The car crash that completely altered the legacy of The Beatles
Very little about The Beatles was normal, either by the standards of the music industry or 1960s society as a whole. The history of the band is chock full of unlikely encounters, coincidences, and strange characters who forever changed the story and legacy of the group. So, although much of their recorded material was tirelessly rehearsed, honed, and perfected within a studio, many aspects of the band and its history is down purely to chance or, in some cases, near-tragedies.
By now, it is no secret that The Beatles were in a fairly fragile state by the time they came to record Abbey Road in 1969. The final album the band would record together, Abbey Road, captured The Beatles at their breaking point as the end of the 1960s drew ever closer and each member of the Fab Four was moving in different directions. Ultimately, the tumultuous sessions at the heart of Abbey Road culminated in the album being among The Beatles’ finest efforts, though it might have gone a very different way if John Lennon had his say.
The Beatles were due to commence the recording of Abbey Road on July 1st, 1969. At the time, John Lennon had been travelling around Scotland with Yoko Ono, but he planned to return to London for these early recording sessions with the rest of his band, even if his relationship with them was deteriorating rapidly. However, a terrible accident meant that Lennon couldn’t make it back to London so soon.
“Baby, you can drive my car,” harmonised McCartney and Lennon on the band’s 1965 single, but, in Lennon’s case, it was more of an instruction than a chat-up line. The songwriter was a famously terrible motorist, having very little driving experience after passing his test in 1965. So, when he was taking his Austin Maxi – a much more inconspicuous car than his iconic Rolls Royce Phantom – around the highlands of Scotland, Lennon was involved in an accident.
The story goes that Lennon became panicked by an oncoming car while on a narrow country lane and sent the Austin flying into a ditch. Although neither he, Yoko Ono, her daughter Kyoko, nor Julian Lennon were seriously injured, they were all rushed to a nearby hospital. Lennon required 17 facial stitches following the incident, and a pregnant Yoko Ono needed 14 in her forehead.
Inevitably, this meant that Lennon’s journey back down to London was delayed while he recovered from the crash. Ever sympathetic to their bandmate, the rest of The Beatles chose to commence the recording of Abbey Road without Lennon, leaving McCartney to take on a leadership role without interference. While Lennon was already due to be absent from many of the album’s sessions, it is likely that he would have pushed back on some of McCartney’s ideas for the record.
For instance, the cult favourite ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ was a labour of love for McCartney, but the rest of the band made it quite clear that they detested the song. Not only was its content strange, but McCartney also made the group record and re-record the track an exhaustive number of times to get it right. Perhaps if Lennon had been at the studio rather than a hospital in the highlands, he might have led the charge against the song being included at all.
Ultimately, it is difficult to say just how different Abbey Road would have been if Lennon had been able to attend those early sessions. As an album, it certainly weighs more towards McCartney’s ideas and songwriting than Lennon’s, culminating in a more grand – if less experimental – farewell for the group. Either way, by the time the album was released in September, Lennon had already left the band, with the recording process for that album marking the final straw for the songwriter.
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