‘Solid State’ by Kenneth Womack

My Review (5 stars out of 5)

In February 1969, the Beatles began working on their final album – Abbey Road. The album included ‘Come Together’ ‘Something’, and ‘Here Comes the Sun’, some of the band’s most memorable songs.

Subtitled The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles, this is another of Kenneth Womack’s Beatle-inspired books – he has previously written about their producer George Martin, and their long-time roadie, Mal Evans. Quite a bit of the book revolves around the Solid-State EMI TG12345 Mk1 console which had recently been installed at Abbey Road studios, and which allowed the band a greater degree of experimentation than before. The book reveals the stories behind the songs, including who played what, who was off their head on drugs, and all the technical details, such as the band’s experiments with the then recently invented Moog synthesiser.

The audiobook is narrated by William Hughes, an American, who has the annoying habit of pronouncing the band’s name as, Beedles, which is irritating. That aside, this is a fascinating book that is a must for all fans of the Fab Four.

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