The Beatles' "Abbey Road" remixed

[Brian]

The 50th anniversary edition of "Abbey Road" was released in multiple formats on September 27, 2019.

If you're not old enough, you can't imagine the impact "Abbey Road" had on the world when the Beatles released it 50 years ago this week.  Like "Sgt. Pepper" two years earlier, I remember where I was when I first heard the album.  Soon it was in the air, everywhere I went.  By the time that the Beatles broke up six months later, it had become their bestselling album.  A seventh grader, I played the record constantly, often while staring at the album cover, and I would have bought the 8-track too if Apple Records hadn't scrambled the song order.  Later, I taped my record with all of its little pops during the intro of "Here Comes the Sun," fitting it onto a 60 minute cassette by omitting "Maxwell's Silver Hammer." In 1987, Apple Records finally released the Beatles' albums in the CD format.

I pre-ordered the Super Deluxe Edition -- three CD's, one high resolution Blue Ray and a wonderful hardcover book -- from Amoeba Records in Hollywood for $98.  I could've saved a few bucks with Barnes and Noble or another online retailer, but I want to support a physical record store.  The album was released and shipped for free on Friday, and my box arrived Saturday by way of the good old U.S. Postal Service.  For $16 for CD or $23 for vinyl, you can buy a single disc of the album re-mastered by Giles Martin, the son of the Beatles' producer George Martin, who also re-mastered the 50th anniversary editions of "Sgt. Pepper" and the White Album.

When it arrived, the first thing I did was play the 1987 CD.  Still sounds great.  Then I played the 2019 re-master, and Anni and I nearly fell to our knees.  Without changing the character of the album, Giles opened fresh sonic worlds within every song using the original masters at EMI Recording Studios in London.  "Abbey Road" was not only the last recorded work by the Beatles, it was their first using state of the art recording equipment.

But I bought it for the bonus tracks, which deserve a post or two of their own.  The Super Deluxe Edition comes with two discs of outtakes recorded from February to August 1969, including "The Ballad of John and Yoko" and "Old Brown Shoe," along with demos of the hits that Paul McCartney wrote for Mary Hopkin and Badfinger, "Goodbye" and "Come and Get It."  There's also a two-CD set that has a disc configuring the outtakes in the same order as the original album, so of course I'll have to get that too.

[Brian]

Perhaps the biggest revelation among all of the outtakes in the various "Abbey Road" 50th anniversary editions is this version of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," recorded at Trident Studios instead of the usual EMI Studios with Billy Preston playing organ. In the banter before this take, John hears that the neighbors are complaining about the noise.

[Brian]

As much as I've played and enjoyed the Sessions CD on the two-disc edition of the 50th anniversary "Abbey Road," with the outtakes in the same order as the original album, I cannot do without the two Sessions CD's in the Super Deluxe Edition and all of its many previously unreleased wonders.



I remember watching that video on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in the spring of 1969.  Twiggy told Paul McCartney about a 17 year old Welsh singer she saw on a television talent show, and Paul signed Mary Hopkin to Apple Records, producing her first hit, "Those Were the Days."  After the Beatles, she was the label's most successful artist.  Paul wrote his own Russian folk song, "Goodbye," as the follow up.  That's his home demo below, rendered in the mp3 format.  (Buy the CD's, if not the LP's -- the audio quality is worth the cost.)  Mary later married producer Tony Visconti, and she sang on David Bowie's "Low" album, recorded in Berlin in 1977.