The Abbey Road medley is a common point of controversy among Beatles fans, both of the “regular people” Beatlemaniacs and the rock nerd variety. One one hand the medley is dazzling, especially, I would think, to young or otherwise impressionable ears. Of course, I’m giving away my bias: even when I was a kid I found it unsatisfying and a cheap ploy. Over the years, as I’ve matured and grown as a human being, I can better appreciate the craft of the medley–even its place in cementing the Beatles’ legacy. However, I’m not totally certain of how I feel. I’d like to hear your thoughts on this key late-period Beatles work. How should I feel about the Abbey Road medley?
After the jump…perhaps the most fascinating slice of Beatlemania I’ve seen in some time…and the final word?
Fascinating, Captain.
The final word?
I’ve always viewed it as two distinct medleys: “Sun King/Mustard/Pam/Bathroom Window” and “Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End.”
I like them both a lot, but the second one in particularly has a lot to offer if you’re looking for feelings. It’s McCartney — the one who by that point had the most emotional investment in the idea of The Beatles — admitting that The Dream is Over, a couple of months before Lennon made his melodramatic proclamation, and that tough times are ahead. It might even has sociopolitical implications. Here on RTH, Abbey Road gets busted on for its Kentonite polish, but there is an elegaic quality here that undercuts it.
Also, take into account McCartney’s other side-two contributions: “You Never Give Me Your Money” and, to a lesser extent, “Bathroom Window” also refer to the dire state of Beatledom with a sense of sadness and resignation. Whereas Lennon’s medley contributions, while fun and catchy, retreat to his private Lewis Carroll-land. You could argue that McCartney is trying to communicate more about his real life on the second half of Abbey Road, whereas, after “Because,” Lennon has nothing left to say on the album.
I don’t understand how the medley is really “cheaper” than the ingenuity of splicing
two versions Strawberry Fields together, or two separate songs into A Day In The Life. It comes off to me as a lil’ set of songs without an embracing theme, so no heavy baggage, just a pain for those DJs, should they wish to play bits, or for a mixtape enthusiast.
There are hints in there Oats, but Paul can’t really bring himself to be direct. He wanted to negotiate, but is also enamoured of that “magic feeling” of nowhere to go. This should have been the album to go out on, even though George is really the foil for Paul, moreso than John by this point. Look at Paul’s sticky fingers on the vocal arrangements in John’s song Because, his bass riff that drives Come Together, the low end work all over I Want You (She’s So Heavy). The medley is, of course, his idea. While Paul snuck in to add that great bass part to Something, it didn’t need his help really, nor did Here Comes The Sun, with possibly the most tasteful usage of a Moog on record in it’s nascent years. George’s solos and licks are just wonderful on this album in my opinion, single handedly making Octopus’ Garden worth listening to, among other feats.
Has Paul made the His Majesty his yet?
In light of what Mockcarr asks, has no one else ever felt like the medley was too gimmicky to embrace? Has no one else had trouble getting beyond the feeling that it was one too many cutesy Sgt. Pepper’s tricks strung together? Mockcarr, THAT’S how I could think it’s “cheaper.” It’s like they took a half dozen incomplete “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”-quality throwaways and stitched them together into one grand gimmick. The editing behind “Strawberry Fields” and “A Day in the Life” don’t strike me as gimmicks as much as they are part of the necessary fabric of the recordings. Could not “Polythene Pam” have been a cool little album track if it wasn’t stuck in the middle of the medley? Did not Joe Cocker prove that there was a real song to be sung in “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window”? Again, I’m a much bigger man than I was 25 years ago, when this was the tenor of all I thought regarding the medley, but how can you NOT understand what some of us might have or might still think?
I guess you are pretty dogmatic about their songs then. There are a lot of Lennon/McCartney numbers where it’s easy to determine who wrote what, and where the bits combine, and part of the appeal for me is that juxtaposition. THis side messes with their usual manner of collaboration. Much as I love A Day In The Life, there’s nothing more gimmicky than calling attention to the break in continuity with a f’n alarm clock! Do you have the same issue with We Can Work It Out? I figure it’s actually PART of the breakdown that they can no longer fill in each other’s blanks, so, better they should take the good bits and just run them all together, I say.
Then there’s the other issue, She Came… is a complete song. The other one minute songs are fine, and probably COULD have been complete. They still work as cool little truncated tracks without the dogmatic repetition. They could have kept the solo in the middle of Polythene Pam, and repeated the first verse and had a whole number which would perhaps NOT have had the same effect – the Anthology has that version I believe. These pieces are better than Honey Pie or Why Don’t We Do It In The Road on on the White Album which are treated as complete entities, so we can be thankful for the material used in the experiment you feel has failed. Think of what would have happened if the idea came up a year earlier and and Dig It, or some of those dreadful jammy things from Let It Be that never made it past my overpriced bootlegs would up on a record in this manner. It was a musical collage without sacrificing melody like Revolution 9. The actual compromise was having two regular songs start off the side for people who are dedicated to the standard pop song pattern.
Mockcarr wrote:
That’s damming the medley with faint praise, isn’t it? Please don’t discount the “bigger man” aspect of what I’m getting at. I no longer hate the medley. I’m not asking you to convince me whether I should stop hating the medley, only to help me better frame my wiser, gentler take on it.
The fact of the matter is, a local Beatles cover band plays at our town’s July 4th fireworks celebration, at the high school football field, almost every year. The band is thoroughly mediocre, but they’re carried by All-American festivities I grew up thinking I’d never experience and the glory of The Beatles’ music. They always end their set with The Medley. As a decently performed spectacle, it’s moving, maybe more moving than the experience I get listening to The Beatles themselves play it. When I try to listen to the whole thing on Abbey Road it’s like I’m sitting through a religious holiday ceremony/performance, like a reenactment of the manger scene and the birth of Christ. When I hear this mediocre cover band play it, all that musical sausage stuffed in the casing of the last crafted Beatles studio album takes on a new meaning. Somehow I’m reminded of the discussion we had over the Plastic Ono Band album: it’s not the medley itself that’s worthwhile as much as it is the act of the medley – and our communion with it. Does that make sense?
Yah. Like I said, Paul for sure. It is way too cute. And the Beatles proved Bathroom Window on the Let It Be version, or whatever that is on the Anthology. They do the whole slowed-down groove phase-shifty version. Those last few records to me are what make McCartney so annoying overall. To me it smacks of trying to dress up the cry, “I AM a Lovable Mop Top!! I am!!” Too gimicky indeed, for me. As a kid I liked it, too, but wondered why it was so different from other things they did. To me the difference is that earlier, when things would come and go, you’d think, “Jesus these guys had brilliant ideas on tap! That little niblet could have gone on for a whole song!” On Abbey Road it’s “Whew. Good thing they left that annoying snippet be and moved on.”
And Mod, if that’s a religious ceremony, then I’m way atheist. the act of the medley is no less annoying than its contents. Ugh, and ugh. Abbey Road does very little for me. Let’s find another band HVB dislikes and try to talk him into it.
Better still, how about an album from anyone that wouldn’t be a better EP.
I am unapologetically pro-side 2 of Abbey Road and the whole album in general. You can say what you want about Paulie but those songs are too well arranged and played.
Yes, I agree, andyr, they are too well arranged and played.
The medley is great. Lennon was at his most introspective, depressed, and disillusioned during that period, and yet we get songs where it sounds like he’s actually having fun. Mustard and Pam are a really enjoyable hoot.
All George was thinking about was would Krishna give him a pass if he buried his fist into Paul’s face, and yet Paul coaxed those great solos out of him. The solo that leads into Bathroom is trancendent. The arranging/mixing/producing tricks are all treats.
This is akin to Michael Jordan when he could shoot free throws with his eyes closed during a game. Even when they were using those tiny throw-away songs, they were proving they were still the music Alpha Dogs. Their tunes, voices, and mastery of arranging/producing made song scraps a wonderful ride.
Sun King is a complete joke reference to Here Comes the Sun, but the vocal interaction is so perfect, it’s fantastic.
They throw Ringo the Slumbers bone. How great is The End solos. I love the competitive nature of that exchange as they each try to out-do each other. They are really giving it their all on those trade offs.
I believe all the cliches about the album. It “sounds” like them all enjoying themselves. Somehow Martin and Paul got them to capture real enthusiasm and a commitment to individual chops. It sounds as sunny to me as the album cover. Especially nice after the moroseness of the White Album and Let it Be. What’s wrong with fun? Does anyone remember laughter?
i got abbey road for christmas in 7th grade. i couldn’t listen to the medley until i was about 17. no patience for it. and well…it didn’t rock all that much…not in the way i wanted my rock to rock. i listened to it once. hated it. still couldn’t get all the way through: “once there was a way………..(violin surge)……to get backSCRRRRRATCH.”
much later, when i got tired of listening to crappy records by late 80s early 90s bands who were much better live, i re-embraced the beatles and started getting into the songs that were less familiar to me.
it took weed and a desire to get to the deep tracks to get around to the medley, but i exhausted just about everything else before i got there.
when i did, i figured out that i like john’s contributions to the medley (“mr. mustard” “sun king” “polythene pam”, his guitar playing in “the end”) and george’s guitar playing throughout.
have you ever heard the way they had it with “her majesty” stuck in the middle of it? it gives it a much more avant garde feel to have that song come whirling in from out of nowhere, and then right after the word “mine,” give way to “bathroom window,” because it’s so effing incongruous. it sounds so out of place that i’d almost prefer it to be there. but they smoothed that rough edge out, didn’t they?
and that’s my problem with most of abbey road: the edges are so smoothed. it’s the one that “sir george” thinks is their finest, and i couldn’t agree less. it may be his finest, but i’d much rather listen to the relatively clumsy stuff.
abbey road and peper makes me thankful for “rubber soul” “let it be” and the “white album” and thankful that they broke up.
Is it really controversial? This is the only place I’ve seen any real anti-Abbey Road sentiment.
For me, “You Never Give Me Your Money” is at the very top of their songwriting prowess. It just keeps unfolding into something bigger and bigger without ever falling apart. The song contains about two minutes of the most exhilarating music I’ve ever heard, the two minutes that run from about 1:06 to 3:10. This is the part that starts right when the piano kicks in for the “Out of college, money spent” section, contains that guitar bridge right after the last “Nowhere to go!” and through to the “one sweet dream” section.
At this point, they all knew it was over, and I’m sure suspected that they could only really gown downhill. But in those two minutes, McCartney captures what the view must be like at the very top, both the fear and excitement of seeing where you came from and where you’re headed. He puts into song everything positive about what it must have felt like to be sitting at the end run of being the most famous people in the world.
Joe Cocker’s Bathroom Window doesn’t hold a candle to the Abbey Road version. His version sounds too much like the Beck’s beer song. But that part after “Polythene Pam” on Abbey Road, where you can hear heavily accented “Hey, grrreat!” and “Oh, loooook out!” right before it breaks into Bathroom Window? That’s a great payoff, and it doesn’t stick around without the Medley format. The song itself, too, with the interplay between that “Beatle-esque” Abbey Road guitar sound, the loping bass and the group vocals works for me every time.
I understand if the back end doesn’t work for everybody. I’m an admitted ‘70s McCartney fan, so the Golden Slumbers stuff is right up my alley, especially when he breaks out one last voice from the McCartney vocal disguise kit to really sell the “smiles await you when rise” line. Perhaps this annoys in the same way as his “She’s A Woman” voice. Still, when You Never Give Me Your Money returns during “Carry That Wait,” it may be a gimmick, but jesus, what a gimmick.
Mockcarr makes a terrific point that it was Paul and George instead of Paul and John by this point, and that partnership was a lot more fruitful than I think either of them realized in between wanting to kill each other.
Isn’t that “Abbey Road Melody”? : )
that isn’t ringo singing “golden slumbers,” chickenfrank.
I never thought of the medley as controversial either, alex.
for you and mockcarr: where are the “Paul and George” moments?
To me there’s not much of interest in the post Strawberry Fields Beatles recorded output, but that Mr Mustard/Polythene Pam/Bathroom Window sequence is pretty darned good. You can pretty much have the rest of it.
Indeed, Saturn. I meant Carry that Weight is the Ringo bone. I was typing too quickly through my outrage.
Magic: Good call on You Never Give Me Your Money. That song is an entire little medley itself. Do we now have 3 medleys to debate?
I can’t wait for “the guitar is over-rated in rock music” thread.
BigSteve wrote:
Well played!
Alexmagic wrote:
I’ve long sensed supressed controversy. I’m just doing my part to bring it to the surface. I’m getting a lot out of this discussion. You’re hitting on a lot of the mixed feelings I’ve had.
To others out there who’ve been keeping their unease with the medley under wraps, this is your chance to step forward and share. Mwall? Thanks.
Talk about your stew. I actually was working on a post “Abbey Road: The Elephant in the Room”. This entire album is for shit. Seriously. The only two good songs are George’s.
The medley is unfulfilling to say the least.
Sammy, I hope I didn’t see your draft and steal your thunder. Seriously. Thanks for the support.
I can appreciate this. I’d like to point out, though, that I woke up to a lot of off-list e-mail support this morning.
The Paul/George dynamic I hear is that there seem to be more vocal/guitar trade-offs by the time of Abbey Road, maybe replacing what used to be the John part/Paul part/John part or vice versa formula. The bass and guitar seem to interact and snake around each other more, too. I’m thinking Bathroom Window in particular.
What’s with that McCartney interview set? Looks like the last scene of Psycho.
Several years ago, I read a piece about Abbey Road in Q or MOJO that also discussed the Paul/George dynamic on the album. Remember that John and Yoko were in a bad car accident during the making of the album, so he was in the hospital for a couple of weeks. The article suggested that this led to a McCartney/Harrison alliance — if only out of necessity. I don’t think John is on “Here Comes the Sun,” “Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight,” and possibly others.
For me, Abbey Road, both sides, continues the trend of the Beatles late in their career to put together amazingly well-crafted and startlingly original music that doesn’t pack huge emotional power. I think the second side of that record encapsulates all of what I admire and like but don’t love about the Beatles beginning with Sgt. Pepper’s. For me the Beatles have their most emotional power in that broad mid-period from Hard Day’s Night up through Revolver. Later on, I think they become more remote while their technical proficiency continues to expand. Actaully one of the reasons I like “Let It Be” a lot, even though it’s hit and miss, is a return to a warmer, more immediate sound. I would never want to “leave” Abbey Road, but I think it inspires as much geeky tech love as anything. Still, there are some really amazing bits in the medley that I really do love.
Mwall wrote:
RIGHT ON! That’s the way I feel about the value of that album.
The one man Abbey Road You Tube cracked me up. This is something I would have done when I was 12 (and Abbey Road was my favorite album then)
The Ringo NOSE was not needed though.
I always liked the Medley very much. The move twards a more progressive art-rock was all around them (of course they had a big hand in creating that scene)and it was a very “artsy” thing to do. Plus The Beach Boys and The Who were both doing these kinda multi-part things already
The one-man Abbey Road medley reminded me of one of my favorite musical experiences ever: me, Townsman mockcarr and a mutual friend who thought he might be able to play the drums if given a chance plunked down $25 to rent a practice space with drum set. After floundering about with a couple of wacky originals and covers, and discovering that potential drummer could not, in fact, play the drums at all — we decided to play the entire White Album from start to finish. Which, of course, none of us knew. Straight through, no stopping, and no time spent discussing how the songs might go. I think we did agree on song keys before we began each tune, but that was about it. We sounded like the Shaggs or something, completely crazy and weird and fascinating. I never laughed so much in my life; the energy in that room was so free it was downright manic. Oh, how I wish I still had the tap of that recording session.
Mockcarr, you don’t have it, do you?
HVB
No tape Hrrundi, but that was a lot of fun. Frankly, I don’t remember worrying even about the key so much.
In regards to the George/Paul dynamic, whatever he may say, it was Paul’s band from 1967 on, which is likely why so many of you devoted John acolytes do not like later Beatles. I feel like John still has a lot to say, but he is the least technically proficient – and perhaps the most emotional and experimental in his manner of getting that emotion across. So when it’s glossed and shined up nicely like on this album, the emotion is blunted. However, George’s slidey warm sound on this album PERFECTLY suits that glossy ideal. I also think he was confident enough by this point to be freer of his idols and put more personality into his soloing. I’m guessing his fluidity took a huge step forward after messing about with a sitar. On Revolver, Love You To is the only full-George song even without his own playing really, since Paul has the premier bass riff and guitar solos on Taxman, and probably put off-kilter backings on I Want To Tell YOu that make that song interesting. There’s not guest shot by Clapton on Abbey Road, George is a LEAD guitar player. He has weathered that little passive-agressive argument in Let It Be, and is too strong to be denied. Plus, he didn’t go dragging his feckin’ wife into things!
To pick up on the Plastic Ono Band thread, what ended as the better going away statement: God or You Never Give Me Your Money? “The dream is over” or “Step on the gas and wipe that tear away”?
I leave it up to everyone to define ‘better’, but McCartney at least has to get earn a point for getting his onto one of their albums.
The trouble is that Paul sings “one sweet dream came true today” after that. I don’t really believe his dream was for the Beatles to be over.
I think Paul’s going-away statement on Abbey Road is “You’re gonna carry that weight a long time,” and that equals if not betters “The Dream is Over.”
I’d have to agree that “Carry That Weight” is the best of the going-away statements listed. What about “Back Off Bugaloo”?
Abbey Road is the Beatles final masterpiece.
It’s better than any other Beatles record.
It is also better than any Stones record.