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Solid State

The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles

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Solid State

By: Kenneth Womack, Alan Parsons - foreword
Narrated by: William Hughes
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Summary

In Solid State, Kenneth Womack offers the most definitive account of the conception, recording, mixing, and reception of Abbey Road.

In February 1969, the Beatles began working on what became their final album together. Abbey Road introduced a number of new techniques and technologies to the Beatles' sound and included "Come Together", "Something", and "Here Comes the Sun", which all emerged as classics.

Womack's colorful retelling of how this landmark album was written and recorded is a treat for fans of the Beatles. Solid State takes listeners back to 1969 and into EMI's Abbey Road Studios, which boasted an advanced solid state transistor mixing desk. Womack focuses on the dynamics between John, Paul, George, and Ringo and producer George Martin and his team of engineers, who for the most part set aside the tensions and conflicts that had arisen on previous albums to create a work with an innovative (and among some fans and critics, controversial) studio-bound sound that prominently included the new Moog synthesizer, among other novelties.

As Womack shows, Abbey Road was the culmination of the instrumental skills, recording equipment, and artistic vision that the band and George Martin had developed since their early days in the same studio seven years before. A testament to the group's creativity and their producer's ingenuity, Solid State is required listening for all fans of the Beatles and the rock 'n' roll.

©2019 Kenneth Womack (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing
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Opens up the story behind the Abbey Road album, as well as the technology, processes and relationships behind it….

Insightful

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the book felt like its been meticulously researced using sources who's worked closely with the 'Beadles ' ...

its Beatles not Beadles..

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Somehow in the carnage of their later years, and amid increasingly bitter personal relations, The Beatles continued to produce history-making music. This book chronicles the making of Abbey Road, but also looks at the Get Back sessions and Let It Be - it analyses the latter stages of the band’s work and is highly detailed, exploring the production technology as much as the composition, while also examining the behind-the-scenes turmoil engulfing the band. The level of detail in the earlier part of the book will be almost overwhelming for all but the most committed fans, but it becomes more gripping as it moves on, blending a musicological appraisal with a wider look at the personal tensions that blighted the band’s terminal stages. It is a bit disorganised, jumping around chronologically, and there is some annoying repetition of phrases - eg ‘associated with’ makes too many appearances, so maybe better editing was needed. The narration is fine, arguably a bit Marmite, but it worked for me; at times I increased the speed of narration to 1.5 before reverting to 1 after settling into it. This is a good summation of the endgame of the world’s greatest band, and well worth a listen for fans of the Beatles, and indeed music fans generally.

And in the end …

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Brilliantly written, plenty of tangents but never losing focus and easy to follow timeline. Superb book, one of my favourite accounts of probably my favourite era in music

Excellent concise account

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A must for any Beatles fan interested in the technical process of how their records were made and the leaps in studio technology in their last few albums, culminating with (and focusing on) the Abbey Road LP. This book takes a deep dive into the instruments, production techniques and the writing/wider context of one of the most written about bands ever, and finds a fresh and rewarding take on the story. A real deep dive, I didn’t realise how much I had wanted a book like this until this came along.

Sole criticism is the recorded performance. As much as I got used to it the narrator isn’t a great fit for the book. Although written by an American author, a British narrator would have better suited to the content, and the frequent quotations. This aside, excellent.

Fantastic and thorough; wrong narrator.

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