TL;DR:
- John Lennon felt one song from The Beatles’ Abbey Road could make it too similar to Sgt. Pepper.
- A sound engineer for Abbey Road had a really strong reaction to Ringo Starr’s work on the track.
- The other members of the band each performed guitar solos on the tune.
John Lennon felt one of The Beatles’ songs from Abbey Road might make it too similar to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Ringo Starr hesitated to perform a drum solo on the song. Subsequently, someone who worked on the album saw the humor in this reluctance.
1 Beatles song is composed of a bunch of shorter songs
Geoff Emerick served as a sound engineer on the album Abbey Road. During a 2022 interview with MusicRadar, he discussed each of the songs from the album, ending with “The Long One,” which is a medley of the last few tracks on Abbey Road. Emerick said John was hesitant to combine so many songs, partly because he didn’t want to make another concept album akin to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Then, Emerick talked about one of the most famous parts of “The Long One”: “The End.” “And then, of course, we get to the famous parts of ‘The End,’ the drum solo and the three-way guitar solos,” he said. “The thing that always amused me was how much persuasion it took to get Ringo to play that solo.
“Usually, you have to try to talk drummers out of doing solos!” he added. “He didn’t want to do it, but everybody said, ‘No, no, it’ll be fantastic!’ So he gave in — and turned in a bloody marvelous performance!”
Geoff Emerick said the song’s drum solo is ‘not just a drummer going off’
Emerick discussed the evolution of the drum solo. “It took a while to get right, and I think Paul helped with some ideas, but it’s fantastic,” Emerick said, laughing. “I always want to hear more — that’s how good it is. It’s so musical, it’s not just a drummer going off.”
He also discussed the guitar solos from “The End.” “The idea for guitar solos was very spontaneous and everybody said, ‘Yes! Definitely’ — well, except for George, who was a little apprehensive at first,” he said. “But he saw how excited John and Paul were so he went along with it.”
How the song and ‘Abbey Road’ performed on the charts in the United States and the United Kingdom
“The End” was never a single so it never charted on the Billboard Hot 100. The tune appeared on the album Abbey Road, which topped the Billboard 200 for 11 weeks. The album spent a total of 484 weeks on the chart.
According to The Official Charts Company, “The End” did not chart in the United Kingdom either. Meanwhile, Abbey Road reached No. 1 in the U.K. for 17 weeks and stayed on the chart for 97 weeks.
“The End” has an amazing drum solo even if it’s a drum solo Ringo hesitated to create.
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