?Abbey Road? marked the end of an era when it was released on Sept. 26, 1969, as the last album recorded by the Beatles. (?Let It Be? would be the final LP released by the Fab Four.)
Here?s a look back, track by track, at the album that led to the Beatles? breakup in 1970.
?Come Together?
The classic opening track, written by John Lennon, was originally conceived as an anthem for Timothy Leary?s 1969 campaign for governor of California, a race he lost to Ronald Reagan.
?The theme of the campaign was ?Come together, join the party,?? says Kenneth Womack, author of the upcoming book ?Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles,? out Oct. 15. ?It was really John who agreed to help out Timothy Leary, and then, of course, John realized, ?Wait a minute, I got a great song on my hands here! Tim can forget about it.??
The song also nods to a certain ?50s rock god. ?Lennon apparently wrote it as a Chuck Berry-type song, with a Chuck Berry riff and some lines from [his 1956 single] ?You Can?t Catch Me,?? says Bill Flanagan, co-host of ?The Fab Forum? on SiriusXM?s The Beatles Channel.
?And I think it was [Paul] McCartney and Ringo [Starr] who slowed it down ? It?s the furthest thing in the world from a fast Chuck Berry song now.?
?Something?
Frank Sinatra once described this George Harrison composition as ?the greatest love song of the past 50 years.? But the tune also hints that it wasn?t all love among the Beatles at the time.
?It?s haunting; it?s not all romance,? Womack says. ?There?s some darkness behind it, which, of course, was real. The band obviously was struggling. You can also hear a sense of nostalgia. They were certainly growing nostalgic at that time about their days together, which were running shorter.?
?Maxwell?s Silver Hammer?
Lennon was famously not a fan of this McCartney tune. ?John made no secret about how much he struggled with hearing that song in any form,? says Womack.
And the painstaking process of making it certainly didn?t help the song score points with any of the Beatles. ?I think they did dozens of takes of it ? with Paul going, ?Nope, do it again!?? says Flanagan. ?So I think by the end, the other guys didn?t really like ?Maxwell?s Silver Hammer.??
?Oh! Darling?
Like ?Maxwell?s Silver Hammer,? this ?50s throwback didn?t come easily. ?Paul would come in every day, and first thing in the studio he would belt out that lead vocal to see if he got it right,? says Womack. ?And it took several days, but he finally got the vocal that he wanted.?
But, Womack says, one of the Fab Four wasn?t exactly impressed with Sir Paul?s efforts: ?Lennon, of course, rather ungraciously said, ?Well, I think I sing that kind of song better than Paul.? ?
