’Come Together’ –
Myth, music, place and the zebra crossing on Abbey Road
London is a city full of music-related places; houses
where musicians lived, music venues where bands played important concerts,
iconic studios, inspiring record shops and streets and houses that we know as album
cover backgrounds. There are an uncountable number of guides to find these
places a Google-search away, guided music themed walking tours and blue, round
signs on house facades. One of the, probably, most visited music-related places
in London is the zebra crossing on Abbey Road, where cover picture of the
Beatles last recorded LP with the same name was taken in 1969 (DuNoyer, 2009). The
picture of the band crossing the road has been frequently
imitated and cover is one of the most famous album covers of all time. The
zebra crossing on Abbey Road has become a tourist attraction and today it is a
place where Beatles fans wait in line to have their picture taken on the same
spot as the band. There is something about it that fascinates me; in a way it’s
just a zebra crossing on a London road that looks a lot like other zebra
crossings on other London roads and at the same time it’s so much more than
that.
Although
from Liverpool, the Beatles were very much a London band. Derek Taylor, the
Beatles PR, is supposed to have said that the fifth beatle was London because
of the city’s great importance to the band (Miles, 2010). London was the place
where they made most of their music and “they were ultimately as shaped by
1960s London as by their Northern origins” (DuNoyer, 2009, p. 95). There are a
lot of Beatles related places in London. Two places of extra importance for the
Beatles career were the EMI office in Manchester Square and the EMI studios on
Abbey Road, both who appear on the bands record covers; the EMI office on the
Beatles first LP Please Please Me
(1963) and Abbey Road on their last (DuNoyer, 2009). Today the former EMI
office is demolished, but The Abbey Road studios is still in the same place as
I was in the 1960s.
As with all
iconic records the Abbey Road record comes
with a story. The work name of the album during the recording sessions is said
to have been Everest. The myth says
that the Beatles changed the name to Abbey Road because they didn’t want to go
to Mount Everest to take a cover picture (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8188475.stm).
They simply did the easiest thing instead, stepped out of the door onto the
street right outside the recording studio to take their cover picture and named
the album after that street. But Abbey Road was not just a road for the
Beatles, as we already have seen, it was the home of most of their music
making. In a way naming the album after the recording studios feels a bit like
a full circle.
Today the
Beatles plays an important role in a canon of bands in “The rock history” or
“The history of popular music”. It is a history and a canon that tends to focus
on “Great bands” and “Iconic records”, influenced by a genius-discourse (Astor,
2013) and romantic ideas of creativity and spontaneity (Shuker, 2013). It is a
history that tends to gravitate towards anecdotes and stories that sometimes,
maybe a lot of times, seems to be to good to be true. Whether the story of the Abbey Road record above falls in the category
of anecdotes or not is up for discussion, though I have already implied my own
beliefs earlier by calling it a myth. The fact that I have found the story
online, that it’s not a reliable source is in line with that thought. But that
doesn’t make it less interesting. For fans the myth and stories around a band
or a record often have an important role, in a way it becomes like a part of
the music. It is like the stories lives in symbiosis with the music: “Stars
function as mythic constructs, playing a key role in their fans ability to
construct meaning out of everyday life” (Shuker, 2013, p. 62). The history of
the record also contributes to the myth as it “reflects a romantic rock
ideology, with its ideal of spontaneous and inspired creativity” (ibid, p. 81).
This ideology is closely tied to the concept of the authenticity of music. It is
the spontaneity, the sudden, unpretentious inspiration that contributes in the
making the name and cover of the Abbey
Road album real and believable.
Just like
the myth, the story of the name and the cover of the Beatles last record brings
meaning to listeners and fans, the actual place becomes meaningful in a similar
manner. It is also part of the history writing as “many histories of popular
music refer to particular geographic locales” (ibid, p. 180), a place brings
emotional effects and have distinctive auras (Baker, 2012). For a fan, the being
in the same place as the Beatles on the cover of Abbey Road, and the photographing of an “Abbey Road
crossing”-picture, just outside the studio where the band made most of their
music, is like taking part of that history, being a part of the aura.
The idea of “the
aura” refers back to Walter Benjamin’s famous essay “The Work of Art in the Age
of Mechanical Reproduction” from 1936. Benjamin argues that the mechanical
reproduction of a work of art means the loss of the artworks aura, its sense of
place and its original time and space (Benjamin, 1936/2006). Although Benjamin
primarily focuses on visual art, like paintings, the idea can be applied to
mechanical reproduced music, like the LP, as well. It is important to notice
that there is one main difference though; with the reproduction of a recording
there is no original in the same way as with the painting, as the recording
itself is a mechanical reproduction. I would like to argue that the aura of a
piece of music is to be found elsewhere, like in the place where the music was
made.
The aura of
a work of art is strongly connected to a specific place, the place where the
original work of art was made and the space where the one original is placed
(ibid). The aura of a work of art is what makes it real in a sense; there is a
close connection to the concept of authenticity. With a painting, the aura is present
in the presence of the original painting, maybe on display in a Gallery. I
believe that the aura of a piece of music is to be found in places like the
zebra crossing on Abbey Road. Being in the same place as the Beatles is like
taking part of the music’s aura in a “This is the place where it all
happed”-kind of way. Crossing the zebra crossing is like a religious ritual.
The zebra
crossing on Abbey Road is a place where fans of the Beatles ‘Come Together’ to
share and express the meaning of the music. It is a bit like a religious act, a
pilgrimage for tourists from all over the world. It is an illustration of the
importance of place and its meaning to music. At the same time it is also a
reinforcement of the myth that surrounds music and the history writing of
popular music, it is a reinforcement of the work centred canon. The myths, the
constructed history and canon brings layers of meaning to the music and to the
lives of the people liking and listening to the music. Phil Baker (2012, p.
279) writes that “the feeling of place is inseparable from the meaning of
place”, the feeling of the place and the aura of the Beatles and Abbey Road brings meaning to the music
in a similar way.
List
of references:
Baker,
P., (2012). Secret City: Psychogeography and the End of London. In: Kerr, J.,
and Gibson, A., (Eds). London from Punk
to Blair. 2nd ed. London: Reaktion Books.
Benjamin,
W., (1936/2006). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In: Durham,
Meenakshi Gigi & Kellner, Douglas M. (eds.). Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. Rev. ed. Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishing
DuNoyer, P., (2009). In the City: A Celebration of London Music. Croydon: Virgin Books.
Miles,
B., (2010). London Calling: A
Countercultural History of London since 1945. London: Atlantic Books.
Shuker,
R., (2013). Understanding Popular Music
Culture. 4th ed. London: Routledge.
Astor,
P., (2013). Do You Believe in Magic? –
Myths and Histories. From: MMSS407 London Notes: Music, Identity and Place.
University of Westminster on 16th July. Available from: Blackboard.
[Accessed 02/08/13].
Pollard, L., (2009). Revisiting Abbey Road 40 years on. BBC News. Available from: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8188475.stm>
[Accessed 02/08/13]
The Beatles, (1969). Abbey Road. Apple Records. [LP].
