To celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of history’s most celebrated and influential albums, members of Jet, Powderfinger, You Am I and Spiderbait will tour the country this August, performing The Beatles’ iconic Abbey Road in full.
Aussie supergroup Antipodean Rock Collective (ARC) – featuring Kram (Spiderbait), Mark Wilson (Jet), Davey Lane (You Am I) and Darren Middleton (Powderfinger) – head to Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney this August, where they’ll play Abbey Road from start to finish followed by an encore set of “hits spanning the breadth of The Beatles’ career and catalogue”.
The album's enduring influence is widely acknowledged but we asked Kram, Middleton, Wilson and Lane about how it - and The Beatles more broadly - impacted their lives specifically.
Kram
When I was in high school a teacher and a friend gave me two tapes.
These tapes changed my life forever.
One was the Sex Pistols the other The Beatles.
In some way this musical epiphany has shaped my creative side ever since.
I loved The Beatles songs, humour, variation and voices - all the voices.
They made me feel like playing in a band with my friends and trying any type of music that sounded good. It was ok to try it cause that's what they did.
And they were the biggest band in the world.
Once hooked I went deeper and found Abbey Road.
It really affected me as a whole album. Partly because I knew it was the last one they recorded together. But mostly because of the brilliant dynamics of the record - so much variation in style collectively coming together as a whole. Side two is a masterpiece of pop music - more compositional than song structured.
And I love the cover too - just a brief moment in time and then gone..
The Beatles are all great individually - John, George, Paul and Ringo said goodbye as a band with this album.
Really though the greatest thing about them and Abbey Road, is the sum is greater than the parts.
Darren Middleton
I first heard, or was introduced to The Beatles when I was eight years old and I didn't like it one bit.
My parent’s record collection consisted of Elvis, Glen Campbell, Shirley Bassey and The Beatles and it was on constant rotation. They just had the earlier Beatles records, not Abbey Road at that stage.
My, was I young and my, oh my, were my feelings for The Beatles about to change.
It was when I was about 15 that I first picked up a guitar and began down this path.
Within two months, the deeply buried childhood memories of my parents' record collection came flooding back and it was like a door had opened and the room filled with glorious sound.
Not only was I starting to hear the sounds, the songs, the characters within, but also I really started to feel just how good and important they were and would be to my musical path, let alone almost everyone around me.
Abbey Road may not be everyone's favourite record but to me, it captures so many of the band's strengths. It has some incredibly amazing songs, some of their best work, but also the slightly broken, unfinished bits that they must have had so much of.
I love that it exists in this form.
If I ever sit in front of a piano, Golden Slumbers is the first thing I play and sing, each and every time.
What an honour to be doing these shows... I can't wait.
Mark Wilson
I don’t remember a specific light bulb moment where I discovered The Beatles, somewhere in the birth canal perhaps?
They have always been in my ears and in my eyes. In my sense of humour and the way I play music. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of them.
While I can’t pinpoint the time I discovered Abbey Road I can remember that it was the Beatles album that made me fall for the bass guitar. Obviously there are so many incredible bass moments on Beatles records but Come Together with it’s simplicity and movement and Something with it's busy melodic counterpoints that miraculously stay out of the way are simply faultless. I can’t wait to play them every night.
Davey Lane
Abbey Road at least narrows it down, but where the hell do I start with The Beatles?
People looking for music as a means to further a career go to college to learn music. People looking for faith in something bigger go to church. People looking for an escape get a hobby, or look to less noble pursuits… I’m a misfit in some realms of life but The Beatles were (and are) my college, my church, my escape and my hobby; the kaleidoscopic wonder of that band makes me feel like there’s a place in the world where I fit in.
Tribute shows seem quite the du jour thing nowadays, but this is a great opportunity to pay my respects, with some good mates, to the music that set the course for my trajectory in life.
Abbey Road seemed to me the most logical swan song for the band. It took a pinch of the rock’n'roll, a pinch of classic McCartney music hall, the grandiosity of George Martin’s arrangements and a song about sea creatures building gardens out of stones on the ocean floor. I had it on a copied cassette that had the sides the wrong way round. I always thought opening with Here Comes The Sun and ending with the blunt full-stop of I Want You (She’s So Heavy) [on side one] worked just as well as the way it was intended.
Tickets for the shows are on sale now. Scroll down to theGuide for all the details.
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