The Beatles Take Their Walk Across Abbey Road, and Then, Well, Then An Era is Over

The Beatles Take Their Walk Across Abbey Road, and Then, Well, Then An Era is Over September 26, 2016

Beatles Abby Road

It was forty-seven years ago today that the Beatles released their eleventh album, Abbey Road. It shares the distinction with Let It Be as their “last” effort, in that while Let it Be was released the following year in 1970, pretty much all of that effort was in the can before the studio sessions that would produce Abbey Road, which was the fruit of their last collaboration as a band.

The good folk at Wikipedia tell us “Although Abbey Road was an immediate commercial success and reached number one in the UK and US, it initially received mixed reviews, some critics describing its music as inauthentic and bemoaning the production’s artificial effects. Many critics now view the album as the Beatles’ best and rank it as one of the greatest albums of all time. In particular, George Harrison’s contributions, ‘Something’ and ‘Here Comes the Sun,’ are considered to be among the best songs he wrote for the group. The album’s cover features the four band members walking across a zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios and has become one of the most famous and imitated images in the history of recorded music. As of 2011, Abbey Road remains one of the Beatles’ best-selling albums.”

Of course for me just thinking of forty-seven years. So long ago. And this was a significant marker from popular culture, noting the passing of a genuine cultural icon. And it can be seen as marking the end of the “sixties,” as well. It certainly causes the floodgates of memory to open. I think of the Summer of Love in 1967, which I guess was in many ways both a beginning and an ending, itself. And it is not a long ways earlier to 1965 and the Free Speech movement, which some felt the kickoff to this turbulent era. Although for me it really is 1960 and “the Pill,” changing so much about sex and I think the real “beginning” of this era. Each a thing.

Each a thing in and of itself. And, each an ending and at the same time, each a beginning. And all of it connected. So, as I consider Abbey Road, while the counter culture absolutely had a half-life that extended well into the 1970s, and in fact most people when they think of the “sixties,” are usually thinking of those early seventies, this could easily be the marker for the end of that era.

And, now, all of it now well into the rear view mirror.

Strange, difficult, beautiful, ugly times. My formative years.

And, you have to admit, we did have some pretty good music…


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