Abbey Road Revisited

I just listened to the Beatles' Abbey Road for the first time in several years. Here are some random thoughts:


What is up with "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"? This was one of my favorite Beatles song as a kid, and I have always had a fondness for it as a result, but listening to it now it sounds much more sinister than playful. Especially the women in the courtroom "screaming 'Maxwell must go free'." Very Charles Manson-esque.


Anyway, the entire album is darker than I used to give it credit for. For instance, while the ending medley (side two on the cassette I had as a kid [this is a separate issue--due to individual song downloads, young people these days have no sense of what an album is, of the cohesiveness that makes all of the songs better, let alone any sense of how a single side has to work together within the structure of a full album]) is fun, and according to George Harrison in the Beatles documentary that was on ABC in the mid-1990s (1994 or '95, when they released "Free As A Bird"), it was meant to be funny, the last two songs of the medley, "Carry That Weight" and "The End," are just depressing in light of the band's breakup shortly thereafter. They also had special resonance for me tonight since I am completing my last week of graduate school.


Also, while "Octopus's Garden" is a happy kind of song, one has to wonder what Ringo was going through to feel the need to express his desire for "hiding [...where] we can't be found"? The song's vision is happy, but the catalyst for that vision is not.