Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		3.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		5.0
Overall		5.0

The Beatles: Abbey Road Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 30, 2019

One of the odder memories from my college years was when a music professor of mine spent an entire class doing a Schenkerian analysis of Side Two of Abbey Road. If you’re not familiar with Heinrich Schenker, suffice it to say he had an almost topographical approach toward understanding music, with an elaborate system he developed which sought to “explicate” the underpinnings of what he deemed to be masterpieces in the compositional realm. What this ended up delivering to my long ago college class was three blackboards full of weird diagrams that almost looked like mathematical equations, with my professor seeking to establish links between various songs, especially with regard to the big quasi-medley or "multi movement suite" that brings this legendary album to a close. As is discussed in this really interesting and worthwhile interview with Giles Martin that showed up in my newsfeed rather serendipitously just as I was beginning to write this review, a lot of folks who wouldn't know Heinrich Schenker from a hole in the ground consider Abbey Road to be their favorite album by The Beatles, and at least one of the reasons might be clear: you don't need any kind of "special" understanding to immediately and viscerally respond to the huge gamut of styles and stunningly wrought music on this now iconic album.

Fans of audio Blu-ray and The Beatles have had a field day over the past couple of years, with what is now a trifecta of “50th Anniversary” releases, including The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Beatles (AKA “The White Album”). As I mentioned in passing in our The Beatles Blu-ray review, the veritable handwriting as to the band’s ultimate fate may well have already been on the wall with that 1968 album, but as Giles Martin alludes to in the Variety interview linked to above, Abbey Road was the “real” epitaph, with the band seeming to realize their own demise as a performing and recording unit, as evidenced by one of the songs on that Side Two quasi-medley, presciently titled “The End”.

But if there’s an elegiac quality to Abbey Road, at least in retrospect and of course tinged with more than a touch of nostalgia, the album itself is a nonstop celebration of impressive pop and rock hooks, and some of the lushest close harmony vocals in the erstwhile Fab Four’s entire output.

The Beatles: Abbey Road Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

While this is in essence an audio Blu-ray, there is one actual video element tucked away a bit in the somewhat cumbersomely authored menu screens. If you select "Something", you can then "right arrow" to reveal a "video" option (see screenshot 9). That then takes you to what is in my personal estimation a completely unecessary interstitial menu (see screenshot 8) where, if you select "video" again, you get the nascent "music video" for "Something", screenshots of which are offered in positions 1 through 7. This 1.33:1 1080p transfer (via AVC) is fine looking, if obviously archival, with a few blemishes that show up, and somewhat roughhhewn and not overly detailed appearance. Still, it's fun to see the boys (and their girls) at this stage of their lives. The cumbersome interstitial menu situation is unfortunately on hand after playing this video, as the disc is authored to return to the menu seen in screenshot 8, where you then have to click on "return to album", which itself is unfortunately authored to pick up again with Track 1 (Come Together), rather than picking up with the next track automatically, as some (ahem) might have hoped. The main menu (seen in screenshots 9 and 10) also has occasional animations of birds that flit through at random intervals.

The Beatles: Abbey Road Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Beatles: Abbey Road features three absolutely stellar audio experiences, all of them offering their own delights, and as such, I personally highly recommend listening to the entire album three times with the three different mixes. While the intriguing "calling card" for some audiophiles may well be the Dolby Atmos track, purists will delight in the LPCM 2.0 track, and surround sound enthusiasts who don't yet have an Atmos setup will find other pleasures in the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. In my personal estimation, you simply can't go wrong with any of these, and as Giles Martin gets into in the above linked interview, there was less overt "tweaking" to the mix this time around for a variety of reasons. Still, there are noticeable and quite enjoyable panning effects (also talked about in the Martin interview) like those cascading drums in "Come Together". Interestingly, the Atmos track features Ringo's drumming quite prominently overhead, but what I noticed is how the Atmos channels are used quite frequently to support and/or reinforce sounds that are evident in other channels, rather than being used solely for discrete instruments (though some guitar solos are positioned there). Fidelity and clarity on all three tracks is superb, and there are all sorts of "little" things I either never heard before or was suddenly aware of again. As so often seems to be the case, when you listen to an album repeatedly in a "familiar" mix, certain things may blend into the background, and to cite just one example, when the crickets started chirping overhead in the Atmos mix of "Sun King", I was suddenly taken aback for a moment in a way I hadn't been for years. There is definitely more "oomph" in the midrange and low end on the Atmos track, even more than the already excellent DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, so that, for example, when I toggled between them during some of the more raucous moments of the end "medley" of Side Two, the Atmos track was actually rattling my floorboards quite a bit, with a palpable "rumble" I could feel, something that wasn't as much in evidence in the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 version.

The Beatles: Abbey Road Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are some (fools, obviously, and, yes, that's a joke) who might consider the audio Blu-ray the "supplement" in this set, but for the rest of us, this is another incredibly handsomely packaged release that offers three CDs and a beautifully appointed hardback "coffee table" book, all housed in a nice slipbox.

The first CD offers the 2019 mix of the album, but the other two offer rarities, with some sessions that either didn't make the final album, or at least didn't make it by themself (as in the nice track featuring George Martin's string arrangement for "Something"). The two discs of session material are as follows (numbered "2" and "3" since the set is numbering the original album on CD as number 1):

CD Two — Sessions

• I Want You (She's So Heavy) (Trident Recording Session & Reduction Mix)
• Goodbye (Home Demo)
• Something (Studio Demo)
• The Ballad of John and Yoko (Take 7)
• Old Brown Shoe (Take 2)
• Oh! Darling (Take 4)
• Octopus's Garden (Take 9)
• You Never Give Me Your Money (Take 36)
• Her Majesty (Takes 1-3)
• Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight (Takes 1-3)
• Here Comes the Sun (Take 9)
• Maxwell's Silver Hammer (Take 12)

CD Three — Sessions

• Come Together (Take 5)
• The End (Take 3)
• Come and Get It (Studio Demo)
• Sun King (Take 20)
• Mean Mr. Mustard (Take 20)
• Polythene Pam (Take 27)
• She Came In Through the Bathroom Window (Take 27)
• Because (Take 1 — Instrumental)
• The Long One (Trial Edit & Mix — 30 July 1969)
• Something (Take 39 — Instrumental — Strings Only)
• Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight (Take 17 — Instrumental — Strings & Brass Only)

The coffee table book is hardbound and measures approximately 12 5/8" wide x 12 2/8" tall by about 1/2 inch thick. The front frontispiece features two built in slots that have mini LP covers holding the 2019 mix CD and the audio Blu-ray. The back cover frontispiece has a similar arrangement holding the two session CDs. The book is stuffed full of fantastic photographs, along with some really nice writing, including by Sir Paul (the foreword), Giles Martin (an introduction), and several pieces by Kevin Howlett, including a track by track analysis that is very worthwhile and should prove of major interest to fans.

The Beatles: Abbey Road Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Heinrich Schenker may have preferred an audio "road map" to help him chart the figurative and literal ups and downs of any given piece of music, but even "unschooled" listeners will be in for a treat with this fantastic new rendition of Abbey Road. This has arguably less of the "revisionism" (however slight some may have felt it was) that has been a part of some other Beatles projects, and the high resolution audio offered on the Blu-ray disc in this set is reference quality in my opinion. I see from our forum that some have reported playback problems with the CDs included (I personally encountered no such difficulties), but aside from that potential stumbling block, this is one of the best releases of 2019, one that is almost certain to make my year end list of recommended titles. Highly recommended.