100 Best Albums Of All Time

01 Come Together

02 Something

03 Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

04 Oh! Darling

05 Octopus’s Garden

06 I Want You (She’s So Heavy)

07 Here Comes the Sun

08 Because

09 You Never Give Me Your Money

10 Sun King

11 Mean Mr. Mustard

12 Polythene Pam

13 She Came in Through the Bathroom Window

14 Golden Slumbers

15 Carry That Weight

16 The End

17 Her Majesty

Understandably, after more than six years of non-stop madness, the Beatles were over it. Although Let It Be was the last Beatles album released, the songs had been recorded before Abbey Road. Knowing it was the end, Paul McCartney rallied the troops back to the studio to end it on a high note. John Lennon was off in his own art project/marriage with Yoko Ono. Meanwhile, George Harrison was tired of having his efforts belittled by Lennon, McCartney and producer George Martin. (‘Paul would always help when you had done his ten songs,’ Harrison said sarcastically.)

Although relegated to just two songs, George Harrison’s are clearly the best. ‘Here Comes the Sun’ was picked out one afternoon in Eric Clapton’s backyard and is what it says: a warm, irresistible tune; while ‘Something’, which had begun during sessions for the previous album, is arguably the best of all of the Beatles’ ballads. Harrison borrowed a line from James Taylor (‘Something in the way she moves’) and wove a sublime melody that was so captivating that even Frank Sinatra recorded it. ‘“Something”: A great song,’ said Lennon. ‘Possibly a single. If I can get “Come Together” on the back side I’ll be very pleased … so that I can listen to it without listening to the whole album.’

John Lennon also has a purple patch. ‘Come Together’ was based on Chuck Berry’s ‘You Can’t Catch Me’ (the obvious similarity would come back to haunt Lennon) and was originally written for LSD guru Timothy Leary. It’s nonsense-but-clever lyric is set against a swampy, bass-heavy track and a loping beat that is as grungy as the Beatles ever got. Lennon’s other strong contribution to the album was ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’, which consisted of him chanting, ‘I want you’ on top of massed guitar overdubs from him and Harrison. The final overdub session for ‘I Want You’ would be the last time all four Beatles worked in the studio together.

Although Yoko Ono is often accused of breaking up the Beatles, in fact she encouraged Lennon to move beyond his Tin Pan Alley roots and start to take creative chances with his work. The sophistication she brought to Lennon, and indirectly to the band, was part of the Beatles’ creative salvation and meant they were remembered for more than just silly love songs.

Ono’s influence was most obvious on ‘Because’. The melody came to Lennon after hearing her play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on the piano. He reversed the melody and added a lyric inspired by Ono’s book Grapefruit. The Beatles then added harmonies to what is one of Lennon’s most deceptively complex tunes. It was also the last song recorded on the last Beatles album.

For all of McCartney’s enthusiasm he was not at his best on Abbey Road. His two complete songs, ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ and ‘Oh! Darling’, are twee juvenilia, albeit wellexecuted. His real contribution came with the medley on side two. Eight scraps of songs written by either Lennon or McCartney were rolled together into what was a dazzling, seamless whole. If he couldn’t keep the band together, McCartney at least knew how to end it in style. ‘The End’ is a beautifully small song that features Ringo Starr’s only drum solo and then Paul, George and John each take a guitar solo followed by one of McCartney’s best lyrics: ‘And in the end the love you take/Is equal to the love you make’. And then it was done.