Abbey Road

McCartney

It was taken by the late Scottish photographer Iain Macmillan who stood on a ladder in the middle of the street while a policeman blocked the traffic. The whole thing was done in roughly 10 minutes. The crossing was outside the Abbey Road studios in London, where the Beatles recorded their albums.

Paul McCartney

The same order in each of the six frames – John Lennon first in white, then Ringo Starr in black, Paul McCartney in grey, barefoot, holding a cigarette in his right hand (all three in Tommy Nutter suits) and at the back, a denim clad George Harrison./span>

Abbey Road is of course synonymous with the legendary work of The Beatles, who worked with EMI producer Sir George Martin and recorded 190 of their 210 songs at the studios.

Brian Epstein

‘Rubber Soul’ is a punningly-titled album and it takes its name from a reference Paul McCartney heard from a man in the United States referring to Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones as “good, but plastic soul”. McCartney says that this was “the germ of ‘Rubber Soul’”./span>

It was taken on the corner with Alexandra Road. During photographing the sign a girl in a blue dress walked through the shot. Iain was angry but later it was chosen as the back cover./span>

The End

Abbey Road displays all The Beatles’ best wares: Songwriting, guitars, vocal harmonies, overdubs, lyrical creativity, inventive studio work, emotional content and energetic fun. All things for which the band has been known for the five decades since./span>

Paul explained how the album came to be named after the recording studio they had spent so much of their careers making music in: ‘Let It Be’ was a great album, but making it had been hard. ‘Abbey Road’ marked the band’s going back to working together more like they used to, but as the people they had now become…

• Rubber Soul (1965) Runtime: 33:44, 14 tracks.
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
• Revolver (1966) Runtime: 35:01, 14 tracks.
• Help! (1965)
• The Beatles “The White Album” (1968) Runtime: 93:33, 30 tracks.
• A Hard Day’s Night (1964) Runtime: 30:10, 13 tracks.
• Let It Be (1970)
• Please Please Me (1963)

On 3 September 1968, Eric Clapton played on sessions for George Harrison’s composition, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London. It is Clapton’s most well-known guest recording session. A few months later, on 10 January 1969, George Harrison quit The Beatles.

It pictures the four men – George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon – striding along a zebra crossing situated on Abbey Road, outside EMI studios in London, where the band had spent the majority of their ground-breaking recording career./span>

Pepper album sells for $290,500./span>

Jann Haworth

From Me to You

In popular music, a concept album is an album that is “unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical.” Concept albums are more than just albums with general themes, but rather, have specific and purposefully-made connections across the span of the songs of the entire album.

Frank Sinatra

From this perspective, Blonde is a statement at the creative and introspective level, characterized by little conventionality (in this register), both in terms of instrumental composition, and in conceptual lyric terms. That said, I recommend this album to any fan of R&B, psychedelic pop and concept albums (Link here).

But he makes the case for Sinatra inventing the music album as we know it today: as the prime artistic expression for the art form of popular music. So, what album in particular does Lefevre give the accolade? It’s 1955’s In the Wee Small Hours.

Pepper’s was not the first concept album, but it did popularize the form. In his 1988 book on the Beatles, the writer Tim Riley puts it best: “Freak Out! has claims as the first ‘concept album’, but Sgt. Pepper was the record that made that idea convincing to most ears.” Indeed, the world was convinced.

Now Pink Floyd have received an accolade to match the enormity of their sound and performances – by being named the biggest band of all time, ahead of acts such as Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.

Magical Mystery Tour

While Dark Side of the Moon is, in fact, a concept album. It is still a loosely connected one, reflecting how fragile, life can be at times. Through themes of the basic pressures of life in money, mental illness, coming of age, and weariness from travel, it is in ways, a very personal album, specifically to Waters.