By 1969, the once promising, fresh-faced Fab Four had, in essence, transformed into the weary, resentful Truculent Two. Guitarist George Harrison, drummer Ringo Star, and millions of melancholy fans watched on as the most successful songwriting duo in music history -- guitarist John Lennon and bassist Paul McCartney -- became bitter adversaries. Lennon and McCartney's lives were diverging along with their music. The once subtle differences in their influences -- compositional and stylistic predilections which led to the conception of peerlessly popular, exhilarating music -- had become an irreconcilable divide. Lennon’s influences were quickly shifting from the world of popular song to more broad, avant-garde art, similar to the works created by his girlfriend Yoko Ono. Contrastingly, McCartney, still heavily influenced by the ’50s rock of his childhood, remained fascinated with creating timeless pop anthems (though his broader artistic ambitions had become exceptionally inventive, such as his suggestion for the group to personify the fictitious Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band). Never was this artistic split more obvious musically than on the dialectic Abbey Road -- the final album recorded by The Beatles.
The initial eight tracks that comprise the album's first half are a traditional arrangement of full-length songs, as Lennon preferred. Fittingly, his memorable “Come Together” opens the album. Beginning with a superb McCartney bassline, an iconoclastic Lennon farcically strings together illicit drug and sexual imagery, while his eerie calls to be “shot” are accentuated by a clever Ringo hi-hat. Although the opener is a strikingly traditional composition in Lennon’s later-Beatles catalogue, his other full-length contributions are more telling of how he had matured and where he was heading creatively. The menacing “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” progressively combines an incessant blues riff, a hissing Moog synthesizer, and a sparse vocal track bound by a wall of guitars into a magnificently portentous testament of his love for Yoko, while the poignant “Because,” stripped of all rock ‘n’ roll archetypes, eloquently employs sophisticated harmonies to enliven and beautify some of Lennon’s most innocent lyrics: “Because the sky is blue it makes me cry/ Because the sky is blue – Ah – love is old, love is new/ Love is all, love is you.” The opening section is also memorable for Harrison’s contributions (“Something,” “Here Comes The Sun”), which portend his brilliant post-Beatles solo album, All Things Must Pass.
The final portion of the album encompasses the famous medley, spearheaded and dominated in content by McCartney. His eclectic “You Never Give Me Your Money,” a light-hearted, ultimately hopeful rumination on the band’s label troubles (“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven/ All good children go to heaven”), opens this section, but it is on McCartney’s climactic four-track finale where he truly shines. Whether it be his captivating melodies (“She Came In Through The Bathroom Window,” “Carry That Weight”), his knack for pithy, teary balladry (“Golden Slumbers”), or, as Lennon described to Playboy, his ability to be “philosophical” with a poignant Shakespearean couplet (“And, in the end/ The love you take/ Is equal to the love you make”), all of McCartney’s musical trademarks are at work. Combined with Lennon’s playful vocals on “Polythene Pam,” the group’s lush harmonies on “Sun King,” Harrison’s diverse guitar play -- including a memorable use of arpeggio (“Carry That Weight”) -- and Ringo’s notable drum solo on “The End,” the medley proves to be one of the most inspired and enjoyable pieces of music in The Beatles' extraordinary catalogue.
For a band that exceedingly composed their music around motifs of love, the breakup of The Beatles was dissonantly vitriolic. However, by putting their differences aside and recording Abbey Road with a passion for music they had nearly extinguished with petty disputes and grudges, The Beatles gave music fans another blissful musical experience that is still producing joy decades after its creation.
