down. I don’t get it.
Oh, things are about to get crazy, all right. It’s just that the crazy is going to sneak up on you. I love that sense of false calm, those initial few seconds at the 4:37 mark that give zero hint of the hideous vortex on the way. It’s like the frog in the boiling pot. That riff lulls you into a comatose state, then suddenly you look around and you’re being swallowed by a black hole. As with “Gimme Shelter,” the outro may feel ominous and menacing, but it does so in a seductive way. The band sounds like it’s being swallowed by a snowstorm, but it’s a sexy snowstorm.
Or, if you’d like to read more into the song than you possibly should, the outro is the sound of the universe slowly sucking the Beatles back into nothingness, returning the band to the void from whence it came. They were standing right here, changing the world, and then one day, POOF! Gone.
One more note: As a twelve-year-old, I possessed a magical power that never failed to impress my older brother: while listening to Abbey Road on cassette, I could predict, without fail, the exact moment when “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” would go silent. He kept testing my ability, staring at me like a hawk as the arpeggiated riff circled and circled.
“Is it now?”
“Nope.”
“This one!”
“Nope.”
He kept waiting for me to screw up at least once. But every time, only seconds before the song’s abrupt conclusion, I would blurt out “Now!” and his eyes would bug out.
“How can you tell??” His voice had an equal dose of hushed awe and irritation to it, as if I had made some pact with Satan in order to pull off this stunt. But like Coca-Cola before me, I never dared share my secret ingredient. (Hint: listen to Ringo.) Sadly, this trick is not nearly as impressive while listening to the album on other formats.
John famously claimed that he was inspired to write “Because” after hearing Yoko play Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” backward, but my theory is that he wrote “Because” after hearing the outro riff of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” played backward. Same bed frame, but very different sheets.
Listening to “Because” is like dancing on a cloud of cherub’s breath. The electric harpsichord George Martin plays to kick it off sounds like a mechanical spider accidentally plucked from an Asimov story and dropped into a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. The planet this song has been beamed from has yet to be discovered by any race, human or otherwise.
“Because” is what I mean by the miracle of Abbey Road. By all rights, John was done with the Beatles. Yet unlike “Come Together” or “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” “Because” doesn’t sound like a John solo track in waiting. Whatever part of his brain was ready to bolt took a couple of days off and decided to help the band record “Because.” A casual Beatle fan listening to it for the first time might not even guess John was the composer. I read one book saying the voice providing the high harmony is John’s and another book saying it’s George and … honestly who gives a shit? It just sounds like a wall of Beatles singing “Ahhhhhh.”
Also, only a couple of years ago did the puns in the lyrics finally register with me. “World is round”/“turns me on”: like being turned on by sex (or drugs), or the Earth literally turning? “Wind is high”/“blows my mind”: like your mind being blown by a drug trip, or the wind literally blowing? “Sky is blue”/“makes me cry”: blue as in sad, as in “I’ve got the blues”? John, you magnificent bastard.
*****
When asked to name his favorite Beatles song, George Martin would often answer, “The Abbey Road medley.” Come on, man. That’s like somebody naming the Ring cycle as their favorite Wagner piece. That’s not an answer. Disqualified!
On the other hand, is it fair to treat the tracks in the medley as individual songs? I guess there’s somebody out there whose favorite Beatles song is “Mean Mr. Mustard,” but you can’t do anything about those people.
As a kid, I used to say “Here Comes the Sun” was my favorite song on Abbey Road, and then one day, I came up with a better answer. It was an answer so obvious, it was hiding in plain sight. If most Beatles fans thought about it for even half a second, their answer would be the same as mine.
My favorite song on Abbey Road, and I presume everybody’s favorite song on Abbey Road, if they’re being honest with themselves, is “You Never Give Me Your Money.”
The reason no one singles it out is because it’s part of the medley, but I think that’s a mistake. Here is a song that manages the dual feat of being the start of a medley and its own mini-medley, but what I admire most about it is how it creeps up on me. It doesn’t even feel like the start of a medley when it’s starting, but to quote Dryden in Lawrence of Arabia, “Big things have small beginnings, sir.” Credit “Because” for setting the stage so effectively. From Wikipedia:
“Because” concludes with a vocal fade-out on Ddim, which keeps listeners in suspense as they wait for the return to the home key of C♯ minor. [Wildfred] Mellers states that: “causality is released and there is no before and no after: BECAUSE that flat supertonic is a moment of revelation, it needs no resolution.” The Ddim chord (and its accompanying melodic F♮) lingers until they resolve into the opening Am7 chord of “You Never Give Me Your Money.”
Needs a bit more mentions of flats, sharps, and diminished chords, but I agree. Within that three second gap between “Because” and “You Never Give Me Your Money” resides the ghosts of long-deceased civilizations.
Then a piano comes in timidly, tentatively. There’s a woundedness, an uncertainty to it, like a frightened child of an alcoholic stepfather tiptoeing into the living room after having heard the front door slam, hoping to confirm that he’s finally gone to the bar to terrorize someone else.
The child enters, meek and tremulous, not entirely sure if it’s OK to start singing, but he gives it a go: “You never give me your money, you only give me your …” Suddenly, on the words “funny paper,” Paul’s vocals expand, like they’ve been doused in a vat of helium (“funnnn-ny paaaa-per”). It’s like the words start floating off to Oz. More vocal layers come in, the bass grows more ornery … the plot thickens.
Then Ringo enters and wait, what’s this? We’re in a vaudevillian revue, complete with honky-tonk piano and grainy black and white film stock, Paul whipping out his Victrola voice:
Out of college, money spent
See no future, pay no rent
All the money’s gone, nowhere to goAny jobber got the sack
Monday morning turn it back
Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go
Aside from featuring the best-ever usage of the word “lorry” in a pop song, the vaudeville section shifts the mood into one of excitement, promise, and yet still plenty of anxiety. “All the money’s gone, nowhere to go”? Is this a stray verse from the mournful opening section that got lost?
Yet Paul finds relief and liberation in this dire, if vaguely sketched, situation: “But oh that magic feeling, nowhere to go.” The guitar (John’s?) rings out like wedding bells, Ringo slips into a funkier groove, and, well … when other bands throw in a lyric like “magic feeling,” it might come across as contrived, but when the Beatles of Abbey Road throw in a lyric like “magic feeling,” with Paul’s “nowhere to go-uh!” summarily followed by a blast of wordless, harmonic goodness, I mean … if that glistening blast of “Ahhhh” paired with those dueling guitar licks (the swirling, high-pitched guitar with a Leslie effect in the center and a lower, nastier, fuzztone one on the right) doesn’t give you a “magic feeling” in your bones, then what are you doing here?
The craziest part: this song is only getting warmed up.
Instead of cycling through the expected four bars of “Ahhhh,” the fuzztone guitar clones itself around the end of the third bar, splits across the stereo spectrum, starts spewing out some speedy, gnarly riffage and … hold on, this is getting kind of angry? What dark alley have our penniless newlyweds found themselves traveling down now? What danger lurks in adulthood’s unlit crevices?
Ringo attempts to fight off the threats with a series of “one-two-three-CRASH” fills, while the band modulates not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times, like a pursued teen in a tacky horror film climbing the steps of a crumbling staircase, hoping to jump just far enough out of the reach of Freddy Krueger’s claws to survive, and then, after making it to the top and realizing there’s room to run, everybody kicks the energy into an extra gear with a joint “Blam, Blam, Blam-BLAM!”
Here is where I imagine George Martin reaching across the recording console and hitting the “Maximum Poignancy” button on Paul’s microphone:
“One sweeeeeet dream …”
Mmmmm. I don’t know how, but Paul taps into every bit of dread, fear, unease, longing, and restlessness he must have been experiencing during the break-up and channels it all into this one vocal moment. “Pick up the bags, get in the limousine/Soon we’ll be away from here …” Oh yeah. The “Max Poignancy” filter gives it that extra grit, that extra corrosiveness. When he sings “away from here,” I hear this aura of hushed promise, as if even he, the Beatle most afraid of the break-up, is partially looking forward to the relief that it’s going to provide. “Step on the gas and wipe that tear a-waaaay.” You know what the peak moment of poignancy is? I think it’s that last “a-waaay.” The needle on the poignancy meter at EMI Studios was shooting into the red.
No, I take it back. The peak moment of poignancy might be the bit that follows, where Paul belts out a second velvety “One sweeeet dream” before letting that settle into an enigmatic “came true, today,” repeated twice more, then punctuated by a throaty “Yes it did! Nah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhhh …” If there’s a better “Nah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhhh” elsewhere, I want to know where I can find it.
It’s like that moment in Flowers for Algernon where Charly realizes he’s slipping back into his half-functional man-child state, watching helplessly as the version of himself that he desperately wants to retain is fading away. Paul knows that he’s inhabiting the peak version of his musical self, and yet at the same time, he’s aware that he’s losing the supporting apparatus that he needs around him in order to be the peak version. He’s at the helm of the chariot while the chariot is melting beneath him.
Then comes That Riff. I know it well. It haunts me in my sleep. Whenever that arpeggiated “one-two-three-four-five-six-seven” riff appears, its stately, steady menace makes me think of Death unexpectedly appearing and disappearing throughout The Seventh Seal. Popping up as it does at the end of both “You Never Give Me Your Money” and “Carry That Weight,” it’s like the audio embodiment of the Beatles’ unavoidable demise, lurking behind the medley’s carefree and joyous portions, capable of being stalled, perhaps, but never of being defeated.
Yet alas, stalled that riff (and the Beatles’ demise) is, by chirping crickets, a shimmering cymbal, and the best rip-off of Fleetwood Mac’s “Albatross” money can buy.
Random favorite parts of the Abbey Road medley:
- The punchy drum fill that yanks “Sun King” into “Mean Mr. Mustard.” In middle school, I used to sit in class and play that drum fill with my fingers on my desk. In my Tommy essay, I mentioned that Keith Moon’s performance on that album might be my favorite drumming performance on a rock album. Ringo’s performance on Abbey Road might be my second favorite. He’s just … he’s a drummer of wealth and taste, is how I’ll put it.
- The super fuzzy bass on “Mean Mr. Mustard” – it’s like the audio equivalent of his meanness.
- “Takes him out to look at the Queen/Only place that he’s ever been” – So he’s never been outside except for one time? Is this like Chauncey Gardener in Being There? I need answers.
- The “cha-cha” outro of “Polythene Pam” – whoever’s on the woodblock sounds like he’s having a blast.
- “She worked at fifteen clubs a day” – Wait, fifteen clubs? Did she spend a few minutes at each of them and then go to another one? I’m trying to picture the commute.
- Paul acknowledges John’s “Got to be good-looking ‘cause he’s so hard to see” and counters with a “She could steal, but she could not rob.”
You know what’s disturbing about the Abbey Road medley? It’s the way these seemingly unrelated, half-finished leftover bits have been constructed to conjure up an emotionally resonant, if lyrically elliptical, narrative that, without too much effort, could be read as a comment on the end of the band itself. If I’m guilty of being one of those Beatles fans who reads way too much into things, well, so is everyone else. And with a medley sporting this many emotional peaks and valleys, they were asking for it.
Take Tim Riley. As a new Beatles fan in the pre-internet era, with only three or four Beatles-related books available to me at the local library, I remember checking out Riley’s Tell Me Why (published in 1986) and reading it with a mixture of appreciation, incomprehension, and anger at his casual dismissal of Beatles songs I actually liked (“Michelle” “Baby, You’re a Rich Man,” “Fool on the Hill,” almost every George song). Words like “querying,” inferential,” and “punctiliously” probably went over my head. Like most music writers, he wrote with a tone implying that his takes were the definitive ones, all while revealing little about himself and what the music meant to him. In other words, he was no part-time Buddhist.
But I mention Riley because, since much of his analysis was among the first I absorbed, it stuck with me even when I wanted to discard it. For instance, twelve-year-old me couldn’t help but roll his eyes when Riley suggested that the Abbey Road medley “tells the Beatles’ own story” by “beginning with Paul’s shattered love affair and moving through heady nostalgia toward sober reflection,” the trio of “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Polythene Pam,” and “Bathroom Window” representing “the good old days … when they made rock ‘n’ roll for fun, not for pay” before “Golden Slumbers” and Carry That Weight” “symbolize the burdens of maturity and the pressing responsibilities of fame.” Uh-huh. Sure. Like the Beatles were thinking about any of that when they were recording the medley.
On the other hand … it does kind of play that way. Damn it, Riley. You might not have been pulling as much of this out of your rectum as I’d thought. In this reading, “You Never Give Me Your Money” could be considered the introduction, plopping us into the present turmoil, where these former best buddies are bickering at each other in lawyer’s suites, preferring the company of their spouses to their bandmates, and longing for an exit route out of the morass (perhaps in a children’s nursery rhyme?). It serves the function of: “The story that concerns us today starts here.” All right, but if so, then where did it begin?
“Sun King” is the idyllic childhood, where “everybody’s laughing” and “everybody’s happy” and everybody speaks nonsense Spanish and Italian phrases in a bucolic field. It then gives way to “Mean Mr. Mustard,” representing the typical thoughts stemming from a rebellious male teenager who chuckles at gross-out humor, picks his boogers, and generally gives the adults in his household a splitting headache (AKA a young John Lennon?). This morphs into “Polythene Pam,” its giddy kinkiness and driving aggression perhaps the embodiment of horny, Predulin-fueled adolescence (AKA the Beatles’ not-safe-for-work Hamburg days?), only for the supposed fun and excitement of striving to “make it” in rock and roll to be supplanted by the hassles one deals with after having actually made it, such as groupies failing to respect one’s private space and somebody always being on the phone to somebody (“She Came In Through the Bathroom Window”). Why hadn’t anyone told the Beatles there would be such an enormous downside to fame and fortune (“Didn’t anybody tell her, didn’t anybody see …”)? And thus, John and Paul’s attempts to be whimsical Liverpudlians and dick around with wordplay on their home tape machines has been fashioned into a dramatic second act with one hell of a cliffhanger ending (“Sunday’s on the phone to me, oh yeah …”). “Oh yeah”? “Oh yeah” what? Don’t leave me dangling like that.
A break, a pause. The pauses on Abbey Road are just as good as the songs.
Again, Paul is alone at the piano, as if we’re back at the start of “You Never Give Me Your Money.” “Once there was a way to get back homeward.” In other words, once there was a way, but not anymore. “Sleep pretty darling, do not cry”? Is this like reverse psychology? Because whenever I devote my full attention to the Abbey Road medley, I might as well admit it, this is a three-hanky experience.
And then, the most prescient words ever sung in a Beatles song: “Boy, you’re gonna carry that weight, carry that weight a long time.” It’s a chorus of Beatles singing except … I mostly hear Ringo? Let’s just say that, whenever Ringo’s vocal cords are involved in a Beatles harmony, the whole thing ends up sounding like Ringo (see: “Flying”). He’s like adding garlic to a soup – he’s the only thing you can taste. Turns out that, after years of reading that all four Beatles sang the “carry that weight” segment, the 50th anniversary edition booklet claims it was only Paul and Ringo, which explains why Ringo is so audible, but I do think the album needed one additional Ringo vocal appearance aside from “Octopus’s Garden,” did it not? And as fate would have it, Paul and Ringo have ended up being the two former Beatles who were destined to “carry that weight” the longest, although they haven’t seemed to mind as much as the other two did.
And hey, what’s this? I don’t remember the medley starting with a song called “I Never Give You My Pillow.” Amazing how the Beatles can throw a brief reprise into a medley or album, and yet that one puny brushstroke can transform an otherwise still excellent, if scattered, collection of material into a larger work sporting a majestic conceptual unity. Like the Sgt. Pepper title track, “You Never Give Me Your Money” makes a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo, but damn, what a cameo. It’s like when I took an improv acting class and the instructor explained a comedic technique called “reincorporation”: if you remember to recycle a memorable joke from earlier in the skit, you’ll have the audience cracking up. I try to apply reincorporation to my own writing, but the Beatles probably do it better than I do. Again, that “one-two-three-four-five-six-seven” guitar arpeggio rears its crawling, relentless head, reemerging for only ten seconds and yet reminding the Beatles that their doom can only be delayed for one last mini-song.
Perhaps aware that they are running out of stalling tactics, the Beatles take that one last mini-song and really make it count. What do you want? Ringo’s only drum solo? Done. Paul, George, and John taking turns on lead guitar, proving that, despite the intermittent bursts of acrimony, they could not only hold hands and play nice, but still feed off each other’s competitive energy? Done. Paul sending the band off with a lyrical couplet so part-time Buddhist it almost makes me feel foolish for needing 20-page essays to say what he manages to say in two brief lines? Done. Incredibly moving, octave-jumping lead guitar flourish (I believe from George) in the right channel? Done. Surging, brass-heavy orchestral overdub from George Martin? Done.
And so, nothing lasts forever. It’s one of the central tenets of part-time Buddhism, and it’s why I think few albums can match Abbey Road as a part-time Buddhist work of art. Because here is an album that manages to capture the beauty of something beautiful not lasting forever.
Frankly, the ending is too beautiful. It’s so beautiful it hurts. The Abbey Road medley in full, and “The End” in particular, is a conclusion so perfect, it almost doesn’t deserve to exist.
Fortunately, recognizing this, the Beatles decided to do something about it.
Twenty seconds of silence.
BLAMMMMM!!
“Her Majesty” is the silver hammer that comes down upon the head of the world’s most poignant medley, reminding the listener that nothing is quite as perfect as it seems.
And so I say thank you. I say thank you, Beatles, for turning the true ending of your final album into something jarring, quirky, offbeat, messy, funny, and tantalizingly incomplete. Where is the last note to Abbey Road? It is wherever you choose to find it. Perhaps it is in the first note of “Love Me Do,” or the first note of “The Lovely Linda.” Perhaps the last note to Abbey Road … is inside YOU.