Studio 2 is the inner sanctum where The Beatles recorded mostly, George Martin producing.
Extravagant claims are made about Abbey Road Studios. It is said to be the first studio to be purpose-built for making records, and the largest music recording studio anywhere. It is said that stereo was invented here. Abbey Road is also said to be the most famous recording studio in the world, and that claim is hard to challenge.
Leading artists in every field of music and entertainment have recorded here. Sir Edward Elgar opened the studio in 1931, and then conducted the London Symphony Orchestra for a recording of the Pomp and Circumstance Marches. Pablo Casals recorded Bach here in 1936, and Paul Robeson cut records at Abbey Road throughout the decade. The last recordings by Glenn Miller leading the US Army Air Force Band were made here in October 1944. Great jazz musicians, popular singers, comedy performers and the most famous pop and rock artists have all worked at Abbey Road. The roster is almost incongruous: Shirley Bassey and Gracie Fields, Yehudi Menuhin and Cliff Richard. Abbey Road Studios remains active in all musical fields. From 1980 it added orchestral film score recording, including the soundtracks of Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, Shrek, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Skyfall and The Hobbit.
Studio 1 can accommodate the largest orchestras and is much used for film score recording.
EMI – Electric and Musical Industries – can claim most of the credit. Rooted in the earliest recording companies, EMI was formed in 1931 with merger of the Gramophone Company and the American company Columbia Graphophone, which also bought with it the Parlophone label. Work had already started on making a recording studio before the merger. This had required a visionary leap, because at the time all music recording was made in concert halls. No. 3 Abbey Road, St John’s Wood, is a ‘handsome if unremarkable villa of the 1830s’, according to English Heritage. It was redesigned by architects Wallis, Gilbert & Partners, which specialized in factories.
One of the riddles of Abbey Road for those who make the pilgrimage there is how a converted nine-room townhouse can accommodate so much recording space, in particular the massive Studio 1, capable of holding 110 orchestra musicians together with a choir of 100 singers. The secret is that Studio 1 is a vast brick box, engulfing the entirety of what used to be the back garden, at full width. It resembles a film studio rather than a recording space. Studio 2, at a lower level to the side, is where The Beatles recorded most of their music. Many recording spaces are reputed to have particular sonic magic embedded in the fabric, and insiders talk of the EMI echo, or reverberation, in Studio 2, and other qualities of great subtlety. A Second World War air raid shelter at the back of Studio 2 was converted into an echo chamber. Studio 3 is a more intimate space for instrumental soloists and singers, and today there is also a penthouse studio.
Some of the mythology of Abbey Road Studios stems from EMI’s artists and repertoire department over the years, both with British and European musicians, and through its transatlantic links and partnerships – in particular, the decision to record The Beatles on EMI’s Parlophone label. From 1962, the band cut 190 of its 210 recordings at Abbey Road.
Additional significance rests on a ten-minute long photoshoot on 8 August 1969, when photographer Iain Macmillan shot six pictures of The Beatles walking over the pedestrian crossing just to the left of the studio entrance. One image was selected for an album cover. Twelve days later all of The Beatles worked in the studio together for the last time and Abbey Road was the name assigned to that final recorded album.
One minor mystery is the precise date when EMI Studios officially became Abbey Road Studios. All musicians of the 1960s, including The Beatles themselves, invariably referred to the studios simply as ‘EMI’, and never as Abbey Road. Although Abbey Road’s iconography was undoubtedly launched by the cover picture and naming of The Beatles’ album, the sign on the entrance door transom changed only in gradual stages over the next ten years. Still tagged EMI Recording Studios in 1971, then changing to EMI Abbey Road Studios, at a later point it became Abbey Road Studios. Some in the music industry say a shrewd rebranding came at a time when the power of the recording companies was declining, as bands and producers grew more powerful. If so, Abbey Road was a masterstroke in charismatic renaming.
Working condenser and ribbon vintage microphones. Part of a collection of 500 still in use today.
Studio 1 control room’s centrepiece is a 72-channel console; all analogue and digital formats are supported in the studio.
A tiny hard core of female Beatles fans haunted the entrance of the studio for the years when the band was active there; what has happened since is harder to understand: an estimated quarter of a million tourists each year travel to Abbey Road Studios (which does not allow visitors inside), endowing it with shrine status and one of the most graffiti-decorated walls in London. As visitors regularly recreate the Abbey Road moment on the pedestrian crossing, it can sometimes prove hazardous.
The pavement wall, decorated with messages from visitors around the world, is regularly painted over.
English Heritage, in outlining the listed status of Abbey Road and the crossing, acknowledges ‘the sheer cultural status of the premises’.