Why John Lennon Disliked the Abbey Road Medley (and The Beatles' Untold Rock Opera)

Beyond the Pepper Hype: George Martin's Untold Rock Opera |

George Martin revealed in a 1979 interview something I'd never heard him discuss before or since; he envisioned the Beatles making the first rock opera following Sgt. Pepper.

????️ "If they were left to their own devices during Pepper, Pepper wouldn't have happened ever... because they were high most of the time. I thought we'd set a standard with that (Pepper). What I really wanted to do from then on was treat rock music more like a classical symphony. I wanted to integrate things. I wanted to have the boys write and think in symphonic terms. I wanted to write songs that blended into each other and actually had reoccurring themes that even had canonic devices one after the other and had snippets coming back. And treating it like a foremost full-scale work, where you had a 30-minute length that was actually a cohesive whole. Paul liked this idea very much. John didn't..." – George Martin, 1979

► 1967 Time Magazine Article "Pop Music: The Messengers":
https://tinyurl.com/4m47s2p6

► 1979 Interview with George Martin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXPzrDxMbcA&t=565s

► 1970 Interview with John Lennon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZhBQRzBAa8&t=8487s

✷ Sources:
• All You Need Is Ears: The Inside Personal Story of the Genius Who Created the Beatles (George Martin and Jeremy Hornsby)
• The Love You Make: An Insider's Story of the Beatles (Peter Brown and Steven Gaines)
• The Lives of John Lennon (Albert Goldman)
• Wikipedia: https://tinyurl.com/3y25k9t6
• Far Out Magazine UK: https://tinyurl.com/3phmhces

0:00 Intro
0:37 Chapter 1: The Beatles That Never Were
3:07 Chapter 2: Why John Disliked the Abbey Road Medley
6:27 Chapter 3: It All Goes Back to Sgt. Pepper

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