![\"Beatles](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/81\/2016\/09\/Beatles-Abby-Road.jpg\")
<\/a>\nIt was forty-seven years ago today that the Beatles released their eleventh album, Abbey Road<\/em>. It shares the distinction with Let It Be<\/em> as their \u201clast\u201d effort, in that while Let it Be<\/em> 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<\/em>, which was the fruit of their last collaboration as a band.<\/p>\n
The good folk at Wikipedia tell us \u201cAlthough Abbey Road<\/em> 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\u2019s artificial effects. Many critics now view the album as the Beatles\u2019 best and rank it as one of the greatest albums of all time. In particular, George Harrison\u2019s contributions, \u2018Something\u2019 and \u2018Here Comes the Sun,\u2019 are considered to be among the best songs he wrote for the group. The album\u2019s 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<\/em> remains one of the Beatles\u2019 best-selling albums.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 \u201csixties,\u201d 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 \u201cthe Pill,\u201d changing so much about sex and I think the real \u201cbeginning\u201d of this era. Each a thing. <\/p>\n 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<\/em>, 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 \u201csixties,\u201d are usually thinking of those early seventies, this could easily be the marker for the end of that era.<\/p>\n And, now, all of it now well into the rear view mirror.<\/p>\n Strange, difficult, beautiful, ugly times. My formative years. <\/p>\n And, you have to admit, we did have some pretty good music\u2026<\/p>\n