Four men in single file cross the road at the pedestrian crossing, the third one doesn't even have shoes, but holds a cigarette in his right hand. Left leg forward, right leg back, in complete synchrony. From the image it is not clear where they come from or where they are going, it was history that gave us every single detail of that moment.
It was August 8, 1969 and photographer Ian Macmillan, poised on a ladder positioned in the middle of the street in front of Emi Studios, immortalized John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George Harrison in one of the most iconic images in the history of music world. It only took him a few minutes and six shots. The fifth became the cover of Abbey Road, the best-selling album in the history of the Beatles with 5 million copies marketed in one year, over 30 million in total.
The Liverpool band's eleventh album was released a month and a half later by Apple Records: it was September 26, 1969, exactly 50 years ago.
It had been 9 months since the legendary Rooftop Concert e the Beatles were getting closer to goodbye. Relationships were crumbling, friendships were cracking. Yoko Ono was already in John Lennon's life and the death of manager Brian Epstein two years earlier had marked the beginning of the end.
From many Abbey Road comes considered the only disc able to represent the souls of all four members of the group, without the usual Lennon/McCartney dominance. The opening, with Come Together, is entrusted to John Lennon. Soon after it arrives Something, undisputed masterpiece by George Harrison who a few months earlier had even gone so far as to propose the song to Joe Cocker for fear of the judgment of his more cumbersome colleagues (who instead appreciated it and wanted it on the record).
After Oh! Darlings it's the turn of Octopus's Garden, Ringo Starr's second and last song in the Beatles.
Side B starts with Here Comes The Sun (Harrison again) and continue with Because, another famous song of the group. Then begins the very long medley in which eight songs follow one another without pauses but with continuous internal references before concluding with the sweetness of The End and with his words that have become a symbol of universal peace: “And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make”. McCartney loved the 16-minute suite, considering it poetic and inspired. Lennon? He hated it so much that he said "I never liked that kind of pop opera ... I think it's rubbish".
Paradoxically Abbey Road ends in error. It had to be his own to close the record The End, but 20 seconds after the end of the song begins Her Majesty. McCartney had initially placed the song in the center of the medley, only to discard it in the editing phase. John Kurlander, the studio technician to whom the bassist had told to eliminate it, instead of deleting it attached it at the end of the tape, however signaling what Paul's will was. In the passage from the tape to the test lacquer a second technician left the song where it was, it is not known whether voluntarily or due to a simple oversight. The end result surprised McCartney to such an extent that in the end Her Majesty it was left where it is today, to close a disc that has become a legend.
Abbey Road is the last studio album recorded by the British group, given that "Let it be", released eight months later, contains only songs recorded before January 1969. The critics did not welcome it at all, but from the first days it was clear that the commercial success would be enormous. Today those songs, that cover that came out of the desire not to waste time and do something hasty, that medley so hated by Lennon, but also the three pearls composed by Harrison and Ringo Starr are considered the artistic testament of the Beatles. A testament that turns 50 today.
