Off The Beatle Track

An oft-told story about Abbey Road concerns the album’s sequencing. The essence of the story is that the band and George Martin contemplated putting the side one songs on side two and vice versa, or placing all of John’s songs on one side and Paul’s songs on the other.¹

The last word

Ken McNab tells the story in his excellent book And in the End: The Last Days of The Beatles. He writes that up until the last session in which all four band members participated, on August 20, 1969, John wanted to end the album with one of his songs:

. . . Lennon believed he had won the argument with McCartney especially for ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ to be the last track on the album, and possibly, just possibly, the final song on any Beatle album, giving Lennon what he was always used to getting–the last word.²

Even at this late hour–it was almost midnight–he was still lobbying for all his songs to be on one side and all McCartney’s on the other. He still remained unconvinced over the merits of the medley, which at this point was earmarked for side one. But the truth was they had come too far down the road to start backtracking now.

Boxed into a corner, and with McCartney and Martin blocking all the exits, Lennon reluctantly gave way and the running order was flipped, leaving ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ as the final track on side one and ‘The End’ appropriately bringing the curtain down on side two. . . .

Was John right?

Ken Womack, in Sound Pictures: The Life of Beatles Produce George Martin, The Later Years, 1966-2016, writes that “the musical suite [the medley]. . . had been conceived for side two of the record” as early as May 1969. So it’s surprising for McNab to say that on August 20, the medley was intended to appear on side one. Perhaps only John intended to put the medley on side one.

The larger point is that the two sides of Abbey Road could have been flipped if John had gotten his way (and John often got his way). Which would have been a terrible decision, right? How could an album with a song called The End not end with that song?³ Especially if it was the final album the band recorded. It seems altogether fitting and inevitable that the album, and the band’s recording career, would end with The End (with Her Majesty as a humorous coda).

But. . . maybe John was right. I’m not suggesting that closing Abbey Road with The End was a bad idea or detracts in any way from the quality of the album. But if the two sides were flipped, Here Comes the Sun would be the album opener, and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer would appear on side two, rather than as the third song on the album.⁴ The last Beatles’ album would have ended with the abrupt cut at the end of I Want You (She’s So Heavy).

The end of the world

I listened to side two of Abbey Road first, then listened to side one. The trick is not to listen to Here Comes the Sun after I Want You (She’s So Heavy) plays.

In that context, the abrupt ending to I Want You (She’s So Heavy) feels like the end of the world. The music doesn’t fade out; it ends with a jolt. Sort of like the end of the world’s most popular band.

It must have been frustrating for John to conceive of a startling way to end the album, only to be outvoted by one other Beatle and their producer. John told the other Beatles that he wanted a divorce exactly one month after their last session, on September 20, 1969.

What song do you think should have ended Abbey Road? Let me know at beatletrack@gmail.com.

1. Relegating Something, Octopus’s Garden, and Here Comes the Sun to. . .side three? ↩︎
2. Which raises the question: On how many albums did John indeed have the last word? The answer: Most of them. Not counting Yellow Submarine, which ends with George Martin’s Yellow Submarine in Pepperland, I count John’s having the last song on 7 of the other 12 albums: Please Please Me (Twist and Shout), With The Beatles (Money (That’s What I Want)), A Hard Day’s Night (I’ll Be Back), Help! (Dizzy Miss Lizzy), Rubber Soul (Run For Your Life), Revolver (Tomorrow Never Knows), and Magical Mystery Tour (All You Need Is Love). Plus, Johns sings the last words on Sgt. Pepper (A Day in the Life), and he wrote the last song on the White Album (Good Night). ↩︎
3. The Doors’ song The End, for example, is the last track on their album The Doors. ↩︎
4. I don’t mind Paul’s “granny” music, as John called it; I genuinely like When I’m Sixty-Four and Honey Pie, which are warm-hearted singalongs. But Maxwell tells the story of a serial murderer in a whimsical way, and it just doesn’t work. ↩︎