Google Street View Abbey
Road Studios
Location: Abbey Road Studios, City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom
Coordinates: 51°31′54.93″N 0°10′42.07″W
Phone: +44 20 7266 7000
Website: http://www.abbeyroad.com
Abbey Road Studios:
Abbey Road Studios is a recording studio located at 3 Abbey Road, St John's Wood, City of
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| Abbey Road Studios |
Westminster, London, England. It was established in November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music company EMI, its present owner. Abbey Road Studios is most notable as being the venue in the 1960s for innovative recording techniques adopted by the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Hollies, Badfinger and others.
Towards the end of 2009, the studio came under threat of sale to property developers. However, the British Government protected the site, granting it English Heritage Grade II listed status in 2010, thereby preventing the building from any major alterations.
History of Abbey Road Studios:
Originally a nine-bedroom Georgian townhouse built in the 1830s on the footpath leading to Kilburn Abbey, the building was later converted to apartments where the most flamboyant resident was Maundy Gregory. The premises were acquired by the Gramophone Company in 1931 and converted into studios. Pathé filmed the opening of the studios, when Sir Edward Elgar conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in recording sessions of his music.[3][4] The neighbouring house is also owned by the studio and used to house musicians. During the mid-20th century the studio was extensively used by leading British conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent, whose house was just around the corner from the studio building.
It was not until 1970 that the name Abbey Road Studios became official. The Gramophone Company amalgamated with Columbia Graphophone Company to form EMI, which took over the studios and dubbed them EMI Studios. It was under this name that in 1936 cellist Pablo Casals became the first to record Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites No. 1 & 2 at the behest of EMI head Fred Gaisberg. The recordings went on to spur a revolution amongst Bach aficionados and cellists alike.
Studio Two at Abbey Road became a centre of rock music in 1958 when Cliff Richard and the Drifters (later Cliff Richard and The Shadows) recorded "Move It" there.
Abbey Road Studios is most closely associated with the Beatles, who recorded almost all of their albums and singles there between 1962 and 1970. The Beatles named their 1969 album, Abbey Road, after the street where the studio is located (the recording studio was named Abbey Road after the Beatles record in 1970). The cover photograph for that album was taken by Iain Macmillan outside the studios, with the result that the zebra crossing outside the studio has become a place of pilgrimage for Beatles fans from all over the world. It has been a long-standing tradition for visitors to pay homage to the band by writing on the wall in front of the building, although it is painted over every three months. In December 2010 the zebra crossing at Abbey Road was given a Grade II listed status.
Pink Floyd recorded most of their late 1960s to mid-1970s albums here, returning only in 1988 for mixing and overdubbing subsequent albums.
The Shadows named their Live At Abbey Road album after the studio, with the cover spoofing The Beatles' album.
Notable producers and sound engineers who have worked at Abbey Road include Sir George Martin, Geoff Emerick, Norman "Hurricane" Smith, Ken Scott, Mike Stone, Alan Parsons, Peter Vince, Malcolm Addey, Peter Brown, Richard Langham, Phil McDonald, John Kurlander, Richard Lush and Ken Townsend, who invented the ground-breaking studio effect known as automatic double tracking (ADT). The chief mastering engineer at Abbey Road was Chris "Vinyl" Blair, who started his career early on as a tape deck operator.........Wikipedia >>
