It was 50 years ago today (September 26th, 1969) that the Beatles' final album, Abbey Road, was released. Although the Let It Be album was released the next year featuring earlier unreleased tracks, Abbey Road was the last album the group recorded together. The album's working title had been Everest -- after a brand of cigarettes their engineer Geoff Emerick smoked -- before the group simply chose the name of the street where their recording studio was located.
Today from 1 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., Capitol Records in L.A. will close down Vine St. at Hollywood Blvd. to recreate the famed Beatles crossing, with a rep for the group explaining, "The crosswalk will be recreated with a non-slip heavy vinyl recreation of Abbey Road’s zebra crossing laid down over the existing Vine St. crosswalk, with an eight-foot tall double-sided backdrop of four panels (two per side) showing the Abbey Road cover art photo without the Beatles in the image. There will be four Abbey Road zebra crossing and backdrop areas (two areas per side) for fans to take photos and videos."
Abbey Road spent 11 weeks at Number One and featured the double A-sided single "Come Together" and "Something," the highest-charting Beatles song written by George Harrison. Paul McCartney commented on the song in The Beatles Anthology saying, "'Something' was out of left field. . . It appealed to me because it has a very beautiful melody. I thought it was George's greatest track."
Set for release tomorrow (September 27th) is the 50th anniversary edition of Abbey Road. Newly remixed by producer Giles Martin and mix engineer Sam Okell in stereo, high res stereo, 5.1 surround, and Dolby Atmos, accompanied by 23 session recordings and demos, most of which are previously unreleased. The set will be available on CD, vinyl, and all digital platforms.
Earlier this week, Ringo Starr visited The Tonight Show and recorded "Yellow Submarine" with his band and The Roots using nothing but classroom instruments.