The Beatles and the Moog on Abbey Road

A friend gave me this album years ago. It's got a delightfully cheesy cover, front and back, with the "synth babe" (I guess...LOL) and The Beatles.
One of the songs on this album is Penny Lane. A six piece band performs these songs. The Moog Model 55 is played by Eddie Higgins. From 1969.

 

I don't think the Beatles were fully aware of all the possibilities and the potential of the Moog synthesizer at that time. In 1969 it was still a novelty and they used it modestly on a few tracks (with the exception of I Want You (She's So Heavy)). It was a difficult instrument to master and operate so that might have contributed to that.

Maybe they would have used it more if they decided to make another album after Abbey Road. A Beatles album with heavy use of the Moog synth is something that could have been possible. I would have loved to hear it.

 

You'll always have Electronic Sound.
P.S. Having put that out I am pretty sure George had an idea of the range of sounds the instrument could produce, but made the decision to largely use it as a musical instrument rather than as an avant garde intrusion on Beatles songs.

 

You call it an intrusion but when tastefully done the Moog could have added a lot of atmospheric/spacey/trippy/groovy sounds. The possibilities are endless, something that groups like Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk showed.

But we have Electronic Sound so yeah.

 

I'm a guy who likes the sound The Beatles made with 2 guitars, bass, drums, 3 voices and perhaps some piano, electric piano, or organ better than any other sound in the world. I can enjoy them singing with a nice chamber ensemble like on Yesterday or Eleanor Rigby as well, but don't really consider it The Beatles at that point. To me their heavily overdubbed and self consciously experimental material like TNK, their 67 output, and a couple tracks on the White Album was the least compelling material they produced, because it buries or excludes the 2 gtr, bass, drum dynamic of theirs that blew me away from day one.

The synths on Abbey Rd are used as a nice subtle compliment to the instrumental dynamic I love and are about my fav use of analog mono synths in pop/rock/funk, with the possible exception of the solo on Follow You Follow Me and the bass line to Flashlight

(I dont count Eskimo by The Residents as pop, rock or funk.)

 

Tastefully used on Abbey Rd for sure. And yes, many more sounds were capable of the device. Shortly afterwards Keith Emerson expanded heavily on his modular Moog and after reading a good bit about his adaptation of the instrument, it is said that he used very little of what it was capable of also. It is said he rarely changed the main patch connections on it (those cable connection you see on the front of it) and basically would just change some oscillator or sample settings. Whenever he wanted a different sound he would have Robert Moog develop a new module for him as the chassis on it was expandable. If you look at a later photo of Emerson's Moog front panel (hope you can view it here) you can see a sticker of the Brain Salad Surgery cover art on the upper left corner module. This was the module that was added for the sounds he wanted for that era/album. . So the Beatles used the Moog (albeit a much simpler version) as mentioned, very lightly, as it would probably take a whole other career to take a more advanced and knowledgeable advantage of it.

 

Maxwell's Silver Hammer is actually one of my favorite songs on Abbey Road. To each his own I guess.

 

One of the few late 60s Limelight electronic Moog albums that came out during a three year span (67-70). I wish more of that Limelight electronic material would come out on CD.

 

Moog or no moog , I don't care for those two songs either. One cutesy-wutesy song on an album is more than enough. Two is a deal-breaker.

 

Thanks for mentioning this; I just listened to some of it on youtube and it's certainly very interesting to hear :

 

Yeah, it is actually pretty good. I didn't expect that at all.

 

I love this album. When I'm finished unloading my rock albums, I can promise you I'll hang on to this.

 

To say nothing of all the earlier electronic stuff using oscillators, etc.

 

This is my take too. I think it’s very tastefully used, doesn’t sound dated to me at all.

 

Many problems with Abbey Raod for me:
Maxwell's Silver Hammer - Out of place on Abbey Road. Hell, they'd already done When I'm 64 and Your Mother Should Know. Ground already covered in the psychedelic days.
Octopus's Garden - Out of place on Abbey Road. This was just Ringo writing a sequel to Yellow Submarine. A pathetic tag-on.
Here Comes The Sun - Great song but ruined by cheesy, squeaky-clean, middle-of-the-road synth.
Something - Needed to remain a soft intimate ballad but the orchestral arrangement is an uneccessary, overblown intrusion. All over the place.
Because - Overly twee but it fits well into the whole mad fresco that is Side 2.

 

Octopus's Garden has George's best guitar solo. George should have saved it for one of his albums after Dark Horse when things were really bleak.

 

This was George's first brush with the moog. This was recorded in the spring of 1968, released as a single in August, and at some point in between those months he shipped the tape off to the U.S. so that Beaver & Krause could overdub that synthesizer impersonating a trumpet at 1:16. It whetted George's apatite enough to inspire him to fly to Los Angeles to record the rest of the album with American musicians in November:

 

This calls for a toast to the great Ray Kurzwiel. "They" said it couldn't be done, and Ray replied "You think so, eh?" "NOW HEAR THIS!" The synth goes digital. And opens the door to practical sampling tech. Visionary.

One could record a tape loop library of tasty and interesting Moog tones for use in a Chamberlain Mellotron. That would really hit the spot.

 

Here's something from 1966:

 

I recently listened to one side of Electronic music and didn`t make it through.
Sounded like one guy was playing around with the pitch shifter on a fairly regular synth sound while another guy kept hitting the keys producing some very annoying sounds like a air-pressure valve that really makes it unlistenable in the long run. I think George was having us on. Especially the second player seems like a child to me who inaudibly giggles whenever it hits this awful sound. And I am open for avantgarde music (don`t claim to understand it though), enjoying it from time to time.
It seems they had (or used) a very limited palette of sounds.

 

Personally think the Moog was artfully applied to "Save The Life Of My Child" rather then a novelty as it was on other albums. S&G got some interesting sounds

 

Thanks for posting. Great article and photos.

 

I wonder if, had the band continued, this might have been the beginning of a further decline in influence for George Martin. Compared to when they had to basically go and ask him to score any orchestral music they wanted, maybe the Moog might have been a means of them increasingly bypassing him by creating their own electronic accompaniment. It's not something I'd ever considered before, but after reading that piece it just struck me as a possibility.

 

Yes, my remark was more concerning The Monkees than Simon & Garfunkel. I believe the creator of the moog himself played on that track!

 

No, I see that as being an extra skillset that could take focus away from progress. The band's limited familiarity with the instrument led to tasteful contribution over obsessive tinkering. And, it wasn't like they didn't have George Martin at beck and call anyway, in areas of his expertise.

Sometimes it's better to just let the driver change the tire so you can show up both on-time, and clean.