Recently, I’ve found myself listening almost incessantly to certain albums from the late ’60s and early ’70s. The “rediscovery” of this music leads to what I hope will become a weekly installment on the blog.
The focus largely will be on older albums for which the dates of the current week were important in the past. I might even touch on musicians or band and it may be something, like today, that I love or even something that sends me on a rant. Either way, the post will discuss the subject and my recollections and thoughts about it.
I think having Abbey Road as the first album is appropriate. After all, no other band sits as high in the rock pantheon and, to the extent it is possible to single out one LP over another, it is probably my favorite Beatles album. It is the focus this week because it reached the top of the Billboard charts for the first time in the magazine’s November 1, 1969, issue.
I still remember where I was the first time I heard the album. My then best friend and I snuck into his older brother’s room and listened to it on a turntable in there. Both the albums and turntable were off limits to us 13-year-olds. I can’t say I fell in love with it right away. I think the disjointed nature of the medley making up much of side two was a bit beyond my music comprehension at the time, particularly as side one kicked things off with “Come Together” and “Something” and side two itself opened with “Here Comes The Sun.” As the years went by and I honed my musical palate, though, it was actually the medley that pushed this up my list of favorite Beatles recordings.
Of course, Abbey Road also became significant because even though Let It Be was released the following year, the music on Abbey Road was the last recorded before the Beatles split. The album also played a role in the the couple days my wife and I were in London in mid-July. As part of a Beatles walking tour in London, we saw and walked across the crosswalk the album cover made made famous (although it isn’t quite in its original location), as well as the graffiti-filled wall outside Abbey Road Studios.
Once there was a way to get back homeward
“Golden Slumbers,” Beatles, Abbey Road
