Abbey Road: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Famous Recording Studio (with a foreword by Paul McCartney)

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And – as David Hepworth himself snuffles – a vignette featuring the cold virus: John Lennon’s rendition of Twist And Shout on Please Please Me – which sounds (as David wonderfully describes it) ‘like it was the last he would ever sing’ – achieved thanks to Lennon having flu.

It's very recognisable, but doesn't lend itself so well to fact-based subjects, and as a result this doesn't come across as a definitive history of the famous studios. Does get a little technical at times, but the story of the music and artistes takes the reader on quite a journey. I don’t know if I put this in the book, but Pink Floyd were at Abbey Road when Yehudi Menuhin [violinist] was recording. Early attempts at this new-found technique provoked bafflement, sometimes downright hostility, from performers, too.Hepworth uses sound recording and one legendary studio as a palette to capture this arc of systemic change, how it impacts everyone along the chain in different ways, and explored all of its attendant pluses and minuses, depending on your perspective. David Hepworth will be speaking about the history of Abbey Road recording studio as part of Chipping Campden Literature Festival on May 26 at Cidermill Theatre: campdenmayfestivals. Formerly a means for reproducing an artist's repertoire, the recording studio was eclipsed by larger, more lasting notions of art and the production and reproduction of sounds originally borne by the creative imagination. Indeed, a comparable metamorphosis over the past seven to eight decades can be found in almost every other industry.

Those who passed through our doors include the unstoppable ‘Barbie’ up for Best Picture and Best Original Song with ‘I’m Just Ken’, the inspiring ‘Society Of The Snow’ up for Best International Feature Film and the mind-blowing ‘Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse’ up for Best Animated . This is the first time this has happened to one of my books and I won't pretend it doesn't give me some quite irrational pleasure. Abbey Road: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Famous Recording Studio by David Hepworth | 9781529177251. I then went on to oversee the launch of magazines like Just Seventeen, Q, Empire, Mojo, More and Heat in the 80s and 90s. A lovely brief history of the studio and technicians of Abbey Road Studios, made eternally famous by the Beatles.

On July 1st I'll be talking to James Holland about Abbey Road, the Beatles and more at the Chalke Valley History Festival. Every so often, once a month, I believe, the wall outside of the Studios is white washed, and within a few weeks it is covered in names again. But in his book, Abbey Road: the Inside Story of the World’s Most Famous Recording Studio, details such as this turn into the most fabulous of anecdotes. It’s the kind of record that, if it were made today, they’d say, ‘Oh you can get that sound from a synthesiser or whatever’. It may have begun life as an affluent suburban house, but it soon became a creative hub renowned around the world as a place where great music, ground-breaking sounds and unforgettable tunes were forged - nothing less than a witness to, and a key participant in, the history of popular music itself.