12:45 Abbey Road Conclusions

Time to wrap up Abbey Road with some concluding thoughts.

First of all I still stand by all the observations I made in the introductory post Let It Be vs Abbey Road namely,

• Though Abbey Road is far better than Let It Be both albums reflect a songwriting partnership that could no longer work together and a dysfunctional band running out of ideas.


• The reason Abbey Road is such a good album is that in a sense it is George Martin's concept album where the 'concept' was simply to work in a businesslike fashion and make a well recorded, well constructed album.


• Whatever the intentions may have been, the medley isn’t really a unified piece of music at all. Judging each part in it’s own right most of the songs don’t really hold up.

Having analysed every song in detail, here's what I've learned

• Here Comes The Sun, Something, Come Together are classic songs. Others like You Never Give Me Your Money and I Want You have elements of greatness that they don't quite fulfil.

• Abbey Road represents Ringo and George's greatest moments as Beatles composers. John Lennon has one classic on here. Surprisingly McCartney is the only one not on top form. What sapped his creative energy? Let It Be, the lawsuits or the Long One? I think the positive critical response to the Medley (and to a lesser extent A Day In The Life ) harmed Paul's songwriting in that it encouraged McCartney to release many more 'patchwork songs' from Jet to much of the Memory Almost Full album. But apart from Live And Let Die I'm struggling to name any that have really worked. (Can YOU think of any?).

• Two songs start with lines blatantly ripped off other artists. Come Together nicks lyrics (and the vocal rhythm) from Chuck Berry's You Can't Catch Me and Something from James Taylor's Something In The Way She Moves. (Berry's publisher sued and won).

• In The Ballad Of John And Yoko/Old Brown Shoe I think we have the only example in the Beatles career of a single being far worse than anything on the album.

• There are moments on Abbey Road where you can hear the seeds of where the music scene would head in the next decade. There are hints of Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, The Who, Fleetwood Mac and Santana here. I'm sure that, had they continued, The Beatles would have survived and thrived in the stadium rock era.

• But that was not to be. Lennon was fading away. He was completely absent on Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Here Comes The Sun and Her Majesty and contributed only backing vocals to Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight and Old Brown Shoe.

Next time I'll put up an index of all the Abbey Road posts. Then we're movin' on people, movin' on.

12:33 Something: Origins And Descendants (pt.1)

What can you say about the best song that George Harrison ever wrote and arguably the best track on Abbey Road? The answer is a lot. But let's start by looking at the history and story behind Something.

Though very much a band piece it was written on the piano, Harrison carving it out during The White Album sessions. The song is in C but the demo (on Anthology 3) is in A (and possibly capoed). Joe Cocker was supposed to record it (but Abbey Road hit the stores first) and perhaps the demo (and lower key) were aimed at him or was that the key it was written in?

It's also said that Harrison struggled with the bridge until he hit on the idea of a key change. Does that mean he had the bridge already but was playing it in the same key as the verse? We may never know, but it's an interesting experiment to try.

A popular fact was that Harrison wrote it for/about his wife Patti. She certainly says so. But he says it was written with Ray Charles in mind (though presumably not in the same way as Patti!)

...she moves!...get it?...oh, never mind...

Harrison struggled with lyrics and blatantly stole the first line from Apple recording artist James Taylor's breakthrough song Something In The Way She Moves

Though using other peoples lyrics as a kick start to create is a totally legitimate songwriting tool taking such a recognisable bit and leaving it in is a bit naughty to say the least. Factor in that it was the biggest band in the world 'borrowing' from a little known singer/songwriter on their label and it seems a bit of a shoddy way to conduct yourself.

If Harrison struggled with the first line the next one was even more painful. He had “attracts me like...” and then nothing. John Lennon, who added the final brilliant piece in more than one McCartney jigsaw suggested

Something in the way she moves
Attracts me like a cauliflower

Top marks for scanning Lennon, but if you wanted evidence that John was going downhill rapidly, there it is. Harrison rejected the very British working class vegetable for the more exotic pomegranate, but thankfully that soon went the way of Paul's scrambled eggs.

It's rumoured that Harrison hated McCartney's bass playing on the track, having gone on record as saying he'd rather have Willie Weeks play bass for him than Paul McCartney (Revolution In The Head p.349). Engineer Geoff Emerick says

Paul started playing a bass line that was a little elaborate, and George told him, 'No, I want it simple.' Paul complied. There wasn't any disagreement about it

Though there may not have been any Let It Be style hissy fits it's hard to believe that the bass line we have on Abbey Road was a satisfactory response to “I want it simple”. What was he doing before – playing 64th note polyrhythms above the 12th fret?

Lennon & McCartney always wanted to write a song for Frank Sinatra. Paul even submitted one called Suicide which Frank dismissed as some kind of sick joke. But George succeeded where they had failed (even though Sinatra initially credited Lennon & McCartney as composers) and Sinatra proclaimed Something “the greatest love song of past 50 years” (Revolution p.348) and proceeded to murder it in concerts for the next 30 years.

"Stick around Jack???" Harrison's favourite cover was by the equally understated James Brown.

Something was the last Beatles single and they were soon to shuffle off the world stage and make was for the new breed of stadium rock dinosaurs. There's definitely a passing of the torch to Led Zeppelin on this song – as well as the mellotron part recalling Abbey Road's lush strings like a lofi bootleg listen to the first 3 chords of Rain Song...

Something – C Cmaj7 C7
Rain Song – G Gmaj7 G7*

(*The first two chords have no third but it's implied by the overall major tonality of the song).

Next time we'll start chipping off little bits of songwriting awesomeness. Stay tuned!

Sources: Paul Du Noyer's excellent article at PaulDuNoyer.com, the fabulous Beatles Bible and of course the highly recommended Revolution In The Head