Beatles Not For Sale

Music fans around the world, including the global Rock Turtleneck readership, were relieved to hear that Abbey Road studios was not for sale by EMI as rumoured, and was in fact being given protected status as a historic building by the British government.

Abbey Road, of course, is where The Beatles recorded all of their albums, with the exception of Let it Be. Other masterworks recorded there include Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Radiohead's Kid A.

Its massive Studio B, one of the few remaining studios which can accommodate a full orchestra, is where the Fabs made most of their magic. Here's some rare footage from the early days of Beatlemania, accompanied to the Please Please Me nugget "Misery":


Ideally, Abbey Road would be given the same treatment as Sun Studios in Memphis - open to the public for tours, yet still a working studio. If EMI wants to raise a few quid, many will gladly pay to stand inside the massive space where the orchestral swells of "A Day in the Life" were recorded.

The "A Day in the Life" sessions were also filmed, as the following video demonstrates. This being the height of Swinging London, the Beatles turned the early-1967 orchestral recording into a party and invited the beautiful people of the era, including the Rolling Stones, Donovan and even the Monkees, to turn on and tune in.


A few months later, they recorded "All You Need is Love" in Studio B for the first worldwide TV broadcast Our World. It was arguably The Beatles' peak as a global and cultural phenomenon.



Much more recently, Paul McCartney returned to Abbey Road, which is right down the street from his flat in St. John's Wood, and filmed a wonderful special to coincide with the release of his excellent 2005 CD Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. Herein he shares many anecdotes about recording in Abbey Road, and lays down some pretty amazing tracks himself. Had the Queen not stepped in to save Abbey Road, it's easy to picture Macca saving it himself.

This special is an hour long, but it's well worth watching, so eat lunch at your desk. Mr. McCartney's talent and charm are still very much intact. And now, for the forseeable future, so is his fab studio. God Save the Queen.

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Part VII: