As a kid I listened to many artists and songs, from Neil Diamond to ZZ Top, but certainly from the earliest age that I can remember being influenced by music, the original driving force for me that shaped my musical taste was without a doubt - The Beatles.

Before I was into much heavier stuff like the Cream’s, Deep Purple’s, Jimi Hendrix’s, Led Zepplin’s and so on I was weaned on the Beatles and then their solo works as well. The first album of theirs, which I played on an old Zenith Hi-Fi Turntable was the first compilation album of theirs - the “1962 to 1966″ album.

This got me turned on to Rock and Roll mainly as it had all of their great oldies like “I wan’t to hold your hand” and “Eight Days a Week”, etc… After that I craved everything of theirs I could get my hands on and by the Time I got to “Abbey Road”, I thought I had really struck the motherlode.

Through Listening to their albums in a sort of chronological fashion, “Rubber Soul”, “Revolver”, “Sgt. Peppers”, “Magical Mystery Tour”… I felt I got to know them almost more as people than as a band. Each album seemed to separate the four of them a bit more and by the time it got to the “White Album” it was almost like each one was working on solo projects and then splicing them together to make an album. Even though every song by either Paul or John had to have (by contractual arrangement) both names Lennon-McCartney on them they were clearly either Just John’s or Just Paul’s creations, style and taste.

Now I’m not knocking the music on any of these albums, but it just sort of saddened me to see the large creative gaps in what was once the most cohesive pop band ever. Speed ahead to 1969 and “Abbey Road”, which I believe to be my all time favorite Beatles album. My reasons are two-fold; first the music on it was superb and timeless, but secondly and perhaps most importantly, it was a sort of coming back together creatively for them.

While the First side almost seems like a continuation of previous individual works like the “White Album”, the second side began a continuous theme starting with “Here Comes the Sun” and ending with “Her Majesty” and in between it seemed that one song was carefully crafted to lead into the next and keep building up a story and layering one great melody on top of another.

A great example of this is the transition from “Mean Mister Mustard” to “Polythene Pam” to “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” they just seem to fit together so perfectly, but they are all completely different sounding and in the same was as “Golden Slumbers” (my favorite on the album), “Carry That Weight” and “The End”.

Not only were these a great collaboration of songwriting, but in playing as well as you hear some great collaborative soloing on the guitar just before “The End”.

The ”Let it Be”  album which was their last had a few good collaborations on songs like “Get Back”, but as whole did not capture the closeness and togetherness of “Abbey Road”.  All in all because this was more of a true “Beatles” album than almost any other since “Revolver” it will always be more special and besides that - it has a totally cool Album Cover…

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