A Grand Finale..................
"Abbey Road offers something for everybody, a 90 year old senior citizen could enjoy this album just as easy as a five year old girl or boy. The sounds and tastes of this record are all over the map. For instance, whereas "Come Together" is a serious rock anthem with a heavy message, songs like "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" (Lennon-McCartney) and "Octopus's Garden" (Ringo Starr) are pure silly pop. The Beatles also tend to get very romantically inclined on "Abbey Road," as on the excellent "Something" (check out the wonderful string section), and on "Oh! Darling," where Paul McCartney belts out the lyrics in his most heartfelt tone. Overall, there's a boyish, innocent quality to these songs, especially lyrically, yet a sophistication in the sound and musical development. In short, The Beatles and their producer, George Martin, had the resources and talent to shine years ahead of their time.
Though The Beatles were on their way out with "Abbey Road," the 7 minute plus song "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is reminiscent of another British band on their way IN in 1969, none other than Led Zeppelin. The song features severely wanting lyrics and an ingraining guitar riff that stays in your head light years after you hear it, definitely Jimmy Page style, before Page became a household name. On the flip side, songs like "Because" and "Sun King" are positively airy and lightweight, yet no less spectacular. The Beatles thrived on hazy and dreamy songs that featured their sky-high choruses and melting melodies. Mere mortals simply can't write music like this, yet The Beatles made it seem as easy as playing hop-scotch on a bright sunny day.
Starting at "You Never Give Me Your Money," the album transforms into a hot-potato medley of one inherently melodic song after another, as if the guys went composition-crazy and miraculously melded some of their best songs into one boiling pot and spewed everything out in one shockingly creative assembly line of tracks that just blend together magically. It's like a movie score with words or a spur-of-the moment "best of" mixture. Undoubtedly, Paul McCartney and John Lennon deserve the lion's share of credit for creating some of the best songs in the history of rock and roll in a span of twenty minutes on the second side of one album. The guys sound excited, joyful, happy to be alive, inspiring, crazy, and willing to experiment.
As the music on "Abbey Road" mutates from one moment to the next, sometimes in the space of just one song, the lustrous sounds and sky-high choruses mix perfectly with the weightless lyrics, which sometimes refer to strange events or people, or just as easily, sound hazy and dreamy, in their own spacey world. Nonetheless, it's worth mentioning The Beatles blatant attempt at spreading their famous "love is all you need" message throughout the album, especially the back-half of the album. As the album winds down, and we here such greats as "Mr. Mustard" and the punkish "Polythene Pam" (both ahead of their time), it's the understatement of the century to say that it ends dramatically. The Beatles go out with a positive and touching message on one of the last lines of the record, and it's not a reach to say that this is one of the most well thought out albums ever made, a concept album with no real concept. I'm now beginning to understand why many have said over the years it is The Beatles and then everyone else.........Read full review
