3.
The Beatles – Abbey Road
This was one of my parents’ Beatles albums. Listening to this as an 8 year old, I loved ‘Octopus’s Garden’ and ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’. There were also two songs, which I felt were raw and really malevolent: McCartney’s ‘Oh! Darling’ – which is his greatest ever vocal performance; he sounds like he’s ripping his throat out – and Lennon’s ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’, which is an incredible song and has such an amazing outro. Even though ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ is, what Lennon called “one of McCartney’s granny songs,” it is also a song about a serial killer that gets free at the end.
As a kid, it’s one of the first albums where I would listen and conjure up visuals. That’s how I wrote Baby Driver much later.
On their final album, hearing The Beatles essentially playing on each other’s solo songs is fascinating to me. But then you also have ‘Because’ that is one of those songs where all The Beatles seem to be working together to create something spellbinding. And then there’s the suite on Side Two, which is fun. When it gets to ‘The End’, it’s beautiful how all four of them do their own solo. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band is obviously the more famous album, Revolver is the cooler album and The White Album is the most discussed because it’s so expansive and sprawling, but Abbey Road features these moments when it’s your last chance to hear all The Beatles together.
