Record basics

• Album name: Abbey Road
• Group name: The Beatles
• Year: 1969
• Number of discs: one
• Label: Apple
• Collection: Brenner / Gessner
• Distinguishing characteristics:
  • “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
  • “GESSNER” written on inside of album sleeve, indicating that my father owned it
  • “GESSNER” written on face of second side of record, indicating that my father owned it
• Buy it on Amazon: $33.98

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

When I reviewed the White Album, I said that I had heard it more times than I could possibly estimate, and that’s true of “Abbey Road” too.

What I expected

Abbey Road.

What it was actually like

Come Together

I love this song every time I hear it, and yet I never consider it one of my favorite Beatles songs. Why is that? Could it be because Bob Dylan obviously contributed to the lyrics?

If I had been in the band, I would have tried to make the tempo faster, but I would have been dead wrong: this song must be just as slow as it is.

In any case, Come Together has never sounded as good as it does on my father’s vinyl, playing on his Yamaha turntable and blasting through his pair of Advent loudspeakers.

Something

Many consider this to be one of George Harrison’s greatest compositions, but I think it’s just all right, that Harrison was maybe too virtuosic-showy, and that a more straightforward rock version would have been better. Also, though I guess I’m supposed to assume he wrote this song about an adult human female, knowing the intensity of his commitment to Hinduism, some part of me can’t shake the idea that the song’s subject was Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu.

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

Faul’s granny music. Is there a granny somewhere who enjoys this?

Oh! Darling

This song is probably the best tribute to John Lennon’s musical genius that was ever composed by Faul McCartney. As of Monday 15 August 2022 6:48 PM EDT, it is my absolute favorite song on on “Abbey Road”^[1], and I think it’s awesome how much the intensity increases over the course of the song, how McCartney’s Lennonesque vocals evoke their early records, how it’s simultaneously both a hard rock song and a corny piano lounge love song.

Octopus’s Garden

As the greatest Beatle, I’m always attentive to Ringo’s work (notwithstanding some of the dreck he did in the 1970s), and I really think that this must be one of his best songs. Does that mean that it’s a great song in its own right? Not exactly, but I love all the little guitar parts in it and I love how it begins and ends.

I Want You (She’s So Heavy)

This song is probably the best parody of John Lennon that was ever composed by John Lennon. The way the guitar takes over powerfully after the first switch from the “I Want You” part to the “She’s So Heavy” part is pure gold. I wish he had taken the time to write some more lyrics for it.

Also, I love that it’s dark and eerie, even a little threatening – and it’s about Yoko.

Here Comes the Sun

I’m totally incapable of listening to this song without immediately listening to the Velvet Underground’s response to it, Who Loves the Sun, and today is no different, but today was the first time I ever looked up the two songs to see other people acknowledging their relationship – and to my shock, many people deny it! Anyway, the Beatles’ song is not as good as the Velvets’ – Harrison was clearly trying to make a Faul McCartney track as Lou Reed was trying to make a hit single – but it’s still pretty good.

Because

I’ve never been a fan of this song, but I bet I would like it a lot better if they had taken just a snippet of it and put that in their medley.

Also, the synthesizer part has always reminded me of the soundtrack to the movie A Clockwork Orange.

The weird medley

Not that all the songs on the medley are bad, or that they had no business getting included on a Beatles record, but a group that does a gimmick like this has to know that they’re done as a group, right?

Golden Slumbers is the worst. Sun King and Mean Mr. Mustard are also quite bad – and the latter is probably the worst parody of Faul McCartney that was ever composed by John Lennon – but others are relatively good. I wouldn’t have minded at all if Polythene Pam had been expanded into a full length song, and I love Carry That Weight.

Grade

5/5: love it

There are people who say that “Abbey Road” is the Beatles’ best record, and you know what? De gustibus non est disputandum, that’s what. Just kidding! Those people are wrong. “Abbey Road” still rocks, though.

Record basics

• Album name: The White Album
• Group name: The Beatles
• Year: 1968
• Number of discs: two
• Label: Apple Records
• Collection: Brenner / Gessner
• Distinguishing characteristics: serial number A1667785 stamped on front of album
• Buy it on Amazon: $42.99

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve heard this record more times than I could possibly estimate.

What I expected

The White Album.

What it was actually like

“The White Album” is vast, complex and rich with great songs and also a bunch of awful songs. Though I love a lot of the music on it, and maybe in aggregate I get more enjoyment from its songs than from other Beatles records, it’s not one of my favorites from the Beatles – I prefer “Sgt. Pepper,” “Rubber Soul,” “Revolver,” “Help” and even their earlier records over their later records.

To me, “the White Album” is a perfect example of what can happen when the musical whole is less than the sum of its parts, when a record has no coherent musical voice or statement. It’s the work of a band that had figured out how, in the mid 1960s, to create not just timeless songs but monumental record albums, and then subsequently lost that rare skill by the time of their return from India 1968. When I listen to “the White Album,” I feel like I’m listening less to “the Beatles” than to the beginning of the end of the Beatles, like these are four extraordinarily talented guys who don’t like each other very much but who all have some songs that they need to get the others to play.

It’s honestly a sad record for me, and it’s quite confounding and sad too that so many people consider this to be the Beatles’ high point – instead of the fountainhead of their disintegration.

Anyway, I have no idea how to write a review of it, so below are what I consider to be the best and worst songs from each of the double record’s four sides.

Side 1

Best: While My Guitar Gently Weeps

If it’s one of the great miracles of XX century music that John Lennon and Paul McCartney both came from Liverpool and met each other and formed a band together, then it has to be one of the great ironies of XX century music that a musical genius like George Harrison was sidelined next to them and that his ability to create masterpieces like While My Guitar Gently Weeps isn’t even that significant in context, and that his growing corpus of unrecorded masterpieces couldn’t be fit onto Beatles records and that this helped to precipitate the band’s breakup. Life is so weird sometimes.

Worst: Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

There are a lot of Beatles songs that I very strongly dislike, including several on “the White Album,” but many of them are hardly “songs” at all – rather, as Faul said, Lennon’s “harsh, unmelodious and deliberately provocative” tracks. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da stands out to me as, in Lennon’s words, the very worst of Faul’s “granny music shit.” I would rather have heard three minutes and seven seconds of total silence, or even of Yoko’s atonal screeching, than this drivel.

Side 2

Best: Rocky Raccoon

How fitting is it that I spent the past two days listening to Bob Dylan records (Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2) and today I get to hear the greatest Bob Dylan parody song of all time? What, you didn’t know that Rocky Raccoon is a parody of the archetypal Dylan song? Try listening to it again and I think you’ll see what I mean. By the way, here is an outstanding cover.

Worst: I’m So Tired

Boring. It’s tracks like this that make me inclined to agree with George Martin and Ringo Starr that “the White Album” should have been just a single record instead of two.

Side 3

Best: Your Birthday

This is a pretty weak side, to be frank. Your Birthday is fine, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to listen to it.

Worst: Helter Skelter

Choosing a worst song from side three is a challenging endeavor, since it’s really a low point of the whole record, but I went with Helter Skelter because it’s what I think of when I imagine Faul trying to write a Lennon-style song, and failing.

Side 4

Best: Revolution 1

I’ve always enjoyed this version of “Revolution” as a companion and counterpart to the hard rock version that was released as a single (B-side of Hey Jude) and not included on any studio record. I especially love how they both play on different approaches to the blues, this one acoustic and the other electric.

Worst: Revolution 9

Not only the worst Beatles track, but this is one of the worst tracks included on any musical record that I’ve ever heard. While I hold John Lennon directly accountable for this monstrosity, it’s of course clear to me that Yoko Ono is the responsible party, and if she hadn’t broken up the Beatles, I would still despise her for being so talentless and grandiose.

Grade

4/5: would listen again