Inside the drug-fuelled meltdowns, rows and Paul McCartney’s near death experience at the Abbey Road studios
NO recording studios have witnessed such tumultuous scenes as the ones at Abbey Road.
There were rows, meltdowns, drug-fuelled sessions and the threat of turning the Grade II listed building into a car park.
In a new documentary, aptly titled If These Walls Could Sing, Oasis star Noel Gallagher claims the band were kicked out of the 90 year-old institution for being too loud.
And Elton John says he “could smell the fear” when he stepped inside the place as a young recording artist.
Classic albums such as Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon, The Bends by Radiohead and most of The Beatles records were made there.
It was the Fab Four from Merseyside who truly made the London studio their home.
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HOME FROM HOME
While most musicians were restricted to three-hour sessions, The Beatles became so famous that they could stay in the windowless rooms for as long as they liked.
But that proved to be risky, because the band needed to escape to the roof of the two-storey building for fresh air.
John Lennon once went up there after taking mind-altering drug LSD and the rest of the band rushed up to get him down, fearing he would attempt to fly off.
Paul McCartney’s eldest daughter Mary, 53, was born just eight days after the full band’s final album session at the studio, with the LP later titled Abbey Road.
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She directed the new documentary, which brought up difficult emotions about her late mother Linda, who died from cancer at the age of 56 in 1998.
Pictures of Linda and Paul performing in Wings can be found on the studio’s wood-panelled walls and Mary spotted one of her mum leading a pony across the zebra crossing outside the building.
She tells The Sun: “It is always emotional walking in here and reminiscing about past times. There are still pictures of Wings on the walls.
“A lot of the people here pulled me inside and said how much ‘we remember your mum and how inclusive she was’ and that definitely brought a tear to my eye on several occasions.
“They’d say, ‘She used to come into the canteen and have a cup of tea with us and have a chat’. I love it but also it would make me sad.”
From the outside, the building in St John’s Wood, North West London, looks like any Georgian townhouse, the purpose for which it was built in 1831.
It was only transformed into recording studios for classical music 100 years later. A takeover by EMI Records and the arrival of rock ’n’ roll changed its reputation.
Sir Cliff Richard and The Shadows were the first act to use it repeatedly before The Beatles took over.
Their timeless albums Revolver, The White Album and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band were all made there.
Sir Paul called it a “home from home”, but the staff often didn’t want to work with the most famous band on the planet because of the long hours.
Mary explains: “They are closed-off spaces with no windows, it could be any time of the day. Some of the engineers I spoke to said they really didn’t want to be on a Beatles recording because they were so open-ended and they could be here until the early hours.
“They never knew if it was even going to come to anything because the group were experimenting. They had unlimited recording time.”
The late producer Sir George Martin once told how The Beatles took “pep” pills to keep themselves going and smoked cannabis on the building’s roof to wind down.
By the end of the 1960s fans were making pilgrimages to this promised land.
Sir Elton, once a £15-a-week session musician, recalls that while he was playing piano on The Hollies’ hit He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother in 1969, Paul McCartney walked in to sing Hey Jude for them.
“He probably has no idea what that moment meant to me, but hopefully now he does,” the singer says.
Another Abbey Road session musician who went on to be a superstar is Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page.
He recalls recording the Bond theme Goldfinger with Shirley Bassey, who produced such a powerful take that “she collapses on the floor. It was so dramatic. It was something you would never forget”.
By the time Mary was born The Beatles had disbanded and the late- night sessions ended.
Father-of-five Paul made sure he had time for his growing family inbetween recording with Wings.
DEEPLY SHOCKING
Mary reveals: “To a degree, Dad is quite routine-led and he has a process, so by the time he had a family I don’t think there were those crazy into-the-night sessions.
“I remember him coming home late but we’d always wake up with them there. It didn’t encroach on our family life too much and you grow up with it, so it is how it is.”
Working at Abbey Road was not so harmonious for Pink Floyd.
Their original singer Syd Barrett “lost his marbles” according to fellow band member David Gilmour.
Drugs were largely blamed for the downfall of Barrett, who died aged 60 in 2006, having quit the music industry in 1972.
Bassist Roger Waters says: “He went so fast and never came back, it was deeply shocking and still is.”
From then on Gilmour shared the vocal duties with Waters, which led to bitter fall-outs while making The Dark Side Of The Moon.
Gilmour admits: “Some of those fights were ugly.”
Mary, though, thinks those “creative differences” may have helped, saying: “They were having rows, but it still benefited the music.”
The Abbey Road walls would have heard plenty of Oasis flare-ups.
Singer Liam Gallagher and guitarist brother Noel can’t even agree in the documentary over whether they were once thrown out of Abbey Road or not.
They recorded two of their No1 albums, Dig Out Your Soul and Be Here Now, at the studios.
Noel claims: “We were a bit boisterous, we were asked to leave, which we were quite proud of at the time. The Stones never got kicked out of anywhere.”
Liam, who describes the studio as being like a “church”, counters: “I remember us having a party one night” but being ejected “never happened”.
Having spoken to many of the sound engineers and staff, Mary got the impression that even the craziest acts knuckled down once the microphones were on and the recording tape started rolling.
She says: “The artists did party but they didn’t bring it into the studio, there was a professionality about being here.”
Anyone who has been to Abbey Road will know it is hard to drive on the street outside due to tourists recreating the Fab Four’s album cover walk on the zebra crossing.
It turns out that some motorists don’t have the patience to wait — even when Sir Paul steps out.
Mary explains with a smile: “Did you see that bit at the end of the documentary where that car almost runs him over on the zebra crossing?
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“We filmed him, then as we were leaving, he went over and this car didn’t stop for him.”
- If These Walls Could Sing is released on Disney+ on January 6.
