Customer Reviews

Other Side of Abbey Road

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George Benson's outstanding "The Other Side of Abbey Road" may be the first time tribute was paid to an actual album, as opposed to the assorted songs of an artist or group (Ramsey Lewis and Benson's mentor, Wes Montgomery, had already hit with Beatles covers before this release).

It says much for the deep, rich melodies on "Abbey Road" that they stood sturdy with the arrangements Benson, producer Creed Taylor, and his stellar CTI backup band created. Notables include present and future jazz stars Herbie Hancock, Hubert Laws, and Freddie Hubbard, who contributes some great trumpet fills on "You Never Give Me Your Money" and "I Want You." Benson's ballad style, which he would rely more on in his later solo recordings, transforms "Golden Slumbers" and "Here Comes The Sun" into comforting lullabies without compromising either song's integrity; they indicate how Nat Cole may have covered those songs had he lived. Don Sebesky's string arrangements are first-rate (working the baroque string arrangements of "Because" around "Come Together" as one example), Benson's guitar rings and chimes where needed, the band finds an appealing jazz-blues groove to lock into the melodies and, with the exception of a short-sell fade out on "The End," this stands with "Chet Atkins Picks On The Beatles" as the finest Fab Four intrumental covers album ever.

While most people consider "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" not only the greatest Beatles album of all time, but the greatest album of all time - I tend to think that "Abbey Road" is the superior album. One reason why I think "Abbey Road" stands out is the state of the Beatles as a band during the time of recording. "Abbey Road" was recorded at a time when tensions and emotions were high between the four members of the band. It is when emotions are high that often a band produces their best work. Fleetwood Mac also did their best work under similar circumstances. Tensions and emotions between the members of Fleetwood Mac were running high when they recorded "Rumours" - and it became their most successful album. Great works are often targets to be covered by other artists. "Rumours" was an album that was covered by a variety of artists on a tribute album: "Legacy: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours". While there was an admirable job of the covers on this collection, it failed to capture the emotions of the original. When I discovered George Benson's "The Other Side of Abbey Road", my initial fears that surrounded the Fleetwood Mac "Legacy" cover began to surface. My curiosity of seeing a legendary Jazz artist such as Benson cover my favorite album outweighed the fears I was having. While I knew it was going to be impossible for Benson to reach the level of emotion that the Beatles had on "Abbey Road", I was very surprised how close Benson came to hitting the mark, I was surprised how much Benson "got it" when it came to covering "Abbey Road".

George Benson is basically a jazz guitarist and vocalist. In the 1970s Benson suddenly found success as a pop star with such hits as "On Broadway", "Give Me the Night", and "Turn Your Love Around". It was Benson's "This Masquerade" that gave him critical acclaim as he would take the coveted award at the 1977 Grammy Awards for Record of the Year. Many people forget that Benson's musical roots are in jazz. It is a jazz cover of "Abbey Road" that is done on "The Other Side of Abbey Road".

It is important to note that "The Other Side of Abbey Road" is not a full cover of the Beatles' "Abbey Road". There are only 10 songs that are included on "The Other Side of Abbey Road". The songs that are missing are "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", "Sun King", "Mean Mr. Mustard", "Polythene Pam", "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window", "Carry That Weight", and "Her Majesty". This was something that I found disappointing because I have an immediate curiosity about how Benson would have covered these songs.

Benson does not order the remaining songs in the order in which they appear on the original Beatles' "Abbey Road" album. Normally this would be something that disappoints me, however Benson structures the 10 songs included into 5 tracks. Four of the five tracks include combining two or more songs on one track. The five tracks are "Golden Slumbers/You Never Give Me Your Money", "Because/Come Together", "Oh! Darling" (the only 'single' track), "Here Comes The Sun/I Want You (She's So Heavy)", and "Something/Octopus' Garden/The End" (the one track with more than 2 songs). While I didn't feel I would like the way that Benson combined the songs - it works. Benson does a beautiful job at providing the fusion needed on each of these tracks. Benson could have easily found a way to fuse all ten tracks together into a single one - but I do think the way he combined the songs helps to break things up a bit.

Benson also doesn't sing all of the tracks. He uses instrumentals for some of the covers while providing partial vocals on others - and this also hits the mark beautifully. Benson also assembles a terrific orchestra to cover the songs. This includes Strings, Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion, and Piano! Included in this band is Herbie Hancock on piano.

Here is a brief summary of the five tracks:

"Golden Slumbers/You Never Give Me Your Money": Benson "wraps" at the beginning and end a vocalized "Golden Slumbers" around an instrumental "You Don't Give Me Your Money". "Golden Slumbers" has an orchestral feel to it while "You Don't Give Me Your Money" a smooth jazz feel to it (that also has some orchestral qualities to it).

"Because/Come Together": This is one of the album's highlights. "Because" starts out with the orchestral feel to it before the segue into "Come Together". Many say Aerosmith nailed the passion of this song with their cover. I would also subscribe that Benson nails it here with his jazzy cover. I love how Benson will improvise later in the song and make the use of the horns.

"Oh! Darling": Benson provides a supper-club style feel to this cover. This isn't my favorite Beatles song, but Benson does a nice job on this.

"Here Comes the Sun/I Want You (She's So Heavy)": Once again Benson starts out with an orchestral feel ("Here Comes the Sun") and then goes into a jazzy feel of "I Want You". While it doesn't have the same haunting feel of the Beatles original, Benson puts his own haunting spin on "I Want You" (as heard in the instrumentals).

"Something/Octopus's Garden/The End": Benson does an incredible job on this. He starts out with an orchestral feel on "Something" that is mostly instrumental with partial vocals. Benson really captures the passion of "Something". The segue isn't quite smooth into "Octopus's Garden" and "The End", but it works. The latter two songs are instrumental and provide a jazzy feel. These latter songs showcase the talents of the band that Benson assembles.

I wish the liner notes provided some insight into why Benson did what he did. Still, all in all this is a surprising good cover. Jazz and Beatles' fans should enjoy this.

George Benson was an extremely young superstar on jazz guitar, recording his first single with RCA Victor in New York at the tender age of 10 years old! From there, his name appears in a jazz Who's Who of some of the biggest names in the industry culminating with Miles Davis. He was also a protégé of Wes Montgomery who's influence is written all over Benson's work ever since, even easily recognizable on his 80's "pop" albums. George was one of the handful of A&M artists under the wing of Creed Taylor who Creed took over to his new label CTI Jazz and under this new label, George made some of his best recordings ever. A month after The Beatles released Abbey Road (September 1969), George went into the studio and in only two weeks (October 22nd to November 5th) he recorded an incredible and amazing "tribute" to the album, the fusion masterpiece THE OTHER SIDE OF ABBEY ROAD (released early 1970). This album was my personal introduction to George Benson, to modern jazz music in general, and to CTI with whom I would have a loving relationship for many years!

I was by no means a jazz neophyte, my father was a huge big band audiophile and he strayed often into the worlds of bop, especially Bird and Brubeck, so an elementary introduction to the new moguls of the fusion movements was accomplished quickly thanks to the help of CTI Records which I found myself partaking of part and parcel. Benson, Deodato, Kenny Burrell, Airto, these folks were making music like no other and a classic rocker with tunnel vision, I was not. THE OTHER SIDE OF ABBEY ROAD was spread primarily by word of mouth among Beatles fans and many of us were young enough and experimental enough to not only immediately fall in love with this recording but become deeply interested in jazz in general, and more specifically, the artists playing on the record, most all of whom were releasing their own albums on CTI. CTI jazz albums sported incredibly hip photography (all from photographer Pete Turner) with extremely vivid cover art and color. The albums were all gatefold covers made of heavy cardboard, very glossy and durable and probably expensive to produce. The result was nice thick high-quality vinyl records, engineered for pure sound rivaling the classical recording industry (read: Angel Records, Deutsche Grammophone, etc), and encased in solid sturdy enclosures built to last physically and esthetically. Creed Taylor was a producer for Herb Alpert & Jerry Moss' A&M Records when they asked him to start a subsidiary label for their jazz musicians (mainly Wes Montgomery, Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine, George Benson, and Antonio Carlos Jobim). So CTI Records was born in 1967, beginning with the artists just mentioned and an "in-house" staff of musicians including Herbie Hancock and Bob James on keys, Ron Carter and Stanley Clarke on bass, Billy Cobham on drums, Airto Moreira on percussion, Hubert Laws on flute, all of whom had their own albums on CTI with the support of the other musicians. With the help of Airto and Jobim, Creed Taylor would recruit a number of Brazilian jazz artists to the label as well, Deodato, Walter Wanderly, Milton Nascimento to name a few. In 1970 Creed Taylor would launch CTI as an independent label and took all of his star-power with him. Soon he attracted Kenny Burrell, Grover Washington Jr, Milt Jackson, Chet Baker, Nina Simone, and others. In 1971 he split his "soul jazz" artists on a sub-label called Kudu Records starting with Grover Washington Jr.

This then is the background from which THE OTHER SIDE OF ABBEY ROAD arose. Although sparse, Benson contributed some of his first vocals to this album. He would not sing again until the mega-hit crossover album BREEZIN'" in '76, and then only on one track, "This Masquerade". Luckily for those of us who enjoy his strong vocals and scatting, the follow-up '77 album IN FLIGHT would provide three more vocal tracks. On THE OTHER SIDE OF ABBEY ROAD, George Benson's vocals are delivered tenderly as an instrument more so than for lyrics, hence, the songs are not sung in entirety, but only as introductions, or for effect. He opens up the album with a solemn "Golden Slumbers", sings a nice bluesy majority of "Oh Darling", a smidge of "Here Comes The Sun" again as an introductory musical edge to the hot and heavy ("She's So...") rendition of "I Want You" with some bemoaning Lennonizations, and lastly a haunting old-timey Victrola piece of "Something" as a ghostly image of that other George. These vignettes of song provide for a full jazzy fusion of Beatles and contemporary improvisations. The effects are striking and one wonders at Benson's seemingly deliberate attempts at avoiding vocals altogether until near the end of the decade of the 70's. But that's not even close to the best part of this amazing album. George's free-style guitar solos flutter, soar, twirl, and boogie through every track, augmented by Herbie Hancock and Bob James piano and organ solos, Sonny Fortune and Jerome Richardson wailing saxophones, and blazing Freddie Hubbard trumpets. Flittering about the backdrop, Hubert Laws accents these with flute and Ron Carter lays down serious bass beats. THE OTHER SIDE OF ABBEY ROAD is not a re-telling of The Beatles album, only select songs from that original are toyed with here, and those are combined together with other songs to form entirely new compositions which nod to, without blatantly attempting to cover, the originals. Therefore, you get "Golden Slumbers" and "You Never Give Me Your Money" intertwined into one track of symphonic introduction with electric guitar based bop. "Because" is symphonically presented as parenthesis bookends to the electric fusion jam of "Come Together". "Oh Darling!" is the only Abbey Road track presented as a complete blues song, especially heavy on the blues! "Here Comes The Sun" is sung in partial verse, accompanied by grand piano and violins, tenderly, before "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" take the rough improvisational jazz jam road that builds to monumental crescendos, hot horn solos, and blues guitar reminiscences. "Something", "Octopus' Garden", and "The End" form the last unique montage which begins with strings, blends into guitar-tympanic soft-shoe-drums, and then outright full orchestral band-jazz, with a pregnant pause before the electric jam finale laid over a boss nova percussion line. This, in my opinion is one the most inspired and greatest jazz albums ever made. THE OTHER SIDE OF ABBEY ROAD was a purely inspired work that in its own right is inspirational to other artists and to Beatles fans, and to music lovers of all genre. Despite the praise heaped upon WHITE RABBIT, BAD BENSON, BREEZIN', IN FLIGHT, and WEEKEND IN L.A., this is the album I return to most, over and over. Perhaps I am biased by a love of the Beatles music, but objectively, I find the ingenuity of arrangements, the incredibly inspired (there's that word again) improvisational sections, the vocals used as instrumentation rather than as narrative, and the sealed tight unity of orchestra, band, producer, and band leader to be a rare achievement in music recordings. You can FEEL the good vibes emanating from this album as it plays. It never grows old, it never ceases to amaze, and it still gives goose bumps even after all these years. To quote Graham Nash: "Sheer Profundity".

The Best Benson collection:
(Jazz)
* The Other Side Of Abbey Road Other Side of Abbey Road
* White Rabbit White Rabbit (CTI Records 40th Anniversary Edition)
* Bad Benson Bad Benson
* Breezin' Breezin
* In Flight In Flight (Deluxe Edition)
* Weekend In L.A. Weekend in L.A.
* Collaboration (with Earl Klugh) Collaboration
(pop)
* Give Me The Night Give Me the Night
* In Your Eyes In Your Eyes
* 20/20 20/20

I listened to this as an album about twenty years ago during some times when I was in college and more concerned with getting wasted than passing my classes. Those were fun times, nonetheless, and this little gem is one that I got "turned on" to by a friend and fellow Beatles' fan in my "partying era." I ordered the CD recently after hearing the excellent "I Want You." George Benson is strong as both a musician and a singer throughout. Some of the songs, such as "Here Comes The Sun" are a little overdone for my tastes, but the entire CD flows together like a good album from the 60s/70s is supposed to.

I came to this record not as a George Benson fan but as a fan of Abbey Road. It's a wonderful recording, a rare tribute album that does something different with the songs so that you see them in new ways and appreciate them even more. The musicianship and arrangements are excellent, as are George Benson's vocals. I'm glad I found this 40 years after the fact.

I guess this is how to make a tribute just months after the original. It speaks volumes, that so soon after the release of Abbey Road, it so affected the culture, that it demanded this wonderful tribute album. IT truly is the other side of Abbey Road. Abbey Road seen through the eyes of some of the greatest Jazz musicians in history. A wonderuly delightful stop at the side of the Abbey Road. Oh, Darling please believe me this album will never do you no harm!

Jazz Guitarist George Benson, along with some of the best musicians the late sixties Jazz scene had to offer, addresses the Beatles' Abbey Road album with respect in 1969. There are some nice vocals here from Benson along with crack instrumental passages that truly get under your skin. Buy it !!

As I understand it this is not a tribute. The story that I heard was that George Benson, amongst others was appearing at a Jazz Festival (Montreaux?). Rudy van Gelder invited George to his home/studio whatever along with other musicians to record an impromptu set as was his want, and the only music that they had with sufficient copies to go around was Abbey Road. It is a great album and one that I had from when it first came out - I much prefer this earlier George - he was brilliant.

I listened to this album in the childhood and it was very pleasant to me to listen to compositions george. It is a remarkable album. Singing george is magnificent. Remarkable structure of musicians together create pleasant music. I always in moods to listen to this album also listen often.

1969 RELEASE ON THEN-EMERGING CTI RECORDS, THIS IS ONE OF THE FIRST GEORGE BENSON ALBUMS ON THAT LABEL (OF WHICH THERE WERE QUITE A FEW, I HAD EM' ALL A LONG TIME AGO). COVER VERSIONS OF THE SONGS FROM THE BEATLE'S ALBUM ABBEY ROAD, WHICH HAD BEEN RELEASED MERE MONTHS BEFORE. ANOTHER REVIEWER IS CORRECT IN SAYING THAT IT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER, BUT IT IS A NICE TRIBUTE ALBEIT A BIT TOO COMMERCIAL FOR A JAZZ ALBUM.