Image courtesy of niteprowl3r Flickr page - beatles: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sreichenbach/3025971406/in/photolist-5BoTSN-6Kp6DG-9oQPyZ-6Kp8vw-6Kp9oJ-6KjXm4-6KoV2S-6KjVca-eC4tTE-6Kp3Qm-6Kp3hq-6KoWdy-6KjLZg-6Kp5yf-6KjUgt-6Kp6TN-6KjXdM-6Kp45N-6Kp1WY-6KoUGs-6KoVYG-6KoUx9-6Kp153-6KoX3q-6KoZUu-6KjLoH-6KoVv9-6KoXvh-4vA8mP-6Kp4SW-6KjWq6-6Kp4xm-6KjVXZ-6Kp4hS-6Kk1G6-6KkdtD-6KjMRH-6KoVS5-r1ZqRn-6KjZfx-6KjMrx-6KjZue-6KjYzt-6Kp7D9-bCr2k3-aWjPYX-6KvxqP-6Kp7R7-aUXW5n-6KjZW8
Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
Picture I took from an event where Ringo was promoting his new book of photography some years back, originally published in: Ringo Starr In Conversation at Strands Bookstore - October 26, 2015: http://charbor74.blogspot.com/2015/10/ringo-starr-in-conversation-at-strands.html
Recently, Ringo Starr, the former drummer of The Beatles, suggested that the Beatles could have made another album. In fact, despite the generally widely believed notion that the Beatles were at each other’s throats towards the end, and too sick and tired of one another to really even think of keeping things going together, Starr suggested that the band actually never seemed intent on making Abbey Road the final album that they did together. According to him, not only was it not discussed, but no one in the band felt that way:
He said that he never felt that the end of the Beatles was set in stone, even though they actually never did get together or have a full reunion again. At least, not the four original members, even though the surviving members after John Lennon’s death did get back together in the mid-1990’s.
Here is what he recently said:
"We did do Abbey Road and we was like, 'Okay that's pretty good,'" he told BBC 6 Music, "but none of us said, 'OK, that's the last time we'll ever play together'. Nobody said that. I never felt that.
"We'd made this record, and then we would go off and do whatever we wanted to do. And then Paul would call us and say, 'Hey, you want to go in the studio lads?' and we'd do another one.
"So it was not the end - because in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make. So I never felt it [the end of the band] was in stone."
And to back up those claims, Beatles expert Mark Lewisohn recently uncovered a tape in which the members of the band actually discussed a future album after Abbey Road.
Starr also elaborated on the specific process of creating Abbey Road, specifically the medley that served as the legendary band's finale:
"Everybody was writing at a great level because they always did - but on side two, everybody wasn't finishing the songs. But that medley? It works so great.
"It's like we could do no wrong: You don't have to finish the song! Let's just edit them together and it works like a mini play. I love that section. It was really fun."
It is kind of a bittersweet revelation for Beatles fans, such as myself. On the one hand, perhaps this idea that members of the band loathed each other towards the end was not quite as dramatic as it has long believed to have been. On the other hand, the idea that there was a real chance of at least one more album of great, probably immortal Beatles music that the world was robbed of, and perhaps, arguably, more than just one album, is kind of a bitter pill to swallow. What would it have sounded like? Would it have encompassed some of the material that the individual members were working on and/or released in their solo careers? If so, how different would it have sounded with the influence and sound of the other three? Might they have come up with material that was completely different than any of their solo projects and, again, what would that have sounded like?
Alas, the world will never know.
At least, as John Lennon suggested, we have access to the great existing albums that they did produce, plus much other material that they either never released, or at least did not quite release in albums and, in the case of the two Anthology songs, material that, on some level or other, all four members of the band did work on, even if it was in extremely unorthodox manner.
Still, what a fascinating, and somewhat sad, story that allows us to imagine what another Beatles album – which again, was apparently a very real possibility at some point – might have sounded like!
Ringo Starr: Abbey Road wasn't meant to be The Beatles' last album by Matt Everitt, BBC 6 Music News, 11 October 2019:
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-49991164?fbclid=IwAR0PddhbyAeSDgveQIiTOwIvGoTcH1ljPklzRr7QarcUsL8DjFwRkmnG0q4#
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