To make music, you don’t always need to make music. George Harrison discussed meditating during the sessions for The Beatles’ Abbey Road. He produced two huge songs for the album: one major hit single and an album track that’s hugely popular. One of the songs charted twice in the United Kingdom.
George Harrison said The Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road’ sessions recalled his childhood
The book George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters features an interview from 1977. In it, he said his Abbey Road meditation sessions reminded him of his childhood experiences. “I used to have an experience when I was a kid which used to frighten me,” he said. “I’d feel really tiny and at the same time I’d feel I was a whole thing as well.
“It was feeling like two different things at the same time,” he said. “And this little thing, with this feeling that would vibrate right through me, would start off rolling around and it would start getting bigger and bigger and faster and faster and faster [his voice races] until it was going like so far and getting so fast that it was mind-boggling and I’d come out of it really scared.”
George Harrison wrote 2 of The Beatles’ most famous songs for the album
George felt similar vibrations while making Abbey Road. “I used to get that experience a lot when we were doing Abbey Road, recording,” he said. “I’d go into this big empty studio and get into a sound box inside of it and do my meditation inside of there and I had a couple of indications of that same experience, which I realized was what I had when I was a kid.”
Though George meditated during the sessions, he also contributed two incredibly famous tunes to Abbey Road: “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something.” The former is an album track that became a standard while the latter was an international hit.
‘Abbey Road’ spawned 2 hits on the charts in the United States and the United Kingdom
Abbey Road was a huge hit, even by the Fab Four’s high standards. The record topped the Billboard 200 for 11 weeks, staying on the chart for 490 weeks. It was the band’s biggest album in the United States. Two tunes from the album, “Come Together” and “Something,” were released as a double A-side single from Abbey Road. The songs topped the Billboard Hot 100 for a week, lasting on the chart for 16 weeks.
The Official Charts Company reports Abbey Road was No. 1 for 17 of its 97 weeks. Upon rerelease, it hit No. 1 for a week and spent another 45 weeks on the chart. “Come Together” and “Something” initially hit No. 4 and remained on the chart for 12 weeks, before hitting No. 84 for a single week. In 2010, “Come Together” hit No. 81 and spent two weeks on the chart.
Abbey Road is a great album even if George wasn’t always putting his nose to the grindstone during its recording.
