The Beatles - Abbey Road Review

Lennon's rewrite of a campaign song for Timothy Leary became the murkiest, most hypnotic blues the Beatles ever recorded. The bass is mixed louder than the vocal, the drums are compressed into a tight shuffle, and the guitar is played through a Leslie speaker to give it a swirling, underwater texture. Lennon sings in a low, almost conversational tone, half-spoken and half-sung, and the effect is more trance than rock. The lyrics are deliberate nonsense—juju eyeballs, toe jam football—but the groove is so strong that the words function as rhythm more than meaning. The track was later the subject of a lawsuit because the opening line was lifted from Chuck Berry's You Can't Catch Me, and Lennon admitted the theft and settled. The song works because it commits to its own weirdness without apologizing for it.

Harrison's first A-side single for the Beatles and the strongest song he wrote for the band. The melody is immediate and the structure is airtight: verse, bridge, guitar solo, verse, bridge, coda. Lennon called it his favorite on the album and McCartney said it was the best thing Harrison had done, and both were right. The lyric is a straightforward love song with no cleverness or wordplay, and that directness makes it more effective than most of the band's more ambitious writing. The recording is clean and spare, with Harrison's guitar solo in the bridge and a string arrangement that supports the melody without overwhelming it. Traces of Lennon's piano remain in the final mix, most noticeably before the guitar solo. Frank Sinatra called it the greatest love song ever written, which is overselling it, but it is the rare Beatles ballad that does not rely on production or arrangement to make its point.

McCartney's most divisive contribution to the album, a vaudeville novelty about a medical student who kills people with a hammer. The melody is catchy and the arrangement is bright, with Moog synthesiser and an anvil sound played by roadie Mal Evans, but the subject matter is too cute for the treatment. Lennon hated it and refused to work on it, calling it granny music, and Harrison was exhausted by McCartney's insistence on perfecting the performance. The song was rejected for the White Album as too complicated and forced into the Abbey Road sessions despite the band's resistance. It functions as a palate cleanser between Something and Oh! Darling, but it is the weakest song on side one and the clearest example of McCartney's tendency to mistake cleverness for substance.

McCartney's doo-wop pastiche, recorded with the discipline of a method actor. He came into the studio early every day for a week to sing the lead vocal once per day, waiting for his voice to roughen so it would sound like he had been performing the song on stage all week. The result is one of his best vocal performances on any Beatles record, raw and committed, and the arrangement supports it with a simple rock structure and a tambourine-heavy backbeat. The song was attempted during the Get Back sessions and re-recorded for Abbey Road, and the second version is tighter. Lennon thought he should have sung it because the style was closer to his range, and he might have been right, but McCartney's version works because of the effort he put into making it sound effortless.

Starr's second and final solo composition for the Beatles, written after he quit the band during the White Album sessions and spent two weeks on Peter Sellers's yacht in Sardinia. The melody is pleasant and the lyric is simple, and Harrison helped with the structure in the studio. The song is insubstantial but harmless, a children's tune with a clean arrangement and a solid vocal from Starr. It serves the same function as Yellow Submarine, giving Starr one track per album, and it works better than Maxwell's Silver Hammer because it does not try to be more than it is.

Lennon's eight-minute dirge about Yoko Ono, built from a repeating guitar riff, a straightforward blues structure, and a wall of white noise that grows louder until the track cuts off mid-phrase. The song is a combination of two recording attempts, one from February with Billy Preston on Hammond organ and one from the Abbey Road sessions in April, and the seam between them is invisible. Lennon kept the lyrics deliberately simple—"I want you so bad it's driving me mad"—and the repetition becomes hypnotic rather than boring. Harrison's Moog synthesiser creates the wind effect that dominates the second half, and the track builds tension for seven minutes before Lennon told Geoff Emerick to cut it at exactly seven minutes and forty-four seconds, creating a jarring silence that ends side one. The abrupt cut is the most effective production choice on the album, and the song is the closest the Beatles came to proto-metal.

Harrison's second contribution, written in Eric Clapton's garden during a break from business meetings. The song is lighter and more optimistic than Something, with an acoustic guitar foundation and a Moog overdub that Harrison added two days before the final mix. Lennon was still recovering from his car accident and did not play on the track. The structure is simple—verse, chorus, bridge—and the melody is strong enough that the song has become one of the most covered Beatles tracks. Martin provided an orchestral arrangement that fills out the sound without weighing it down. The track has been chosen multiple times on Desert Island Discs and reached number fifty-six on the UK chart in 2010 when the Beatles catalog was released on iTunes. A guitar solo Harrison recorded for the song was cut from the final mix and rediscovered in 2012.

Lennon's most complex vocal arrangement, inspired by listening to Ono play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and asking her to play the chords backward. The track features Lennon, McCartney and Harrison singing three-part harmonies that were then triple-tracked to create nine voices in the final mix. The vocals are some of the hardest the band attempted, and the result is beautiful but lacks the rawness of their earlier harmonies. Harrison played the Moog synthesiser and Martin played the harpsichord, and the arrangement is clean and precise. The song is more impressive as a technical feat than as an emotional statement, and it functions as a transitional piece before the medley begins.

The opening track of the medley and a suite in itself, shifting from a piano-led ballad to arpeggiated guitars. McCartney wrote the song about the band's dispute with manager Allen Klein, though the backing track was recorded on 6 May before the worst arguments occurred. The track moves through three distinct sections without losing momentum, and the transitions are smooth enough that the song feels cohesive rather than fragmented. Both Harrison and Lennon provided guitar solos, with Lennon playing the solos at the end. The song sets the tone for the medley and establishes the narrative arc that the rest of side two follows.

Lennon's contribution to the medley, showcasing the same triple-tracked harmonies as Because but with a warmer, more relaxed tone. The song is short and does not develop much beyond its central melody, but it serves as a bridge between You Never Give Me Your Money and Mean Mr. Mustard. The vocal blend is clean and the arrangement is sparse, and the track functions as a moment of calm before the medley picks up pace again.

A one-minute fragment Lennon wrote during the 1968 trip to India. The song is trivial, a character sketch with no depth, but it moves quickly and does not overstay its welcome. It transitions directly into Polythene Pam without a break.

Another Lennon fragment, slightly longer than Mean Mr. Mustard but just as insubstantial. The vocal is delivered in a thick Liverpudlian accent and the arrangement is punchy, but the song is filler. It transitions into She Came In Through the Bathroom Window, and the shift in tone is jarring but effective.

McCartney's first song in the second half of the medley, written after a fan broke into his house through the bathroom window. The melody is strong and the arrangement is tight, with a guitar riff that drives the track and a vocal that builds momentum. The song is short but complete, and it sets up the transition into Golden Slumbers.

McCartney's ballad, based on a seventeenth-century poem by Thomas Dekker set to new music. The melody is simple and the orchestration is lush, and the track functions as the emotional peak of the medley. The vocal is restrained and the arrangement supports it without overwhelming it. The song transitions directly into Carry That Weight without a pause.

The penultimate track in the medley, reprising elements from You Never Give Me Your Money and featuring chorus vocals from all four Beatles. The song builds on the momentum from Golden Slumbers and sets up the climax in The End. The arrangement is full and the vocal blend is strong, and the track works because it brings the medley's themes together without summarizing them.

The final track in the medley and the last song the four Beatles recorded together. The track opens with Starr's only drum solo in the Beatles catalog, mixed in true stereo across two tracks. Fifty-four seconds in, the guitar solos begin: McCartney plays two bars, then Harrison, then Lennon, and the sequence repeats three times. The solos were cut live in one take, and the interplay is loose and spontaneous. After the solos, the track shifts to a piano-led coda with the line "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make," the most quoted lyric in Beatles history. The section was recorded separately and required McCartney to re-record the piano. The song is the strongest ending the band could have written, and it makes the medley feel complete rather than assembled from scraps.

A twenty-three-second fragment McCartney recorded alone and then asked to have cut from the medley. Second engineer John Kurlander attached it to the end of the master tape after twenty seconds of silence because he had been told not to throw anything out, and the band kept it. The song is a joke, pleasant but slight, and it undercuts the finality of The End.