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The Beatles' Abbey Road Medley: Extended Forms in Popular Music
- Author: MacFarlane, Thomas
The Beatles' Abbey Road Medley: Extended Forms in Popular Music
- Author: MacFarlane, Thomas
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About
In September 1969, the Beatles released their final recorded work, Abbey Road, using a variety of progressive musical ideas that expressed the group's approach to multi-track recording and offering songs that constituted a highpoint in the Beatles' musical corpus. Of particular interest is the concluding sequence of songs (tracks 8-17): seemingly unrelated fragments woven together into a musical form that has thus far defied attempts at categorization. The Beatles' Abbey Road Medley: Extended Forms in Popular Music offers an analysis of these fragments, commonly known as the Abbey Road Medley, in order to understand and explain the emergent musical form and to clarify the relationships between music recording and music composition.
Thomas MacFarlane provides an overview of the Beatles—their history and their music—within the context of popular music and culture between 1962 and 1970, paying particular attention to the production of the album Abbey Road and the pivotal role of producer George Martin on the Abbey Road Medley. After explaining his method of analysis, MacFarlane applies it to the recording and transcription of the Abbey Road Medley, examining the implications of the work's structure and demonstrating how the Beatles expanded the parameters of the popular music form by incorporating recording technology directly into the compositional process. Drawing conclusions about musical form and practice in the recording process of the 1970s and beyond, MacFarlane also suggests other examples of rock music that were influenced by Abbey Road. An appendix transcribing the author's interview with the Beatles' de facto manager Peter Brown, a selected discography, a bibliography, and a selection of photos conclude the book, which will be of particular interest to musicians and Beatles fans alike.
Contents
- Part 1 Acknowledgments
- Part 2 List of Examples
- Part 3 Part I . Context
- Chapter 4 1. A Beginning
- Chapter 5 2. It's Been a Long, Long, Long Time
- Chapter 6 3. Methods and Techniques of Analysis
- Part 7 Part II . An Eclectic Analysis of the Abbey Road Medley
- Chapter 8 4. Prelude-"Because"
- Chapter 9 5. Movement I: "You Never Give Me Your Money"/"Out of College"/"One Sweet Dream"
- Chapter 10 6. Movement II: "Sung King"/"Mean Mr. Mustard"/"Polythene Pam"/"She Came in Through the Bathroom Window"
- Chapter 11 7. Movement III: "Golden Slumbers"/"Carry That Weight"/"The End"
- Chapter 12 8. Postlude-"Her Majesty"
- Part 13 Part III . Conclusions
- Chapter 14 9. An Implicit Challenge
- Part 15 Appendix A: Review of Related Literature
- Part 16 Appendix B: Interview with Peter Brown (August 5, 2003)
- Part 17 Appendix C: Discography
- Part 18 Bibliography
- Part 19 Index
- Part 20 About the Author
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