Abbey Road

Abbey Road is the eleventh studio album by the English rock band the Beatles, released on 26 September 1969, by Apple Records. It is the last album the group recorded, although Let It Be (1970) was the last album completed before the band's break-up in April 1970. It was mostly recorded in April, July, and August 1969, and topped the record charts in both the United States and the United Kingdom. A double A-side single from the album, "Something" / "Come Together", was released in October, which also topped the charts in the US.

Abbey Road incorporates styles such as rock, pop, blues, and progressive rock, and makes prominent use of the Moog synthesiser and guitar played through a Leslie speaker unit. It is also notable for having a long medley of songs on side two that have subsequently been covered as one suite by other notable artists. The album was recorded in a more collegial atmosphere than the Get Back / Let It Be sessions earlier in the year, but there were still significant confrontations within the band, particularly over Paul McCartney's song "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", and John Lennon did not perform on several tracks. By the time the album was released, Lennon had left the group, though this was not publicly announced until McCartney also quit the following year.

Although Abbey Road was an instant commercial success, it received mixed reviews upon release. Some critics found its music inauthentic and criticised perceived artificial elements of the production. Critical reception improved in the following years and the album is now widely regarded as one of the Beatles' best and one of the greatest albums of all time. George Harrison's two songs on the album, "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun", are considered among the best he wrote for the group. The album's cover, featuring the Beatles walking across the zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios (then officially named EMI Studios), is one of the most famous and imitated in music history. The album has sold over 30 millions copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums.

After the recording sessions for the proposed Get Back album, Paul McCartney suggested to producer George Martin that the group get together and make an album "the way we used to do it", free of the conflict that had begun during sessions for The Beatles (also known as the "White Album"). Martin agreed, but on the strict condition that all the group—particularly John Lennon—allow him to produce the record in the same manner as earlier albums and that discipline would be adhered to. No one was sure that the work would be the group's last, though George Harrison later recalled that "it felt as if we were reaching the end of the line".

The first sessions for Abbey Road began on 22 February 1969, only three weeks after the Get Back sessions, in Trident Studios. There, the group recorded a backing track for "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" with Billy Preston accompanying them on Hammond organ. No further group recording occurred until April because of Ringo Starr's commitments on the film The Magic Christian. After a small amount of work that month and a session for "You Never Give Me Your Money" on 6 May, the group took an eight-week break before recommencing on 2 July. Recording continued through July and August, and the last backing track, for "Because", was taped on 1 August. Overdubs continued through the month, with the final sequencing of the album coming together on 20 August – the last time all four Beatles were present in a studio together.

McCartney, Starr and Martin have reported positive recollections of the sessions, while Harrison said, "we did actually perform like musicians again". Lennon and McCartney had enjoyed working together on the non-album single "The Ballad of John and Yoko" in April, sharing friendly banter between takes, and some of this camaraderie carried over to the Abbey Road sessions. Nevertheless, there was a significant amount of tension in the group. According to Ian MacDonald, McCartney had an acrimonious argument with Lennon during the sessions. Lennon's wife Yoko Ono had become a permanent presence at Beatles recordings, and clashed with other members. Halfway through recording in June, Lennon and Ono were involved in a car accident. A doctor told Ono to rest in bed, so Lennon had one installed in the studio so she could observe the recording process from there.

During the sessions, Lennon expressed a desire to have all of his songs on one side of the album, and McCartney's on the other. The album's two halves represented a compromise: Lennon wanted a traditional release with distinct and unrelated songs, while McCartney and Martin wanted to continue their thematic approach from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by incorporating a medley. Lennon ultimately said that he disliked Abbey Road as a whole and felt that it lacked authenticity, calling McCartney's contributions "[music] for the grannies to dig" and not "real songs", and describing the medley as "junk ... just bits of songs thrown together".

Abbey Road was recorded on eight-track reel-to-reel tape machines rather than the four-track machines that were used for earlier Beatles albums such as Sgt Pepper, and was the first Beatles album not to be issued in mono anywhere in the world. The album makes prominent use of guitar played through a Leslie speaker, and of the Moog synthesiser. The Moog is not merely used as a background effect but sometimes plays a central role, as in "Because", where it is used for the middle eight. It is also prominent on "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Here Comes the Sun". The synthesiser was introduced to the band by Harrison, who acquired one in November 1968 and used it to create his album Electronic Sound. Starr made more prominent use of the tom-toms on Abbey Road, later saying the album was "tom-tom madness ... I went nuts on the toms."