Perhaps to their own relief, the Beatles have lost the desire to touch us. 'Abbey Road' contains talent comparable with any other Beatles album, but nevertheless is a slight matter.

Rock music is potent through its relationship with the times in which it is played. Anyone who thinks that must be puzzled at the fuss that I as well as others make over it. The potency of rock music does not lie in the quality which can be isolated as musical. But, in the wide, living sense of the word, no one can be as 'good as ever,' musically. Of course the album is clever and deft: of course it touches far more ideas than all but the most talented music.īut if you've heard 'The Beatles,' 'Get Back,' and 'Give peace a chance,' you've heard 'Abbey Road.' Musically, in the narrow sense of the word, the Beatles are as good as ever. Electric music has netted plenty of bigger fish since those days.īut the old rock and roll had energy and purpose.

The old heroes of rock and roll, like Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, contented themselves with a driving line, which left nothing more than an awakening sense of energy and vitality. Even their slightest track, now, has an ambiguity and complexity, which, especially Lennon adds his strange word-images, turns the music into an object rather than a tune. The Beatles' music has a special dense texture, which no other band rivals. And side 2 has that little bit added that you miss until you leave the record playing: for Princess Anne to play to her mother. And, OK, Ringo let's orchestrate your new variation on a theme of 'Yellow Submarine': 'Octopus's Garden.' And let's have two surprises. There is the enigma in 'You never give me your money' ' No-where to go' (know where to go, no-where to go.). Alan Price made a great arrangement of 'The House of the Rising Sun.' The Beatles use it again in 'I want you.' 'Golden Slumbers' sounds like the mandatory McCartney swelling sad-happy number: 'Because' the mandatory Lennon happy-sad number.

Backtrack 1969