Best Song on "Abbey Road"

This one seems to have been forgotten.

Wow! We won!

What would Geir say?

And wow! A First!

No tracks with no votes!

Not melodic enough?

xp

I don't like the winner much :(

Oh well!

No, I think you'll find that was Fleetwood Mac, from the album Then Play On.

Geir to thread.

No, don't summon him! He shows up plenty without that!

I'm not a fan of the winner, and I'm surprised

But he must make at least a token appearance. It's mandatory on all Beatles threads.

xp

The winner makes me happy.

Abbey Road is their prog record. And their easy listening record... all in one. The Moog in "Because" sometimes sounds scary to me like the Clockwork Orange soundtrack.

wtf ilm?

That's awesome.

Yay! I backed a winnah!

Look mum, no geir!

Wong winner. But some nice songs following it. And at least I prefer "I Want You" above "Come Together", whose six votes are still six too much.

"Her Majesty" is the token protest vote, no?

I respect more than love "Come Together" but like it well enough.

But I want to hear "I want you/She's so heavy" RIGHTNOW AND LOUD!!!

What can I do?

xpost a vote for her majesty a token/protest vote? Where is this, Australia? :)

Generally, with some exceptions like "Because", John Lennon stopped writing good songs around 1968, and wasn't able again until the mid 70s. (Well, OK, he wrote several great ballads for the "Imagine" album)

What, he wrote a couple songs you didn't like?

He stopped writing songs that sounded typically English. After first more or less inventing Englishness in rock music.

How long before that comment appears linked on the B*P website?

John Lennon stopped writing good songs around 1968

No matter how hard you try, you will always be wrong about this.

I agree. "Jealous Guy" and "#9 Dream" are good.

I can't believe there's 4 other people who voted for "she came in through the bathroom window". I can never find anyone who likes that as much as me!

I'm suprised no metal band has ever covered 'I Want You' (to my knowledge). That opening riff is just mammoth. I suppose most metalheads have a kneejerk hatred of the Beatles.

Maybe, but aren't Ozzy, Lemmy and Gene Simmons on record as foaming Beatles freaks?

Though I suppose that's not the most unimpeachably Metal trio of people...

I was thinking more of my era of metal (early 90s) when there was a strong 'The Beatles are for fags' sentiment from your Hetfields and Anselmos.

Here come cover versions of She's so heaveh:

I Want You (She's So Heavy) 	CD	Booker T & The M Gs	Uncut Magazine

I Want You (She's So Heavy) 	CD	Dexters			It Was 40 Years Ago Today

I Want You (She's So Heavy) 	CD	Sarah Vaughan		Songs Of The Beatles

I Want You (She's So Heavy) 	Vinyl	Bee Gees		Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

There's a fairly entertaining website given over to the relating of Beatles cover versions.

Although the comments go a bit Geirlite.

www.beatlescoverversions.com

http://www.beatlescoverversions.com

Sorry, trying again.

Most headbangers I know like the Beatles more than the Stones. I think metal kind of grew out of psychedelia in the beginning, and that really wasn't the Stones bag. All of the Sabs were Beatles freaks.

And Phil Anselmo's an idiot.

in HS my friend always used to say Soundgarden should play it

We have to maintain this Beatles/Metal conversation until Geir wakes up around 5pm EST.

There's some truly terrible stuff on this album

I can't believe there's 4 other people who voted for "she came in through the bathroom window". I can never find anyone who likes that as much as me!

I still kinda like the Joe Cocker version better.

I'm suprised no metal band has ever covered 'I Want You' (to my knowledge). That opening riff is just mammoth. I suppose most metalheads have a kneejerk hatred of the Beatles.

Motley Crue sorta ripped off/paid homage to "I Want You" on one of the songs from Dr. Feelgood. It wasn't a cover, but the whole last half of the song sounded just like it (even though those mascara pussies simply faded the song out rather than ending it abrup

Oh, and the Four Seasons, of course!

"i voted for 'You Never Give Me Your Money' for having one of the most gorgeous intros in the history of music."

it does but i wish it was developed into a full song.

i love a lot of the songs on the long medley but trying to turn it into a big concept piece/suite seemed a bit unecesary, or like the easy option compared to fleshing the songs out properly.

the riff on shes so heavy goes on too long too. good as it is, im surprised they didnt edit it. its repeated far too much.

Makes you wonder how much longer than 7:49(?) it lasted in real time.

Man, "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is my least favorite.

"i voted for 'You Never Give Me Your Money' for having one of the most gorgeous intros in the history of music."

it does but i wish it was developed into a full song.

I think I wrote the original post you're responding to, and I totally do think it develops into a full song, albeit a structrually unorthodox one. The three-part harmonies that come in at 1.48, for example, are not quite as beautiful as the intro, but they're near as dammit.

Also that end riff under "1,2,3,4,5,6,7..."!

Hey guys thought I'd drop by and ruin "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" for everyone.

i want you (she's so heavy) is shit.

this album is mostly godhead though.

Not much "Oh Darling" in this poll. I would love to have heard Otis Redding cover that song.

wow, my own top 2, in correct order! wd ilm

anyway, my vote is for the tune that will either end up with 1 vote, or the maj.
― Mark G, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 08:28 (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Ha, I was right: The maj

Her maj?

I'm suprised no metal band has ever covered 'I Want You' (to my knowledge). That opening riff is just mammoth. I suppose most metalheads have a kneejerk hatred of the Beatles.

― chap, Thursday, 24 May 2007 15:49 (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Probably because it's already damn heavy...

(xpost no, The Maj-ority of votes.)

I suppose most metalheads have a kneejerk hatred of the Beatles

Why? They tend to be quite a traditional bunch, don't they? Ozzie loves the Beatles, for instance.

"I suppose most metalheads have a kneejerk hatred of the Beatles"

^ I dont know if this is necessarily the case.

i would have voted "you never give me your money". maybe I did.

re: Sun King
The Beatles managed to have their quecaneatit

you never give me your money, easy.

― akm, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 20:02 (2 years ago) Bookmark

Not much "Oh Darling" in this poll. I would love to have heard Otis Redding cover that song.

― Squash weather (Eazy), Thursday, 17 September 2009 14:58 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

Wow, yes! when they invent time machines I'm going back to make this happen. paradoxes be damned.

I looked at "Golden Slumbers" in a new (improved) light after seeing McCartney perform it at the Concert For Montserrat. perfect choice for the theme because of the "once there was a way to get back homeward..." beginning, but McCartney also gave it such a moving rendition that it seemed to put paid to years of 'all craft no art' accusations.
of course, most viewers wouldn't have known at the time that Linda was already dying.

This was my favorite Beatles record for some chunk of time early in my fandom of them, but I've put it on less and less as time goes by - not sure why because it is GORGEOUSLY recorded, in my opinion their best-SOUNDING album next to Revolver. Lush and precise and the guitars are just SINGING throughout. You'd never guess from listening to it that this was a band already broken up.

The fragmentary songs on Side B are only a drag if you consider them being replaced with fully-formed compositions as good as the rest of the album....but as a listen in their own right they've never let me down. And boy was Macca singing at the top of his game here: "Once there was a way..." just as clear as a bell, he almost never sounded that lovely on record with Wings.

(wow, xpost!!!)

Great record. Would have voted "... Money."

i think the second half of the album is about as good as it gets rly.

You'd never guess from listening to it that this was a band already broken up.

well, sort of, except the second half says "we're splitting up!"

Second half is SO much better than the first half. Album starts at IWY(SSH) for me, and keeps its level up from there on in. Have always strangely disliked the opening few songs.

Have always strangely disliked the opening few songs

Fail to see anything strange about disliking "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", "Oh Darling" and "Octopus's Garden", they're crap

Yeah, but I find Come Together dull and Something mawkish as well :-/

i've always hated Maxwells and Octopus's Garden, until the reissue. i dunno, they have their place. they're totally stupid, but so what? and the guitar on Octopus's Garden is great

I'd have voted for either "Because" or "Something": I love the airy moments on this album more than the earthy moments like "I Want You" and "Oh Darling" (or the watery moments like "Octopus' Garden", keeping with the theme; not much fire here but it's late in the game for that). Since I prefer the a cappella "Because" on Anthology 3 I'd go with "Something".

i've always liked Come Together, i've recently come around to Something--the middle eight or whatever it's called, is especially great

This is not a Beatles album I have much time for

Octopus's Garden is one of the saddest songs I've ever heard.

You guys, Pavement covered "IWY(SSH)" on Crooked Rain... on the sly but still...

Question for all you sequence freaks: Do any of you digital listeners insert "Her Majesty" back between MMR and PP?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCSZgVxMdJA

"5 - 4 = Unity" = "Take Five" - "The Fab Four"

Question for all you sequence freaks: Do any of you digital listeners insert "Her Majesty" back between MMR and PP?

― *⁂((✪⥎✪))⁂* (Steve Shasta), Thursday, September 17, 2009 10:19 AM (1 hour ago)

have never sequenced it, but here's my splice of it - http://www.sendspace.com/file/ote1vm

"Her Majesty"
Main article: Her Majesty (song)

"Her Majesty", tacked on the end, was originally part of the side two medley, appearing between "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam". McCartney disliked the way the medley sounded when it included "Her Majesty", so he had the medley re-edited to remove it. However, second engineer John Kurlander had been instructed never to throw out anything, so after the group left the recording studio that day, he picked it up off the floor, spliced 14 seconds of red leader tape onto the final mix reel, and then spliced in "Her Majesty" immediately after the leader tape. The box of the album's master reel had a notation stating to leave "Her Majesty" off the final product, but the next day when Malcolm Davies at Apple received the tape, he (also trained not to throw anything away) cut a playback lacquer of the whole sequence, including "Her Majesty". The Beatles liked this effect and left it on the album. On the first printing of the LP cover, "Her Majesty" is not listed, although it is shown on the record label. "Her Majesty" opens with the final, crashing chord of "Mean Mr. Mustard", while the final note of "Her Majesty" remained buried in the mix of "Polythene Pam". This was the result of "Her Majesty" being snipped off the reel during a rough mix of the medley. The cut in the medley was subsequently disguised with further mixing although "Her Majesty" was not touched again and still appears in its rough mix.

I never really liked "Something" but then I heard the Anthology version and I began to appreciate it. Anthology version > Abbey Road version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40yFvJujNzg

That trivia about "Her Majesty" is strange considering "Mean Mr Mustard" was extended to include the part about "sister Pam" .. but then again it actually makes sense because she "takes him out to look at the Queen" which in that case would lyrically work well segueing into "Her Majesty."

huh had never thought of the lyrics to Come Together as being about each of the individual Beatles (verse 1 is George, 2 is Macca, 3 Lennon, 4 Ringo) but kinda funny to think about.

Here come old flattop he come grooving up slowly
He got joo-joo eyeball he one holy roller
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker he just do what he please

He wear no shoeshine he got toe-jam football
He got monkey finger he shoot coca-cola
He say "I know you, you know me"
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free
Come together right now over me

He bag production he got walrus gumboot
He got Ono sideboard he one spinal cracker
He got feet down below his knee
Hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease
Come together right now over me

He roller-coaster he got early warning
He got muddy water he one mojo filter
He say "One and one and one is three"
Got to be good-looking 'cause he's so hard to see
Come together right now over me

yes I can see that one.

McCartney, shoeless, snorting coke

apparently

I read this for the first time the other day too...v. inneresting

don't understand ringo's verse

Can't see him cos he's behind a drum kit?

Hold you in his armchair

lol

Released in the UK 44 years ago today.

I'm kind of amazed that an album so relatively devoid of obvious singles, every single song got at least one vote.

'something' and 'come together' seem like obvious hits.

i would've gone with 'golden slumbers' or 'carry that weight,' which still sound as crushingly sad to me as ever.

There's a little string cue that happens after the second "One there was a way to get back home" that always sends chills down my spine.

Carry that weight a personal favorite

Wow, can't believe how much I agree with ilx in this poll

Pavement covered a lot of Beatles songs on the sly, huh? No Tan Lines = and yr bird can sing

Hold you in his armchair

lol

― musically, Saturday, February 27, 2010 2:28 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=191

This has one of the most commonly misheard lyrics in the history of popular music: "Hold you in his -armchair- you can feel his disease." It's actually "Hold you in his arms, yeah, you can feel his disease." All published sheet music had the "armchair" lyric, including the inner sleeve of the 1967-1970 compilation, which contained lots of other errors too, notably on "Strawberry Fields Forever." After John heard that his lyric was incorrect in the sheet music and other folios, he decided he liked "armchair" better and kept it. (thanks, Mark - London, England)

i would've gone with 'golden slumbers' or 'carry that weight,' which still sound as crushingly sad to me as ever

You might like this rendition - I think it's pretty great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeOzNxh2TEU

I always thought "arms, yeah" and was "really?" when I read the armchair yesterday.

Thought it was "arms and" for years, myself

huh. i think this is my favorite beatles record. sorry i’m getting reacquainted with the catalog after burning out on it in high school (thanks post-beatles poll)

the songs ppl hate i love or at least feel i can’t deny some aspect of them (ringo’s fills on “oh darling,” george’s solo on “octopus’ garden” like he’s so psyched to be playing on ringo’s song, literally everything paul plays on “i want you” is fucking insanely awesome and contributes to the song becoming such a rad dark spiral, “because” and “sun king” being such gentle cosmic yawns)

i don’t think i said anything nice about “maxwell’s” but i like it, it’s charming and the arrangement is cool. the rough runthrough in the let it be movie is so sweet

probably my favorite too, come together rules tbh

think it's the sonically most accomplished, lush recording they made

i have no problems with Maxwell's - you're right Brad, it's a fun little song and gets unnecessarily shat on

this was the closest they came to prog, i think. as i had my overdose of prog in the 70s, this is definitely not my fave beatles album.

Oh you mean the album, not "Maxwell" as such?

This has been my favourite Beatles album, and one of my legit favourite albums of all time, since the moment I first heard it back when I was going through my first Beatles phase decades ago. I can still remember the first time I ever listened to this record - how much the production and overall sound seemed so much more warmer and fuller than previous Beatles work, and listening to all of those tracks in the medley fly by one after the other while gazing at that iconic sleeve. I remember the way every track, even the sillier songs on the record, had something about them that made me think "wow, what a neat idea" ... and the musicianship on the album is great: McCartney and Harrison in particular are bringing their "A game", but there's also some fine drumming from Ringo in places - no other drummer could have made those shifting time signatures on 'Here Comes The Sun' feel so natural. The harmonies on 'Because'! The moog synth on 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer'! The dark, circling chord progression on the outro to 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)', the way 'Sun King' segues into 'Mean Mr. Mustard' ... "and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make" etc. Just great songwriting, great performances, great production, great album. It doesn't sound like the work of a band that are about the split up at all, rather the sound of a band that have hit upon a way to move forward in the '70s. Of course - as we all know - this didn't happen, and the Let It Be project gave a starker and more honest picture of the state of the band in late '68 to early '69.

Fortunately, anyone who likes this album will be able to find much to like about McCartney's '70s work (whether solo, with Linda and with Wings) as albums like Ram, Band on the Run and Venus and Mars feel like more of a continuation of Abbey Road than John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band or All Things Must Pass.

i like it lots too, but in my head it's a bumpy ride. bumpier than even the White Album, which is strange considering a large part of it is structured so the songs flow into each other. despite all that, it feels less 'of a piece' than Peppers or Revolver or TWA, a sort of jumble of mad ideas. just feel like the jumps in mood and tone are so extreme that it can all feel a bit random. I don't like Mean Mr Mustard and Polythene Pam very much

Obviously, I disagree and find it their most cohesive album - undoubtedly far more so than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Revolver, and it doesn't share the same flaws as The Beatles at all.

Oh you mean the album, not "Maxwell" as such?

I get the proggiest vibes from 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)' ...

Fortunately, anyone who likes this album will be able to find much to like about McCartney's '70s work (whether solo, with Linda and with Wings) as albums like Ram, Band on the Run and Venus and Mars feel like more of a continuation of Abbey Road than John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band or All Things Must Pass.

nah i think they're sort of all connected, especially george's record

i mean pob is still an outlier but the line from "something" to all things must pass is an arrow

In the sense that All Things Must Pass came out the year after 'Something', and quite a fair bit of the material was written around the same time (although some of it dates as far back as the Revolver era), yes. All Things Must Pass sounds very different to Abbey Road, though, particularly because of the Phil Spector production, the musicians involved and of course George's suddenly fully-formed slide work - Abbey Road to Ram is far less of a stretch, or Paul's contributions to The Beatles to the highlights of McCartney.

Lennon hit upon a certain post-Beatles sound quite strongly characterises his work post-Abbey Road. You can hear a post-Beatles John Lennon solo track and not confuse it as being a late Beatles track, and it's pretty much the same with Harrison I think. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to hear 'Maybe I'm Amazed' as a Beatles song, or 'Jet' or 'You Gave Me Answer' etc.

yes the production sounds different of course but the songwriting is still plotting a path toward '70s soft rock which began on abbey road

Well yeah, it all plots a path towards "'70s soft rock", but that term is so broad that how could it not? It's also not what I was getting at!

what you were getting at is that macca seems to carry forward the sound of abbey road more than the other two and i don’t really agree at all. lennon drew a line in the sand sure, but “hold on” could be on abbey road

i also love macca and don’t think in particular his solo work survives the broad pressure of “continuing the sound of abbey road”

The first solo album, McCartney is a strange one in that the approach is quite similar to some of his tracks on The Beatles such as 'Blackbird' or 'Why Don't We Do It In The Road?' (particularly on 'Junk', which was written for that album) yet 'Maybe I'm Amazed' wouldn't have sounded out of place on Abbey Road at all, especially in the 'Oh! Darling' spot. Yes, there are things that don't quite carry on from where Abbey Road left off, such as on Wild Life which is rawer than any Beatles recording, and Red Rose Speedway has the sound and the ideas (jamming unrelated songs together a la Abbey Road never really left McCartney) but not the songs. Ram, Band on the Run, Venus and Mars and the good bits of Wings at the Speed of Sound? Absolutely.

Of course another difference between McCartney's solo career vs. Lennon's and Harrison's is at least McCartney was still willing to try things that were new for him, vs. Lennon's "I like rock'n'roll and Yoko and that's really real and fuck all that pop-opera shit" approach and Harrison's "Mojo Magazine music" approach. That's a whole 'nother conversation though.

what you were getting at is that macca seems to carry forward the sound of abbey road more than the other two and i don’t really agree at all. lennon drew a line in the sand sure, but “hold on” could be on abbey road

― flamenco blorf (BradNelson), Monday, June 4, 2018 1:40 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It could, but not in the way that Lennon did it. In the hands of The Beatles, I think it would have changed a fair bit - been given a fuller arrangement, and it would have been interesting to see what McCartney would have contributed. Something like 'Every Night' on the other hand, I can imagine ending up near enough the same, just better recorded and engineered.

Songs like "I Found Out" aren't so far removed from "Come Together" or "Polythene Pam," just stripped of the psychedelic gauze. Paul taps the woozy stoner vibe of Abbey Road on e.g. "Long-Haired Lady."

'I Found Out' would have been quite different in the hands of The Beatles, too, provided it had a cat in hell's chance of ever getting recorded by them. I could imagine McCartney hearing it and going "hmmm... no!" ...

Then again, McCartney wasn't a fan of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.

well he was wrong about that. also this is a dumb speculative exercise

yeah the lushness of ATMP marks a very obvious continuation. obviously spector makes it a different record than martin with heavy mccartney touches, but imo aside from the obvious development in his guitar arsenal, george's songwriting and preferred "sound" don't really change that much from the white album forward. "blow away" could be on abbey road easy. i'd say that both Ram and ATMP have a similar-but-different sound vis-a-vis abbey road: thick piled-up mixes, but both a little earthier/warmer/scratchier in their sounds. "uncle albert" maybe sounds a bit like the first half of the medley, and "back seat of my car" a little like the second half, but nothing on Ram is as polished and smooooth as the backing vocals on AR, the gauzey hush around john's lighter songs ("sun king," "because"). ram is a loose, shaggy kind of record, successfully working hard in the studio to convey a homemade all-hanging-out vibe. the absence of martin's meticulous tendency is as marked as the continuation of macca's whimsy and medley-istic maximalism. just as much as POB's stripped-down-iness is as marked as the continuation of john's doomy intensity on "come together" and "i want you."

that is absolutely otm

"blow away" could be on abbey road easy.

Yeah, I don't agree with this at all!

After finishing tinkering with my White Album equivalent, I've done a first pass at Abbey Road in covers. It's notable how much contemporaneous stuff there is to work with compared with the White Album, and much of it of a piece. Was tempted to put Jessica Mitford's version of Maxwell's Silver Hammer on there (as Decca and the Dectones) but I don't think I could face listening to it more than once.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6hmt9EphRzRIfwldTnklUz?si=b9b726f5668c4070