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Abbey Road is the twelfth official album recorded by The Beatles. Although its release preceded that of Let It Be, the latter was mostly recorded in January 1969. Work on Abbey Road began in earnest in April of that year, making it the last album started by The Beatles. The album was released on 26 September 1969 in the United Kingdom and 1 October 1969 in the United States. It was produced and orchestrated by George Martin for Apple Records. Geoff Emerick was the engineer, then-unknown Alan Parsons was assistant engineer, and Tony Banks tape operator. It is regarded as one of The Beatles' most tightly constructed albums, somewhat ironically, as the band was barely operating as a functioning unit at the time.
After the near-disastrous sessions for the proposed Get Back album (later retitled Let It Be), Paul McCartney suggested to producer George Martin that the group get together and make an album "just like the old days. .. just like we used to", free of the conflict that began with the sessions for The White Album. Martin agreed to this if the band would be "the way they used to be". In their interviews for the Beatles Anthology series, the surviving band members stated they knew at the time this would very likely be the final Beatles' product, and therefore they agreed to set aside their differences and "go out on a high note."
With the Let It Be album partly finished, the sessions for Abbey Road began in April, as the "Ballad of John and Yoko"/"Old Brown Shoe" single was completed. Most of the album was recorded between July 2 and August 1, 1969. After the album was finished and released, the Get Back/Let It Be project was re-examined. More work was done on the album, including the recording of additional music. Although people often label Abbey Road as the "last album recorded by the Beatles", this is incorrect. Songs for Let It Be were added after Abbey Road was released. However, since the bulk of Let It Be was recorded before Abbey Road, it would be wrong to label that album as the Beatles' last, either. Properly, Abbey Road was the last album started by The Beatles before they disbanded. In September 1969, just shortly before the release of the album, John Lennon quits the group to launch a solo career with the Plastic Ono Band, effectively being the first official sign of dissolution.
The two album sides are quite different in character. Side one is a collection of single tracks, while side two consists of a long suite of compositions, many of them being relatively short and segued together. The main impetus behind the suite approach was to incorporate the various short and incomplete Lennon and McCartney compositions the group had available into an effective part of the album. John Lennon said several times that he favoured the more polished material on side one, while Paul McCartney opined that the medley on side two was the album's best feature....read more
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