ABBEY ROAD

As a rule, I refuse to give 5 stars to any album in Proto or Related. If this was a plain vanilla rock site, this would get 5 stars from me. I think Revolver has better songs but Abbey Road is far more consistent. And there's Moog here. You can't go wrong with Moog(even something like Switched-On Bach is nice).

"Come Together" has some of Lennon's best lyrics("Got to be good looking cuz he's so hard to see"). "Octopus's Garden" is the best song Ringo wrote while a Beatle. Abbey Road also has some of his best drumming. "I Want You(She's So Heavy)" is one of the greatest songs ever. Period. "Here Comes The Sun" is the best song George did while a Beatle. His guitar tone on this album is fabulous. Before this was recorded Harrison released one of the first electronic albums, Electronic Sounds. You can hate this band all you want but you'll never convince anyone that they were not influential.

The so-called Long Medley("You Never Give Me Your Money" to "The End") is fantastic and a precursor to the beloved epics of prog. "You Never Give Me Your Money" is possibly my favourite Beatles song. It's like 4 or 5 songs in one. "Mean Mr. Mustard" has great fuzz- bass. "Golden Slumbers" has the best vocals McCartney ever did with the group. "The End" is great proto-prog; it has drumming in stereo and George, Paul and John trade guitar solos. Sweet. "Her Majesty" was removed from the medley(it was originally between "Mustard" and "Polythene Pam"). It's a throwaway the band didn't want on the album.

"Because" was always one of my favourites here. John, Paul and George recorded their vocals three times each, so you are literally listening to nine Beatles singing. The instrumentation is just superb with an electric guitar arpeggio(Lennon), electric harpsichord(George Martin) and Moog(Harrison). This was the last song the three ever recorded together. Now let's talk Moog. Paul plays it on "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"(the happiest song about murder); George plays it on "Here Comes The Sun"; and John plays it on "I Want You"(the noisy part at the end).

The first time many people heard a synthesizer for the first time was on this album. But the Beatles were no pioneers in this department; The Monkees, The Byrds and Simon & Garfunkel had already used Moog. It's strange that a band as big as the Beatles was only using 8-track to record this album. Obscure(at the time) American artists like Zappa and The Grateful Dead were using 16-track in 1969. British studios were behind their American counterparts until the early 1970s.

Not much else to say really. Great album. Great Proto-Prog. 5 star effort but 4 stars for PA.