Remembering Booker T. & the M.G.s’ instrumental cover of The Beatles ‘Abbey Road’
Released in 1970, McLemore Avenue is an instrumental soul reimagining of The Beatles Abbey Road album, which was released a few months earlier in September 1969. Comprised almost entirely of covers, the album also boasts a portrait of Booker T. & the M.G.s recreating The Beatles’ iconic artwork for Abbey Road.
The photo for McLemore Avenue was taken at 926 East McLemore Avenue, the address of Stax Studios in Memphis, where Booker T. had been a regular session musician. In mid-’62, the multi-instrumentalist was joined by Donald Dunn, Steve Cropper, Lewie Steinberg, and Al Jackson Jr. to form Booker T. & the M.G.s, who served as the studio’s house band for Stax, playing on practically every record it put out between 1962 and 1970.
Booker T. Jones first heard Abbey Road in California. Speaking to A.V Club in 2009, he recalled: “I thought it was incredibly courageous of The Beatles to drop their format and move out musically like they did. To push the limit like that and reinvent themselves when they had no need to do that. They were the top band in the world, but they still reinvented themselves. The music was just incredible, so I felt I needed to pay tribute to it.”
Abbey Road came together as The Beatles were falling apart. Despite the tensions within the group following the Let It Be sessions, the record features some of The Beatles’ finest work. Many have wondered whether Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr’s knowledge that things were coming to an end influenced their approach to the album.
According to George Martin, “Nobody knew for sure that it was going to be the last album – but everybody felt it was. The Beatles had gone through so much and for such a long time. They’d been incarcerated with each other for nearly a decade, and I was surprised that they had lasted as long as they did.”
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