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List Price: $14.95 | | Publisher: Schirmer G Books
Salesrank: 785316
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| Used Price: $13.56 |
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| Media: Paperback |
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Editorial Review:
Classic Rock Albums is a series of 6 books on famous albums that changed the way rock and roll was heardand played. Each book opens with a brief history of the group, their previous recordings, and their importance in rock. The main section of the text focuses on the album itselfhow it was recorded, the songs, the trivia and interesting information about the process of making and packaging the record. Finally, critical reactionthen and nowis summarized along with a brief essay on the album's place in musical history and the group's remaining work.Let It Be and Abbey Road were the products of a series of sessions that turned out to be the last the Beatles made. The Beatles undertook to return to their "rootsto make a simple live album and to document the process on film. Unfortunately, the sessions turned cantankerous, and a mountain of materialoriginal songs, oldies, fragmentswas recorded but never completed. The film crew only made matters worse, requiring sessions to take place early in the morning, as well as capturing much of the dissension and arguing among the ranks. In the end, the sessions were shelved, and the Beatles returned to the studio to make their "last" album: Abbey Road.Here, the entire story of the sessions is told, revealing the Beatles's unique working methods and documenting the dissolution of one of rock's most important bands. The book reveals in detail the acrimonious recording sessions for the Beatles last two albums. What brought them together for the sessions? What drove them apart? How did they manage to write and record many of their best-loved songs in the midst of their disintegration?Peter Doggett is the editor of Record Collector and well-known British writer on rock musicespecially the Beatles.
Abbey Road/Let It Be : The Beatles (Classic Rock Albums Series) Reviews:
Great Summary of the Story Behind the Last Months of The Beatles 
2009-07-23 - I re-read this book after getting excited about the pending Abbey Road DLC for Rockband Beatles that comes out in September. Doggett does a great job describing the dynamics of John, Paul, George & Ringo's relationship as they produced their last recordings as The Beatles. After providing a timeline view of the creation of the last two albums of the catalog, he gives a short look at each song on the records and how they came to pass. You'd have to be a Beatles fan to really appreciate it fully but I am and I did.
Let It Be 
1999-09-04 - Perhaps a bit too exhaustive and too reverential treatment of the Beatles' last two albums. There are other books available detailing all of their albums in a single volume. This does not add much to any of the others.
Well-researched, compelling narrative of group's demise
1998-11-11 - The circumstances surrounding the break-up of the Beatles have been shrouded in myth ever since the group assembled their Let It Be project. Doggett's book provides a gripping and persuasive account of the tensions that wracked the group in their final years, drawing on the hours of conversations and chaotic music-making captured on the so-called Get Back tapes. This material, never previously published, allows the reader to feel like a fly-on-the-wall as the Beatles implode. Remarkably, it's Paul McCartney, usually pegged as the villain of the piece, who emerges as the book's hero - the only one of the Fab Four prepared to stand up for the integrity of the group's reputation. Doggett's book altered the way in which I looked at these sessions, and indeed the entire responsibility for the break-up of the Beatles.
A shabby, superficial rehash of final Beatles sessions. 
1998-07-23 - One wonders why anyone would devote an entire book to the waning days of the Beatles' studio productions. These were acrimonious times for the once Fab Four, and the individual nature of each of their songs shows that they were the product of solo artists, not a unified band, who were using the others simply as a backing group. The breakup had already occurred creatively before it was institutionalized legally and corporately. However, Mr. Doggett chooses to sift through these lackluster sessions anyway, largely through the use of previously published accounts, many of them sketchy or inaccurate, rather than conduct any first-hand archival research or fresh interviews of his own. The result is a dismal rehash of old stories about very dull recording sessions. The shopworn tales are not likely to interest anyone other than diehard Beatles fanatics, and they will have seen it all before and heard it all on assorted recordings, both legitimate and bootleg. The shabby! result is not surprising considering Doggett's shaky sources, two of whom he dedicates his work to in words so reverentially gushy they should be reserved for deities, not hacks like these.
Betty Mitchell
