The Making of The Beatles’ Abbey Road: Alternate Album Cover Photos, Recording Session Outtakes & Interviews

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A good part of my youth was spent in front of my old fam­i­ly hi-fi sys­tem, lis­ten­ing to Bea­t­les records. This was music I knew no longer exist­ed in the mod­ern world—not on con­tem­po­rary pop radio, and not on MTV… nowhere but on what seemed to me those ancient plas­tic disks. To my untrained ears, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s, Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour, and espe­cial­ly Abbey Road sound­ed like they had come down from an advanced alien civ­i­liza­tion.

What I was hear­ing in part—especially on Abbey Road—was the per­fec­tion of the stu­dio as an instru­ment, and the major influ­ence of the last, best fifth Bea­t­le, George Mar­tin. Not to dimin­ish the incred­i­ble musi­cian­ship and song­writ­ing abil­i­ties of the Bea­t­les them­selves, but with­out their engi­neers, with­out Mar­tin at the con­trols, and with­out the state-of-the-art studios—EMI, then, of course, Abbey Road—those albums would have sound­ed much more down to earth: still great, no doubt, but not the sym­phon­ic mas­ter­pieces they are, especially—in my opin­ion—Abbey Road, the last album the Bea­t­les record­ed togeth­er (though not their final release).

So how did such a bril­liant record­ing come to being? You can piece its con­struc­tion togeth­er your­self by sort­ing through all of the stuff that didn’t make it on the record—outtakes, alter­nate album cov­er pho­tos—as well as through inter­views with Mar­tin and the band. At the top of the post, see one of the cov­er pho­tos that didn’t make the cut. A self-effac­ing­ly-named blog called Stuff Nobody Cares About has sev­er­al more alter­nate pho­tos from that ses­sion on August 8, 1969 (which McCart­ney con­cep­tu­al­ized before­hand in a series of sketch­es). Before the album got its icon­ic look, it came together—pun intended—as icon­ic sound. Just above, you can hear George Mar­tin describe the process of pro­duc­ing the band’s last record­ing, a “very hap­py record,” he says, com­pared to the tense, unhap­py Let it Be. After­ward, hear George, Paul, and Ringo rec­ol­lect their bit­ter­sweet mem­o­ries of the ses­sions.

Near the end of the doc­u­men­tary clip, Paul McCart­ney says, “I’m real­ly glad that most of the songs dealt with love, peace, under­stand­ing….” If that’s what “Mean Mr. Mus­tard” or “Maxwell’s Sil­ver Ham­mer” are about, col­or me sur­prised, but I’ve nev­er been one to get too hung up on the mean­ings of the Bea­t­les songs—it’s the menagerie of sounds I love, the unusu­al chord changes, and the wit­ty lit­tle nar­ra­tives, touch­ing vignettes, and almost shock­ing­ly apt lyri­cal images (“Hold you in his arm­chair / You can feel his dis­ease”).

But like the band them­selves com­ing back togeth­er, the songs on Abbey Road—includ­ing that mas­ter­ful clos­ing med­ley—didn’t imme­di­ate­ly fall into place; they were the prod­uct of much stu­dio noodling and idio­syn­crat­ic Bea­t­les brainstorming—an activ­i­ty one part music hall com­e­dy improv, one part genius hap­py acci­dent, and one part good-natured fam­i­ly squab­ble. In the three clips above and below, hear the pow­er­ful Abbey Road med­ley come togeth­er, in fits and starts, with plen­ty of play­ful ban­ter and off-the-cuff inspi­ra­tion.

Hear­ing the mak­ing of Abbey Road doesn’t take away from the oth­er­world­ly final prod­uct, but it does bring the exalt­ed per­son­al­i­ties of the band back down to earth, show­ing them as hard­work­ing musi­cians and nat­ur­al writ­ers and come­di­ans who just hap­pened to have made—with no short­age of help—some of the most mind-blow­ing music of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

Hear the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks for The Bea­t­les’ Cli­mac­tic 16-Minute Med­ley on Abbey Road

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig Filmed in Jan­u­ary 1969

The Bea­t­les’ Final, “Painful” Pho­to Shoot: A Gallery of Bit­ter­sweet Images

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness