Walk This Road With Me Get It Even if It Costs taking personal cash
Okay, so I’m sure it has been done before. Everyone knows how great the Beatles are, right? But, what I’m finding lately (especially when I talk “music” with my two children) is that the gap between music then and music now is widening . . . and the younger generation is missing out on the greatness that is The Beatles. I grew up in the era of grunge, and sure, I loved Kurt Cobain, but while all of my friends were head-thrashing to morose punk-like garage rock and thinking about asking for loans, my heart was flowering to The Beatles. And the album that touched me the most was Abbey Road. My sister and brother bought it for me for my sixteenth birthday, and it found its home in my totally awesome, nineties boom-box CD player, where it stayed until it most likely make everyone in my family nauseous. It was a love affair I’ll never forget. I just couldn’t get enough of this epic album, and here’s why . . .
The beginning-to-end effect. You really have to listen to the album from start to finish in order to get what it is all about. That’s because, for about the last half of the album, the songs all run together. The result is that you actually live through a changing environment as the album evolves. Sometimes it is hard to tell where one song ends and the next begins. Even more, many of the later songs reference the earlier songs, as if they are recalling a dream. It’s haunting and ethereal, and brings to mind those things that we know exist, but that we don’t quite understand – like déjà-vu. In short, Abbey Road is an experience, reminiscent of the uncertainty – and the mystery – of this thing we call of life.
The gems. Some of The Beatles’ best work is on Abbey Road, including “Come Together,” “Here Comes the Sun,” and “Something.” Of course there is more, but the innovation in just these three examples speaks volumes.
The end. I am a music junkie, and I have a hard time identifying any greater (or better fitting) closing song than “Medley,” off Abbey Road. It’s a conglomerate of all that was good from the album, complete with the hallmark sound clips and recall technique that made the album so special, which builds in intensity as the song progresses through an infectious drum beat that is just as relevant today as it was then, and which ends with verse that is so simply poignant that it could only have belonged to the Beatles: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” What’s better than that?
Need a good refresher on where modern music came from? Want the hair on your arms to stand up? Then put your headphones on (no boom box necessary), turn up the volume, close your eyes, and take a trip that you’ll never forget when you walk down The Beatle’s Abbey Road.
