You know at once that you’ve come to the right place: there’s a surprising amount of people waiting to cross the road, while others are milling around on the pavement looking into the forecourt of the iconic building where history was made. The zebra crossing is iconic (and surprising to find it so close to a road junction). The building itself would go unnoticed if we didn't know its history. This, of course is Abbey Road Studios.
Walking past the crowds, I strolled in through the open gates unchallenged, and up the famous front steps. Unlike the tourists, I had a pass in my pocket, allowing me entry to the studio on a set date. And once inside, I was free to roam around at will. The reason for my visit was to attend a recording session by my brother’s jazz outfit, The Pete Cater Big Band, who were recording in Studio 2 – the room made famous by the Beatles.
Passing through the smart reception area, one enters an inner corridor. A stairway on the right, its walls lined with photographs of the many famous names who have recorded here, takes you down to the lower floor. Almost immediately opposite as you come down the stairs is the door to Studio One, which happened to be standing open. I had a look inside. The space is large and impressive, yet vaguely reminiscent of the assembly hall at my old grammar school: high ceilings, parquet floor, a nice art deco staircase, acoustic baffles on the walls.
On the other side of the corridor, a short passage leads you to a set of double doors. There are further doors within, heavily soundproofed, which look to have been there a long time. Through these doors and you’re in Studio 2.
Studio 2 as seen from the stairs to the control room
Very little has changed in the sixty four years since the Beatles first stepped in here – the parquet floor is the same, and the acoustic screening, white panels covered in hundreds of tiny slits is still in place, still bolted into position using the same brackets that can be seen on countless historic photographs. It’s a large room, but the proportions aren’t intimidating: around 60 feet long by 38 feet wide, with a 24 foot high ceiling. By contrast, Studio One (the largest purpose built recording studio in the world) measures a whopping 94x58 feet at its maximum dimensions, with a 40 foot high ceiling.
Today, the studio has been set up for a large jazz group to record: one area has been turned into an isolation booth for a bass guitar player, using the same moveable acoustic screens that were once set up around Ringo’s drums during Beatle sessions. Smaller acoustic panels, with windows, separate the brass section from the area where the drums are set up. These look like more recent additions, but the padded wall hangings look very much like those that can be seen in shots of the Beatles at work back in 1963.
As you enter, the stairway up to the control room is on your immediate right. Up these same wooden steps the ‘boys’ would have clattered when invited by George Martin to hear a playback. As you ascend, you’re aware of an an antique, musty smell, redolent of wax floor polish, dust… and Beatle sweat?
The control room, is of course, completely modernised, save for the window looking down into the studio. A modern digital desk measuring around 12 feet across occupies one side of the room. It’s by no means brand new: the padded leather front is showing signs of age. Two flat screen monitors give a video feed of what’s happening downstairs, and a centre screen displays the virtual mixing desk of the Pro Tools music software that’s now used here. The walls are lined with bright red acoustic panels, and an array of speakers stand behind the desk.
Back down in the studio, I notice an old Steinway upright standing in a corner. Is this one of the pianos used by the Beatles? It certainly sounds like it: when I play a few chords, it gives out a very familiar tone, bright and percussive. It’s been set up as a tack piano or ‘jangle box’, with brass tacks (literally drawing pins) pressed into the hammers to produce a sharper sound when they strike the strings. Further down the room, there’s a large grand piano, and a more modern example has been set up for the band to use, alongside a vintage Rhodes electric piano (not an instrument with Beatle provenance – they used a humble Hohner Pianet).
I sit in the control room as the band runs through various numbers, repeating certain sections to be edited in later. This in itself is impressive, for these guys are pro musicians sight reading parts that they’ve maybe never played before. There’s discussion between the band and the guys in the control room: ‘we’ll go from bar 107’. And they hit it every time, note perfect.
During a break, we go out into the small garden where the Beatles posed with their instruments during the recording session for 'She Loves You' almost sixty three years ago to to day. I think twice about depositing a banana skin in the flower bed: this is hallowed ground. Fortunately, there's a bin provided.
We’re lucky that the studio still exists at all. In 2010, with then owners EMI facing increasing debts, there were rumours about the building being put up for sale and even redeveloped into luxury flats. Horrific though this prospect was, it would in fact have been a reversion to an earlier era, for the Georgian townhouse had previously been converted into flats prior to its acqusition by the Gramophone Company in 1929. Fortunately, the bulding was granted Grade II listed status in 2010, preserving it and preventing major alterations from taking place. The pedestrian crossing is simlarly Grade II listed. I was a little worried for its safety when I arrived, as a gang of workmen were tearing up the road just yards away...
Abbey Road Studios is, without a doubt, one of the most famous recording facilities in the world, and looks to be in rude health from what I could see. As we brought some of my brother’s drums back to his car, some sightseers on the other side of the railings asked ‘have you been recording in there?’ and were suitably impressed when they learned that this was indeed the case. Even as we were leaving, the pedestrian crossing was still heaving with tourists waiting their turn to re-create that famous album sleeve. But we’d gone further, as deep into the recorded history of the Fab Four as it is possible to go.
My thanks to Pete Cater and everyone at Abbey Road Studios who made this visit possible.
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