Tomorrow, September 26th, marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the last album the Beatles recorded together, Abbey Road. From the opening bassline of “Come Together” to “The love you take is equal to the love you make,” four decades later Abbey Road remains one of the greatest masterpieces not only in the Beatles’ history, but also in rock history. Thankfully, because of the new Beatles remasters, we’re hearing Abbey Road again like it’s the first time. With a Side A stocked with tracks like “Come Together,” “Something” and “Oh! Darling,” our readers recently voted Abbey Road as the Fab Four’s greatest album, no small achievement.
And then there’s that Side B. As John Mendelsohn wrote in his 1969 Rolling Stone review of Abbey Road, “That the Beatles can unify seemingly countless musical fragments and lyrical doodlings into a uniformly wonderful suite, as they’ve done on side two, seems potent testimony that no, they’ve far from lost it, and no, they haven’t stopped trying. No, on the contrary, they’ve achieved here the closest thing yet to Beatles freeform, fusing more diverse intriguing musical and lyrical ideas into a piece that amounts to far more than the sum of those ideas.” (Mendelsohn also said “Simply, side two does more for me than the whole of Sgt. Pepper,” which might be a slight overstatement.)
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Abbey Road, in addition to listening to the LP itself, be sure to check out all the essential coverage over in our Beatles hub, including the Fab Four’s photos, reviews, the story behind their breakup, their Rolling Stone covers, a landmark 1970 interview with John Lennon and much more.
...Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily