Best Song on "Abbey Road"

"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