FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Booker T. & the MGs cover the Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road’
01.30.2015
09:37 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
In spring of 1970, mere months after the Beatles released Abbey Road, the Stax label’s elite house band Booker T. and the MGs released McLemore Avenue, a near-complete tribute to that LP. A lot of you probably guessed as much, but McLemore Avenue was the Memphis street on which Stax’s studios resided, just as Abbey Road was the street on which the EMI studio where the Beatles recorded was located. (The studio wasn’t officially named “Abbey Road Studios” until sometime after that Beatles LP came out. The more you know.) A lot of you probably also guessed that the Booker T. album is freakin’ excellent.

Booker T. talked about the inspiration for paying tribute to a brand-new LP in a 2009 AV Club interview:

AVC: What inspired you and the M.G.’s to record McLemore Avenue, your instrumental cover version of Abbey Road?

BT: I was in California when I heard Abbey Road, and I thought it was incredibly courageous of The Beatles to drop their format and move out musically like they did. To push the limit like that and reinvent themselves when they had no need to that. They were the top band in the world but they still reinvented themselves. The music was just incredible so I felt I needed to pay tribute to it.

Rob Bowman’s informative history of the Stax label Soulsville, U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records sums the album up thusly:

McLemore Avenue was divided into four tracks. Taking a cue from the extended medley on side two of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album, three of those tracks are medleys clocking in at seven, ten, and fifteen minutes each. Every Abbey Road song except “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” “Octopus’ Garden,” and “Oh Darling” appears in one or another of the medleys, but the order of the songs in each medley does not necessarily follow the order of the Beatles’ album. My favorite is the final track on McLemore Avenue, which adroitly combines “Sun King,” “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Polythene Pam,” “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” On the surface, covering a complete album of any group, let alone the Beatles, is quite a risky gambit. The MG’s pull it off with aplomb, in the process creating a parallel masterpiece to the quintessential Beatles album.

 

 
“Parallel masterpiece,” sure, why not, but it’s almost a shame it wasn’t a complete cover. I’d give a lot to hear the MGs do the affably goofy Ringo song “Octopus’ Garden.” It’s kind of tantalizing to imagine how Steve Cropper could have transformed that guitar lick. On the subject of Cropper, I was amazed to learn that he wasn’t present for the McLemore Avenue recording sessions, and that he overdubbed his parts later, still having never actually heard Abbey Road yet! Again from Soulsville, U.S.A.:

“Booker told me every note to play,” relates Steve. “I hadn’t even heard the Beatles album. I might have heard a cut on the radio but I had not sat down and listened to the album like they had. He showed me the changes and sat down to teach me the songs. I strictly played to what I heard Booker play. [When I heard] the Beatles versions of those tunes, I went “Holy shit!” I was very surprised. I didn’t know those songs at all.”

Here’s the album, in sequence.

Side One:

1) Medley: “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” “The End,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “Come Together”

2) “Something”
 

 

 
Side Two (and more) after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Ron Kretsch
|
01.30.2015
09:37 am
|
‘Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?’: Short film reflects on the ‘Abbey Road’ album cover
06.17.2013
04:49 pm
Topics:
Tags:

Why don't we do it in the road
 
Every year, scores of tourists and locals alike attempt to recreate the famous Abbey Road crosswalk scene, even folks who might otherwise find such efforts at photographic performance “cheesy.” Director Chris Purcell elegantly employs the dulcet tones of Liverpudlian performance poet and literary polymath Roger McGough, creating this soothing mediation on photography, iconography that spans generations, and the passage of time.

Fun fact: Roger McGough once wrote a poem entitled, “To Macca’s Trousers,” about a pair of Sir Paul’s pants given to McGough by The Beatle’s younger brother, Mike McGear.
 

Posted by Amber Frost
|
06.17.2013
04:49 pm
|
The Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road’ album cover made out of breakfast ingredients
09.10.2012
03:38 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
British food sculptor Paul Baker has recreated The Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover using the main ingredients of an English breakfast with garnishes - beans, mushrooms, bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, toast and fruit.

Note that he used mushrooms to create Paul McCartney out of respect for McCartney’s vegetarianism.

Via The Daily Swarm

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
|
09.10.2012
03:38 pm
|
Man pictured on Abbey Road cover hates the Beatles’ music!
10.20.2010
01:28 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
He says, “I’ve seen the Beatles on television and have heard of few of their songs. It’s not my kind of thing. I prefer classical music.”

Seniors!

Posted by Tara McGinley
|
10.20.2010
01:28 pm
|
Beyond Abbey Road

image
 
Abbey Road is pop culture’s most iconic location.  It served as the title and backdrop to The Beatles’ eleventh studio album, and is the site of the world’s best known recording studios.

Scots photographer Iain Macmillan was given ten minutes with George, Paul, Ringo and John, to capture one of the most famous and most imitated album covers ever.  Now, a live webcam, allows Beatle fans and road lovers everywhere the chance to watch that legendary zebra-crossing 24/7.
 
More on Beyond Abbey Road after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
09.25.2010
09:18 am
|