Recommendations of the Editorial team
The original idea came from McCartney, but George Martin claims that the last major act of the Beatles – an eight -part medley that dominates the second page of “Abbey Road” – was due to his initiative.
“I wanted John and Paul to get their music more seriously. And Paul was always open to experiments.” So it was McCartney who tackled the first section on May 6th: “You Never Give Me Your Money”, a only superficial cheerful billing with the Apple Corporation business nightmares.
Lennon showed far away from the Medley, even if he taxed two of the most eccentric parts with “Mr. Mustard” and “Polythene Pam”. He later denounced the whole concept as “scrap” in the Rolling Stone and said that “none of the songs had something to do with each other. There was no thread – except for the fact that we had packed them together.”
Playful, careful, bitter
In a way, of course, he was right. The 16-minute sequence, which meanders from “Money” to Lennon’s atmospheric “Sun King” and the soulful “she came in through the Bathroom Window” to the cradle song “Golden Slumbers”, in order to be rounded off in “The End” by a McCartney’s wisdom (“The Love You Take/ Is Equal to the Love You Make ”) has no narrative context.
And at the same time the Medley shows the Beatles at their best: playful, gently, bitter – and always connected by their music. The vocal harmonies are breathtakingly complex, the guitars confidently and precisely to the point. “Somehow we were still sticking together,” said McCartney, “even if we had to struggle with fierce stitches. But even at our low points we still had respect for each other.”
The individual parts of the medleys were recorded in July and August, without defined order. (“Mean Mr. Mustard” already came from the beginning of 1968.) If there was a higher -level topic in these fragments, then it was certainly her financial situation, which she almost drove into bankruptcy and gave mentally.
Lennon had campaigned to hire the Rolling Stones Manager to all of them in order to disguise the chaos at Apple. McCartney insisted on Lee and John Eastman, his future wife’s father and brother. McCartney later admitted that with “You Never Give Me Your Money” he “shot against everyone and his promises that were never kept”.
In “Golden Slumbers” (originally a lullaby from the 17th century) and “Carry That Weight”, McCartney once again takes up the subject of mental exhaustion. “In the end I am a positive person,” he said, “but there are moments when I can no longer be positive. And that was such a moment:” Carry that Weight a long time-Like Forever! “
The crossing guitar solos in “The End” were the result of a common brainstorming. Lennon suggested that he, Harrison and McCartney should play the licks. McCartney said he wanted to start. And so after Ringo’s only solo on a Beatles recording, you hear three flaming breaks (Harrison in the middle, Lennon at the end), which were recorded live in the studio-the last joint fanal of a band that was only removed from their resolution for months.
“I was not aware of it,” said Harrison about “Abbey Road”, “that it would be our last records, although I already had the feeling that we had arrived at the end of a development.”
“On the ruins of this madness,” Starr later explained to the Rolling Stone, “we played another number that is one of the best that the Beatles have ever done.”