By 1969, The Beatles were already packed up and done with each other. John Lennon was more preoccupied with Yoko Ono, George Harrison wanted to make his own albums, Ringo Starr felt as though he wasn't even a member of the group, and Paul McCartney was becoming a band leader that couldn't listen to his collaborators. To say they were going downhill was an understatement, but from the sounds they created in their last breath as a band you could never believe it. To the uninitiated, listening to anything The Beatles showcased on Abbey Road would lead you to believe that this was the band at their most inspired. How every song felt so expert was just another day at the races for the band, that maybe their greatness wasn’t over-exaggerated if this is an album and not a greatest hits compilation. But, this was The Beatles at their end, it was barely what would have been considered The Beatles even three years earlier.
Recorded shortly after what would be the final Beatles album released, Let It Be [which was recorded in January of 1969, but held from release due to production disagreements among the band. The album would eventually be released on 8 May 1970, on the cusp of a month since McCartney officially left the band on 10 April 1970], Abbey Road may just hold the title for the most iconic Beatles album, if that title can even be given. Its cover, The Fab Four just simply walking across the street, is a pop culture fixture. The cover alone is so iconic that the band´s name is nowhere to be found on the front yet is instantly recognizable as The Beatles. Nearly every song on this album is one that people know, side one is complied of what reads as greatest hits: Come Together, Something, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Oh, Darling!, Octopus’s Garden, I Want You (She’s so Heavy). There’s a signature song from each Beatle here, and that’s not even delving into the back half, Here Comes the Sun and the infamous medley, complete with Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight, and The End.
The circumstances under the album's recording is arguably during The Beatles' worst time. They were constantly bickering, ignoring each other, or working on music outside the band they deemed more important. Starr was the first to leave the band, back in ´67, due to feeling left out by the other three, but McCartney coaxed him back into the band. The next was Lennon, who upon meeting Ono, told her that he was only loyal to her, not The Beatles,
though he stayed with the band [¨I don't believe in The Beatles, I just believe in me.¨]. The villainization of Yoko Ono happens in this part of the story, and to set the story straight: she had nothing to do with the impending doom of The Beatles. It was Lennon who tied himself to her, never her who asked for that. Because she was the most discernible difference to the crumbling band to the outside, the entire three years of pent up frustrations and infighting, legal issues, and creative differences were suddenly pinned upon her. Her involvement in group settings was largely Lennon as well, her disinterest palpable as she sits in the corner often minding her own business, McCartney even attests saying it was the bands fault for letting Lennon do that, and ultimately pushing the woman he loved into horrible scrutiny. This was also around the time that McCartney had met his future wife, Linda Eastman, a photographer from New York who was making huge strides for female photographers in the rock landscape. A lot would be placed upon her too, how she was too involved with the band even if she was also far from infringing on their issues. Harrison left during the Let It Be sessions, believing his songwriting was being treated as second class compared to Lennon and McCartney. This was shown in the second episode of the docu-series Get Back, and showcases a lot of the inner problems of the band, how barely anyone seemed to want to put in the effort to
continue the group in earnest. Harrison would ultimately find his way back to the band a few weeks later, but the damage had in many ways proven to be irreconcilable. Harrison’s departure left one Beatle left standing, a once fully oiled machine succumbing to its constant use. By the recording of Abbey Road, there was gas left in the tank, but only to make it to a final destination. McCartney, struggling at this time, was grappling with the idea that The Beatles were over, while being the only one keeping them going, a task much too big for any one person. To pull the weight of a foursome alone is impossible as is, but make that foursome the world's most famous, and McCartney was in a losing battle. This fell on McCartney harder than the rest for a mirage of reasons, one of the biggest being the sense of identity and family he had found within the band since he was 16 years old. After the death of his mother, it was his friendship with Lennon and the subsequent journey of the band that would act his sense of self, his purpose in many ways. To see that break in front of you, being unable to fix yet another huge piece of yourself can’t be easy on a man. At 26 years old, McCartney had spent most of his life loving things that would be ripped from him at a moment's notice, with nothing he could conceivably do to fix these things. A perfectionist at heart, how wouldn’t that destroy a man? How wouldn’t that destroy a man who seemed to have it all but really not a spec of what he longed for: a family that couldn’t be torn from him.
The Beatles and Ono photographed by Linda Eastman, 1969
Back to the nonsense of the recording of Abbey Road, Harrison was notably fed up with Ono and her presence in the studio. Lennon insisted that she needed to be there. Ono had brought a bed into the studio [she laid in it as she was recovering from a car crash her and Lennon were involved in], and ate the biscuits Harrison had brought for himself. This prompted him to start screaming at her, beforing turning his anger to Lennon, inviting him to start a fist fight to settle the issue. Lennon had begun his tirade against McCartney as well, insulting his songwriting [often calling it ¨granny music¨ when McCartney wanted to write love songs or simple, more lighthearted ones], as well as insulting Harrison’s output as well. This was another point of contention between the members, how Lennon seemed at ease critiquing everyone while not pulling his weight in the areas. In Get Back, after a comment from Lennon towards one of Harrison’s works was hurled, it was McCartney who asked if Lennon had anything to contribute, how it wasn’t helping to discredit some of the work actually being presented if he wasn’t going to present some himself. This is what led this largely anti-McCartney sentiment amongst the band, how he seemed to take on the manager role and position himself above the rest. After the shocking passing of their longtime manager and friend, Brian Epstien, the band chose not to hire another manager - suddenly their work ethic was starting to lull. Being the only member of the band to not quit, McCartney stepped up where he saw fit, and wasn’t the best at it. The Beatles didn’t have a leader, which made them so unique and quite honestly great - yet suddenly it seemed like McCartney was creating a hierarchy. Combine this with how fed up the band had gotten with his experimental ideas and this was bound to go horribly. Anyone could see that - except the group themselves. The only member that seemed to be safe from internal issues was Starr, who remained on good terms with each of the other three as their separate relationships imploded.
“I asked Mick Jagger to come over and explain to the four Beatles who this Allen Klein was,” Brown states. “And John, in his wonderful way, had Klein turn up to the same meeting, which was deeply embarrassing. It made Mick very uncomfortable too." - excerpt from All You Need Is Love written Peter Brown
To add to the division sparking in the band, during early 1969 is when the band decided to work with the biggest supervillain of 60s rock: Allen Klein. After Epstien’s death, The Beatles would create Apple Corps as their offices for business affairs, and it was more or less a disaster. Klein had reached out to Lennon, offering his support and saying he would become
his financial advisor. Klein, at this time, was also managing The Rolling Stones, and doing terribly at that. He was careless with their money, and Mick Jagger was able to sniff it out as early as 1967 (from his whopping two years at the London School of Economics), and took precaution to protect the band from the greedy hands of Klein in the ways he could. It’s hard to believe that at no point a discussion would be had between Jagger and any Beatle about what he saw wrong with Klein, but alas we may never know. Harrison and Starr also chose to have Klein become their financial advisor, but McCartney refused. He’s stated in recent years that he had a horrible feeling about Klein, that he would have nightmares about Klein as a dentist ripping out all of his teeth. With his track record within the band in the last few years, he was seen as being dramatic. It was also his choice of financial advisor that led the band to shun his concerns, that being his future in-laws, the Eastmans. The band believed that one shouldn’t work with family (or… soon to be family), and that created a whole other layer of animosity between everyone. This would cause issues for The Stones as well, with all of Klein’s
attention suddenly focused on The Beatles, they were now stuck with someone they didn’t like negating their finances. It would be 1970 where they would drop Klein (only shortly after The Beatles broke up, fucking Klein over almost as bad as he fucked everyone else), yet they would still have to suffer until 1986 with Klein’s antics. After McCartney left The Beatles, he was advised by the Eastmans to dissolve the partnership within the band, which ended up happening in 1971. This meant Klein could no longer work on Beatles centric work, but could work with Lennon, Starr, and Harrison as solo artists. This decision, though critiqued at the time, ended up saving The Beatles in long run, with him not having say over The Beatles work it made it easier for the other three to cut ties with him when they came around to realizing how horrible the man truly was (as listening to McCartney OR Jagger was clearly not in the cards). You look towards the album can almost see these fractures, You never give me your money, only your funny paper / In the middle of negotiations you break down, Once there was a way to get back home, If you leave me I’ll never make it alone / Believe me when I beg you, don’t ever leave me alone.
"Let's say possibly Paul's suspicions were right … and the timing was right." - John Lennon in 1973, on his decison to cut ties with Allen Klein
Oh, Darling is a fascinating case study into The Beatles at the time. A mainly McCartney number, the vocal he laid down was so coarse it took days to perfect. Oh, darling, please believe / I’ll never do you no harm.are the opening lyrics after a stark piano intro, flowing into the aforementioned lyric I’ll never make it alone. The song is about a separation of some sort, and the pleas of one party for the other to stay, for the other to think of the pain they’ll cause in the wake of their departure. When you told me you didn't need me anymore / Well, you know I nearly broke down and cried / When you told me you didn't need me anymore / Well, you know I nearly fell down and died. Connecting this to McCartney’s reaction to the band's eventual breakup, you see the theme of abandonment holding close to that of insanity. McCarntey wails on this song, but it feels more emotional than anything
to come from him before or after, like the screams are that of unresolved pain over seeing this world crash around him. The song fits within the more upbeat instrumentation of the album, being a downer only when exclaimed closely. The rest of the band members' signature songs on the album are joyful, as to be expected from them in some ways. Nothing Lennon wrote is off-kilter to what you’d expect, experimental and largely nonsensical, Starr was musing about being with his friends beneath the sea, and Harrison was writing one of the greatest love songs of all time and one of the greatest songs of all time. Then you had McCartney, whose pieces make up a bulk of the album, yet who seemed to be struggling the most in this new world, who revealed even the slightest show of this here, midway through. Oh, darling / Please believe me / I’ll never let you down. Later on the album, you hear lines bleed together in theme throughout the medley, Though she thought I knew the answer / Well, I knew what I could not say, Oh, that magic feeling / Nowhere to go, nowhere to go, even down to Carry that Weight, almost mirroring Abbey Road, McCartney sings In the middle of the celebrations I break down to which the choir of the boys follows back Boy, you’re gonna carry that weight / Carry that weight a long time.
“The Beatles changed the world, did all this, only to realize theres no place for them. [..] 'We just want to be a rock and roll band. The world has no place for us anymore.'” - Director Peter Jackson to Stephen Colbert while promoting Get Back, 2021
By the time Abbey Road was released, the band was effectively over. Lennon was off with Ono, releasing his solo singles calling for peace and getting in trouble with governments, Starr was starting his acting career, Harrison had been off with Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton making headway on All Things Must Pass, and McCartney found himself on a farm with his new family. It was the photoshoot to promote the album that the foursome would ever be in the same room together again. Just as fast The Beatles changed the world, they left it. The most prolific part? Despite all of this, the harvest of their crops is oftentimes considered one of their greatest outputs. In a way, proving to the world, and McCartney, that no matter what happened The Beatles could always come together for the love of their music. The last song on the album, the last song to be recorded as a foursome was The End, with the band leaving us with the simple words The love you take is equal to the love you make. At points during the album’s creation, the band suffered their worst moments together, moments that would go on to create some of the most wide ranging gossip in music history, but it was also during this that they left the world with something positive, something more light hearted then they themselves felt. It was Tom Petty who would say in 2006 that the band wanted nothing more than to make people happy and all they got was pain in return. Even in their last moments, the band was making an album that soundtracked millions of lives, the best moments of peoples live within the grooves of Abbey Road. It's a bittersweet album to look at, knowing the unhappiness each held while recording sheds the process in a bit of a negative light, yet they were still able to make something timeless, and overwhelmingly cohesive and positive as they finally stepped away from each other unconsciously. For a group that was once together through everything, living through the highs of their young adult lives as the only four people who could ever understand each other, they were finally letting go of each other. They had grown up - no longer a group of teenagers thrust into a world of adoration and expectations, they were adults with wives, children, ambitions the others couldn’t understand. John wanted to use his art to inspire change, risk everything in an attempt to help others. Bed Peace, experimental art installations, the Plastic Ono Band, giving back his MBE would round out Lennon’s 1969. Paul wanted to write his stories, bring joy to people in the way he knew he could. Becoming a father, a farm in Scotland, a muse to Linda’s camera, and the first echoes of McCartney would complete his 1969. George was fed up with work taking back seat, he wanted to release music as he pleased, no longer policed by what others wanted him to do. His first number one, a tour with Delaney & Bonnie, and headway on the most successful post Beatle work beginning was how his 1969. Starr was ready to take on a more rewarding career path, one where he faded less into a background of huge personalities. Headway on two solo albums, work on multiple films, and work with countless other artists on classic albums was how 1969 panned out. The Beatles were all on separate paths after a while, and it made no sense to tie each other together when the bonds were proving to be suffocating. While each went on to have lengthy and successful solo careers, they never topped what they had together. But nothing good can last forever, and all we can do is look at how these four guys did one last hoorah with everything they had.
Almost as poignant as the last lines of The End is that of Golden Slumbers, with the delivery of the final Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry / I will sing a lullaby. In 1971, Yoko Ono wrote a letter to writer John Findley who had incorrectly stated that art was dead. In her letter she wrote, “There was a temple in Japan called the Golden temple. A man loved it very much as it was, and he couldn't stand the thought of anything happening to it. He felt the only way he could stop anything from happening to it was to burn it down, and he did. Now, the image of the temple was able to stay forever in his mind as a perfect form.” In many ways, this story mirrors that of the deterioration of The Beatles post-Abbey Road. While never intended to be broken in four pieces due to the pressure of the outside world, it's exactly what happened. They never got back together in the short time they had [with John, of course] no matter the amounts of money they were offered, they left The Beatles legacy largely untouched by their hands. In many ways, the legacy they left was similar to the Golden Temple Yoko wrote of, the man who loved it was the band themselves. The Beatles legacy remains how the Golden Temple does, burned down so they didn’t have to watch it deteriorate. The work they put in, the world they changed, remains left only in the minds of each and every person in the years since they’re first step onto the scene all the way back in 1963. The last thing to ever be remembered as a product of The Beatles was Abbey Road, the fab four suddenly singing themselves a lullaby for what they gave the world that no longer needed nor had a space for them.
No band will ever be as special as The Beatles. That’s a fact. There is no chance four people will ever come along and leave as big a musical impact as these four did. Without Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and John Lennon history would be drastically different. Even through bitter arguments, tragedy, and navigating a world they were paving the way for, they still left a legacy that no one has ever come close to. Reframing what it meant to be pop stars, what it meant to write a pop song, what it meant to push artistry forward. Revitalizing and recontextualizing the women’s rights movement back in 1964, pushing the boundaries of pop songwriting and lyrical subject in 1965, in 1966 sticking up for the rights of an artist and freedom of speech and introducing the idea of a studio based band, pushing forward what musical expression could be. 1967 would change the way the world viewed the art of the album, 1968 would see one of the most expansive and experimental releases of a mainstream artist to date, and 1969? Well, the world had changed in accordance with The Beatles to this point, and was now accelerating past them. There was nowhere to go, they had done everything a band could do in seven years. To understand The Beatles impact is to understand that without The Beatles, not only would music be different but the world at large would not be the same. In the 55 years since the Abbey Road's release, The Beatles have never slipped in their cultural revelence, a fact unheard of. While Abbey Road may be the end of The Beatles' output, but it was no end to The Beatles legacy, as that will never end. No matter how far out we become from their music, The Beatles, and the world they left in their wake, will always be there.
The Beatles during their last photoshoot as a band, the last time all four would be together, by Ethan Russell
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