Radio Australia Today Editorial

It was forty years ago today, the moon and the Beatles..

23 July 2009

On Monday it was forty years since man set foot on the moon.

Another event happened on that very same day in July 1969, an event that some might believe was even more important.

It was the day that the Beatles recorded one of their last great tracks.

John, Paul, George and Ringo had put aside personal acrimonies to collaborate on a benign set of sessions and produce what many consider to be their masterwork, Abbey Road. It was the album that realised how great were the hidden talents of George Harrison, who wrote two of the albums master tracks: Something, and Here Comes the Sun. Harrison had been feeling frustrated in the last years of the Beatles, with few of his songs being accepted and Lennon and McCartney taking over lead guitar on some of their tracks.

Abbey Road has been criticised for the medley that ends the album, but on recent listening, it jumps out as one of the great nineteen minutes of pop music with the lot: fabulous playing from all four of the lords of pop rock; the tightest harmonies imaginable (on Because); great humour (on Sun King and Polythene Pam) and little bit of pathos (The End).

But for me the masterpiece was the work recorded as the Apollo 11 team set foot on the moon. It was Lennon’s Come Together, the album’s opening track, which stands as probably the most original song of the era, a song that has never dated, with avant garde (or perhaps, gobbedegook) lyrics that still creates picture images, not matter how many times you listen to it. As one reviewer put it, pop music went downhill from there.

We all know the moon landing was probably the most incredible feat of humanity, but as one co-worker said to me, only half in jest, at least Abbey Road had a point.

And it’s a point that keeps on being made every time someone chooses to listen to it on their music player.

– Phil