The Beatles - Abbey Road (1969)

Steve:

As arguably the finest album by arguably the world's finest rock band, Abbey Road should be familiar to at least a few readers out there. I discovered it in my elementary school years, and my initial impressions were: a) there are a lot of songs here, b) and one of them is hidden at the end!, c) the "Bang Bang Maxwell's Silver Hammer" song is funny!, and d) the song at the end of side 1 is long and kind of scary. Beyond those surface impressions, this album rewards repeated listens, decades later.

Along with the Moody Blues, the Beatles shaped how I consumed music from a very early age. In retrospect, I strongly believe that my early immersion into the Beatles was a key factor in how seriously and thoroughly I embraced music as my primary interest for the rest of my life. After my daughter was born, my wife and I played the Beatles in the car and in the house often, and within several years she was able to identify every song by name and could sing along much of the time. I'm sure later on when she's a middle-aged person like me, even if she's not a music fanatic, she'll still have the Beatles catalog in her muscle memory, ready for instant recall. That's how powerful this band is.

So, bringing my impressions of Abbey Road up to date: a) I've visited that crosswalk on the album cover, and it's a busy intersection! It was hard to find an opening to walk across it, much less get a good souvenir photo; b) "I Want You (She So Heavy)" is still one of my favorite songs to play loud, and a song I would like to play live myself someday - I got a looper guitar pedal partly so I could loop the arpeggios in the closing section while going nuts on amplifier feedback; c) George Harrison might win the prize for best songwriter on this album.  "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun" are rightfully two of the most beloved Beatles songs of all time, and I'm not sure he's ever topped them; and d) kudos to George also for helping Ringo bring "Octopus' Garden" to life. Engineer Geoff Emerick's book Here, There and Everywhere makes it clear that George was very much a guiding light for that song. 

Dan:

Having experienced the first wave of Beatlemania in 1963-64, it was almost impossible not to love the group and their music. So many quality singles in such a short time! Most of the early albums were compilations of singles, and I had a small collection of them. When they released Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966) as full albums, I didn't fully absorb them perhaps due to my snobbishness as a jazz fan as well as my maturation into adulthood. (Too bad for me because these were also great albums that I later added to my collection). The Beatles were relentless and succeeded in bringing out two great albums in 1967 (Sgt. Pepper) and 1968 (The White Album). I did make a point of owning these as well as Abbey Road from 1969, which I view as the cream of the crop of their entire output. 

When he was two years old, Steve heard my records many times in our small apartment. No wonder he likes the Moody Blues and Abbey Road. I never imagined the profound effects those early experiences might have. Abbey Road is the prime example of our Father-to-Son-and-Back-Around blog theme. He knew this album before he could speak. Four years ago he offered me his remastered 50th anniversary edition of the album to rip into my digital music collection.