Abbey Road

Hubby and William are in the other room listening to one of our family's newest music obsessions, the Across the Universe soundtrack (that's a link to the DVD, not the CD) and discussing The Beatles. So I thought this would be a good time to share our adventures on Abbey Road.

Now, to understand the meaning of this little "road trip" (ha! I'm funny!) you probably have to be old enough to have owned vinyl, ie. record albums. Alternative criteria - you can be younger if you are also a big enough Beatles fan to know something about the band beyond the music. Specifically, this record album, the famous cover shown below.

The Beatles - Abbey Road

It never occurs to me to take "tourist" photos. Y'know, like holding the Eiffel Tower between your fingers, or holding up the Golden Gate Bridge, or pushing over the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I just take regular photos, or maybe artsy photos, until or unless I see other people doing silly photos and then hey, I'm not above joining in the fun.

So, I can't say it occurred to me to go to Abbey Road much less try to recreate the album cover. The credit goes to Sam, who said it was a "must do" while we were in London. There were four of us but since I was unwilling to hand over my new, expensive camera to a perfect stranger, that meant I was the photographer and we were down to three "Beatles" for the shot. (However other lone tourists had no qualms about handing their cameras over to ME and I spent about a half hour being the official photographer for travelers from many different countries.)

Along with being one Beatle short, I was also handicapped by the fact that I only vaguely remembered what the album looked like. I never owned this record album. Now that I think about it, I never actually owned ANY Beatles records! I had them in cassette and now in CD, but I didn't own the albums. We might have a few of hubby's old Beatles records though, I'll have to go check that out after I'm done posting. So, anyway, which way were the Beatles walking? From which side of the road was the photographer standing? (in the middle of the road, as it turns out, which wasn't something I was willing to risk my life doing because it's a very busy street!) How much background was included?

It was a very busy street and there were about a dozen other fans there all attempting the same trick. I bet the well-to-do locals just love this phenomenon - NOT. Or maybe they do. Maybe they're Beatles fans too. We gave it several tries, here is the best series of shots. Shot #1, they aren't in the middle of the street yet.

Shot #2, they're in the middle of the street but only hubby in the middle has the swinging arms and legs thing going on. Also, can you tell he's taken off his shoes? Guess which Beatle he identifies with the most?


Shot #3 has the best leg and arm positions but alas, they're almost to the other side of the road.

Apparently one of these buildings is the famous Abbey Road Studio. Do you ever watch Abbey Road Live on the Sundance Channel? Some good music. Fans leave their mark all along the left side of the road.

On the brick wall.

And the wooden fence.

And most of all, the white wall. It doesn't look like a lot of writing from this angle, but there's more of it down towards the other end. Whenever it gets completely filled up with messages, they paint over it and start anew, so we saw it somewhere between the clean slate and full canvas stages. It's amazing how many different languages the messages are written in. Their fans circle the globe.

Here's hubby standing in front of the end of the wall.

As we were leaving, heading back to the tube station, I realized we'd have to walk across the road again so I ran ahead and quickly snapped off one more photograph, which turned out to be the best of them all.

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