By 1969 The Beatles were bickering their way to a grizzly divorce. The tensions that had simmered within the group ever since they had abandoned live performance could no longer be set aside and they had lost the desire to even try and hide them. This makes it all the more striking then, that whilst in the throes of such a messy break up, the band pulled together and completed one last album of frankly startling beauty: Abbey Road. It would be more accurate to say however, some of the band pulled together. For Abbey Road is the rare example of Paul McCartney and George Harrison (with stirling help from Ringo) working in relative harmony.
Together in perfect harmony?
John Lennon then, is the pretty large elephant in the room here. Of course John is hardly a no-show on the album. Come Together is one of the finest openers to a Beatles album and Because one of their prettiest harmony vocal pieces. Look closer though and much of the former’s cool vibe comes from the band’s smokey performance whilst the latter merely piles layers of window dressing on a less than engaging song. What’s more John doesn’t even appear on some of the album’s tracks due to being involved in a car accident when holidaying in Scotland with Yoko. Abbey Road then, was left to the uneasy bedfellows of McCartney and Harrison to whip into shape. By this time, the tension between the innovative yet controlling bassist and the more thoughtful yet overly cautious lead guitarist was as much a problem for the band as the warring egos of it’s two principle songwriters. For them to put aside those differences and get down to work is perhaps nothing short of miraculous.
Nowhere is this marvel better exemplified than George’s two tracks, Something and Here Comes The Sun. The Beatles’ (or perhaps more specifically, Paul’s) natural sense of tight pop arrangement lends both of these tracks a brevity that George could’ve done well to note for the following year’s wonderful yet occasionally ponderous All Thing Must Pass album. The gentle swirl of Something benefits immensely from Paul’s inventive bass, adding a counterpoint to the song’s melody, bubbling up between the vocal lines and nudging the song into life where an arrangement in George’s later style (such as the one he utilised on Isn’t It A Pity) might’ve allowed it to drift into the ether. Here Comes The Sun’s buoyant bounce is given an extra kick from tight harmonies, some wonderful drumming and a counter melody played on the recently invented Moog synthesizer. Both represent the best of George as a Beatle: a shame he was so at odds with Paul and the very idea of the band itself that he wasn’t taking notes in preperation for his solo work.
A word here about Ringo. If Abbey Road is a triumph born of two men who didn’t like each other somehow working well as a team, then it it is one that wouldn’t be half as satisfying without The Beatles’ ever reliable drummer. George Martin and his studio engineers had worked hard ever since Revolver on perfecting interesting drum sounds, and this album really makes the drum parts shine, but Ringo’s own skills have always been severely underrated. On the two aforementioned George tracks he provides a masterclass in how to drum for a song. His playing on Here Comes The Sun is a blueprint for great pop/rock drumming, locking in tightly with Paul’s bass on the verses before a flurry of excited fills drive the revelation of the “Sun, sun, sun here it comes” breakdown. Something, by contrast, is a masterpiece of control and subtlety, staying out of the way as the verse/chorus unfolds before a thundering continuous tom/hi-hat roll breaks through the haze to propel the middle eight. Just as on the rest of the album, these are drum parts you can almost sing: how much drumming can you say that about?
If George and Ringo’s contributions offer useful insight into Abbey Road’s magic, then it is Paul’s that truly define it. Aside from being the driving force behind the second side’s medley of otherwise useless offcuts, his songwriting here is dazzling, giving Abbey Road the golden autumnal glow it is renowned for: Oh! Darling is sweaty and sensual, She Came In Through The Bathroom Window wry and slinky, and love or hate it the twee Maxwell’s Silver Hammer provides a shot of pure pop. His best is saved for the only proper songs in the aforementioned medley, where You Never Give Me Your Money’s musical and philosophical themes reappear in the later Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight, Paul’s gentle melodic touch binding with some of his best lyrics and boosted off into the stratosphere by a classic George Martin horn and string arrangement. It’s his wonderful reaching ambition that makes the album sound better in places than it probably is: Abbey Road is not The Beatles best album, but given the circumstances of it’s creation, both he and George did a better job than might’ve been expected of them.
Paul always seems to produce his best when backed against a wall (such as conjuring Band On The Run out of the direst of times for Wings) and the period of Abbey Road’s sessions was perhaps the tallest wall he’d ever face. George would probably have preferred to be anywhere but in a studio with Paul, his mind already on clearing the large backlog of his own songs. Yet, with the band and their friendship collapsing around their ears, they drove The Beatles to one last little victory: an album that sent the band out on a high note.
By Fuselage 