Abbey Road

I go round and round with the iPod and get away from bands for a while. Already I have so much stuff on there it pleases me enormously. And I still have room for 70 million more albums. I STILL haven't copied all of my music onto this magical, mystical, marvelous musical machine.
Just before washing the dishes yesterday I dialed up The Beatles. And rediscovered them for the 1600th time.
Abbey Road.
The first eight songs on the album are an excellent representation of The Beatles' enormous talent.
Come Together, Something, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Oh! Darling, Octopus's Garden, I Want You (She's So heavy), Here Comes The Sun, and Because.
Come Together, a kind of experimental endeavor, very cool and different. Love it.
"Something", a gorgeous love song, could be the ultimate love song. Simple, beautiful, honest. "You're asking me will my love grow. I don't know, I don't know." To a whimsical song, no less extraordinary for its whimsy, to a PASSIONATE song of hurt and desperation and a mind blowing declaration of love.
I'll tell you right now, if you can get down on your knee and expose your love to a woman as passionately as Paul does in Oh!Darling, you got a mate for life. And she wanted to dump him. He's pleading and begging but doing it with enormous feeling. That song gives me goosebumps every single time I hear (and sing along to) it.
Octopus's garden, more fun Ringo style, then on to John's declaration of love. Or something. I Want You (She's So Heavy). Passion, John style. All kinds of discussion about what he meant. Is it sex is it love is it Yoko is it someone else.
I don't give a damn. It is quintessential John. Expressing emotion directly.
Here Comes The Sun. The ultimate song of hope. Again, George Harrison beautiful.
You did not know The Beatles had a song titled Because, did you? Admit it.
This song is exquisitely beautiful. Heartwrenchingly beautiful. Ethereal harmonizing, a whisper of a song so delicate in its beauty that it will knock you down.
Go online and listen to it. Right now. Afterwards you will erase every other song you own and listen only to Because for the rest of your natural born days.
Here's where I am coming from. As I plugged in the iPod I thought to myself that one day I should sit down and listen to the entire Beatles catalogue, chronologically, from start to finish.
Then the first eight songs of Abbey Road slammed me in the face and I knew why I should do that.
The Beatles were not just rock 'n roll, they were everything. Their talent crossed genres and incorporated every style and emotion and intellectual thought process out there. And they created genres and ideas and expressed emotion from a new angle.
Those eight songs alone are an awesome cross sample of styles of music, of each of their individual voices, of varying emotional intensity, of silliness and seriousness.
Jesus goddamn Christ I wish George and John were alive and The Beatles could still perform once in a while. That would give my life a dimension that would make me invincible.
Let It Be was the last album released, but Abbey Road was the last album The Beatles recorded together.
Pretty much says it all, baby.

Postscript: When I am feeling over the top passionate, I type so fast that every other word is misspelled or out of order. It took me nineteen hours to type this just for the 123,000 corrections I had to make.