Thanks to the never-ending gift of Paul McCartney on stage, we have a few examples of what Abbey Road may sound like in acoustic form. Or at least, thereabouts. The Beatles’ classic album is rightly regarded as one of the all-time great releases, but what would it sound like if all the beautiful instrumentation were stripped away? What if the whole album were the four musicians armed only with acoustic guitars? It isn’t quite as strong as the originals, inevitably, but then the tenderness and reflection which comes from McCartney kicking along to Something with a ukulele on an ascending platform is what people want. What acoustic renditions do is, for many, offer a closer look at the moving parts. What inspired the song before all the instrumental thrills hid it away, that’s what people want. The Acoustic Abbey Road is a neat project which aims to share exactly that. Stripped-back renditions of some all-time great songs.
Reserve that excitement, though. What The Acoustic Abbey Road is, more than anything, is just reducing the instrumentals and isolating the vocals. Obviously, the acoustic sound and percussion from Ringo Starr remains but it’s not alternative recordings. Those hoping for that will be better served by the Anthology series and the alternate versions heard there. The Acoustic Abbey Road is more a collection of sparse, stripped-back originals. Come Together highlights the low point of such a project. “Acoustic” does not mean “sparse”, but for this bootleg, it seems there are some crossed wires. Inevitably this sounds better for the likes of Something, though that may be a matter of slower tempo songs benefitting from this stripped-back style. Instrumentally non-existent is the point of this but even then, you cannot remove the instrumentals entirely. What it means is some lazy quietening of keyboards and string sections. You can still hear them clear enough with the right headphones.
Maxwell’s Silver Hammer has some moments of silence because the bass is removed. It works when the McCartney vocals come through, a piece which feels like a successful example of how stripped-back songs can feature a newfound intimacy. It’s a nice and light project, a “what if” scenario which never has the bones to properly orchestrate its point. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer is hardly an acoustic song but it’s the broader term, rather than the literal meaning, which is at play here. It’s the same for Oh, Darling and the medley B-side. The Acoustic Abbey Road is throwing out whatever it considers electric instrumentation, like a rabid fan at a Bob Dylan gig circa 1965. Here Comes the Sun should be the song to make this transition best of all, given the acoustic guitar is its very core, but it lacks the magic that makes the song so special.
The Acoustic Abbey Road project is phenomenal on paper and underwhelming in practice. It never quite gets to grips with what acoustic means, and it accidentally falls into the category of demo-like listening. What the songs sound like with this layer removed or that instrumental brought up is something George Martin and even McCartney would consider in a near-endless list of documentaries over the years, but it’s never more than a brief note. These are of interest to those who merely wanted an example of what an acoustic version could sound like. Anything else than that will fall well short of expectation. Interesting moments which are ultimately underwhelming, but as far as bootleg projects go, it does scratch the itch of a big question posed by Beatles fans.
