The great soul keyboard player Booker T. Jones was blown away by Abbey Road:
I was in California when I heard Abbey Road, and I thought it was incredibly courageous of The Beatles to drop their format and move out musically like they did. To push the limit like that and reinvent themselves when they had no need to do that. They were the top band in the world but they still reinvented themselves. The music was just incredible so I felt I needed to pay tribute to it.
And that’s how the Booker T. & the M.G.s album McLemore Avenue came to be. It’s loaded with instrumental versions of Beatley goodness. The Fab Four not only inspired the album, Abbey Road inspired Joel Brodsky’s photographs and the album title: 926 East McLemore Avenue was the address of the Stax studio in Memphis.
This swell 1970 tribute to the Beatles holds up to this very day.
Here’s the front cover. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The back cover:
And here’s what’s inside the gatefold:
Here’s the whole damn album:
Interesting; we were driving back home on Sunday and Mrs. gratuitous put in the Abbey Road CD, which I hadn’t listened to in its entirety for quite some time. Some of it was quite good; other parts (specifically “Oh! Darling” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”) sounded to me like the lads said, “Aw fuck it, I’m just not in the mood.” I’m still baffled by the critical plaudits for “Because,” and the whimsical confections “Octopus’s Garden” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” lost their appeal to me once I got old enough to drink.
One of the better songs, George’s “Here Comes the Sun” is undercut almost immediately by Paul and John’s far inferior “Sun King.” All in all, it’s an okay album, but it’s no Revolver or Sgt. Pepper. I’ll listen to Booker T. later; maybe he’ll bring out some musical insights that I’ve overlooked.