‘If These Walls Could Sing’ pays homage to Abbey Road, where the Beatles thrived
You rarely see Elton John – a Grammy-winning Knight of the British Empire – acting like a bona fide fan boy.
Yet that’s precisely what happens amid the new documentary “If These Walls Could Sing” (Disney+, streaming Friday), Mary McCartney’s touching tribute to the myriad artists, ranging from the Beatles to Oasis, who recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London.
John recalls a day in 1969 when he was just a young session pianist on “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” by the Hollies. Suddenly Paul McCartney appeared and quickly sang the recently released “Hey Jude”. jaw group.
“He probably has no idea what that moment meant to me, but hopefully now he does,” John said, visibly moved.
Message received, says McCartney, 53, daughter of Paul and Linda McCartney and sister of fashion designer Stella. “He loved it,” the director says of her dad’s reaction to the clip. “And I think it meant a lot to Elton to come back here and say that.”
These are just a few of the magical moments conjured up by this famous and still operating recording studio, whose historical significance is on par with Sun Studio in Memphis, Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios in New York and Sunset Sound in Hollywood.
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Much of Abbey Road’s story was an eye-opener for McCartney, who grew up crawling around the studio floors.
“I didn’t know it was 90 years old, I didn’t know anything but the Beatles” and Paul and Linda McCartney’s next band, Wings, she says. “Part of the reason for doing this documentary was just to be able to show this photo of my mother leading a pony through the zebra crossing.”
The pedestrian crossing that leads to the studio is famous on the cover of “Abbey Road”, the last album recorded by the Beatles.
And the pony would be Jet, a creature with a luxurious mane that Linda McCartney decided to come work with the family one day. When you’re a Beatle, you can bring a pony to work.
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Even the most tuned music fan is likely to discover gems watching McCartney’s first documentary, which mixes interviews with rare studio footage. Even the talent seems impressed with what has been created there.
“We were just street musicians,” Starr says of his band when they recorded their first album at Abbey Road in 1963. The Beatles finished “Please Please Me” in a day in what turned out to be was then called EMI Studios, a nine-bedroom townhouse that had turned into several studios.
The group’s work in the late 60s at Abbey Road would reshape pop music, with innovative recordings such as “Rubber Soul” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, which made extensive use of recording techniques peak.
Starr is good for a few more jokes in “If These Walls”, noting that “if it hadn’t been for him” – which means perfectionist and studio enthusiast Paul McCartney – “we would have recorded three albums”.
And Ringo’s favorite Beatles track recorded at Abbey Road? It would be ‘Yer Blues’, as the quartet was literally locked in a closet and that closeness added to the raw energy of the track.
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Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame makes an appearance. As one of London’s finest session guitarists, he visited frequently to add guitar parts to all sorts of music, including on Shirley Bassey’s indelible performance of James Bond’s title song ‘Goldfinger’. .
Abbey Road venues continued to throb in the 70s, with Pink Floyd using the space to create their masterpiece ‘Dark Side of the Moon’.
Financial problems once risked turning Abbey Road into a car park
But trouble came in the late 1970s as his financial fortunes waned. Mary McCartney was shocked to discover that “there were serious plans to possibly turn the place into a parking lot.”
Salvation came with a touch of serendipity. A local film music studio was closing, so the director of Abbey Road set up a projector and screen, and invited filmmakers to visit.
Then came John Williams, who recorded the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” soundtrack and later some of the “Star Wars” movies. Of the experience, which featured the London Symphony Orchestra, director George Lucas told McCartney: “It was amazing, like opening a Christmas present.”
The members of Oasis felt the same way. The two famous Gallagher brothers, Liam and Noel, give time to McCartney, which is not surprising considering the outsized impact of the Beatles’ music on their epic 90s outing.
Predictably enough, they have diverging memories of their time at Abbey Road. Noel insists they were kicked out of the place for blasting Beatles music too loudly one night, while Liam says that can’t be true.
“It’s like going to church, coming here,” he says.
Noel pays equal tribute. “My musical language was born in this room, my hairstyle was born in this room,” he says.
Fittingly, Paul McCartney has the last laugh, telling his daughter that what sticks with him most are the memories of the people who shared these walls with him, from his bandmates to the person who ran the bar ( yes, there is a bar).
According to Mary McCartney: “It was a safe place (for Dad and Ringo) where they cocooned and were nurtured. So when they come back here, it’s a place for them full of memories and full of love.”
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