- Culture
- 18 Jul 19
The Beatles: HORNSEY ROAD with Mak Lewisohn will come to the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on the 5th of October to provide a unique insight into their unparalleled success as a band, the recording of one of their greatest album and the struggles which came with their tumultuous personal lives.
It's nearly been half a century since the Beatles fell apart despite the cohesiveness of their immense creative genius. September 2019 will mark the golden anniversary of their multi-platinum album Abbey Road – the last work that they have ever recorded. Released in September 1969, it symbolises the end of an era and the beginning of another: the Seventies - minus one of the world's greatest band of all time.
But this was not completely the end: the Beatles and their creators have been so influential that they have indeniably changed the course of culture. Along the years, their fame has sustained and today their legacy is still very much alive. Younger generations seem to be as fascinated by them as were their elders, showing that the interest for them is not going to die anytime soon - if ever.
Mark Lewisohn has amassed so much knowledge about the iconic band, by accessing public and private collections for over forty years, that he is now considered to be the world’s leading Beatles historian. His highly-acclaimed book Tune In is the first part of the trilogy The Beatles: All These Years, which is set to be the band's definitive biography. He is also the author of best-sellers Recording Sessions and The Complete Beatles Chronicle.
Driven by this success, Lewisohn will soon embark on a Irish and UK tour with his newly-created Abbey Road show HORNSEY ROAD. It is a two-hour live theatre presentation, which will take the audience on a journey full of surpises, humour and excitement while providing an illustrated history of the legendary band and their biggest album.
Advertisement
"On stage he will be talking audiences through a stunning array of strong and relevant content, with rare music, photos, films and collectable artefacts," says the press release.
Not only is Abbey Road an iconic album, its recording has a lot of stories to tell. It came at a time when John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr somehow held together as a band, for the sake of their musical career, but truly were falling apart due to personal and business issues.
Lewisohn commented: “HORNSEY ROAD is all about Abbey Road, the people who made it and the time in which they did it. This artistic triumph was created at a hectic junction in the Beatles’ lives, and I’m going to be revealing the rich history, refreshing the remarkable stories behind its making, and bringing it all back by sight, sound and smell. I’ll be delivering an original and surprising look at this collection of great songs, superbly recorded by the Beatles and their producer George Martin fifty summers ago and packaged in that highly-imitated cover art of the four of them on the zebra crossing in north London. I’ll be explaining the album’s making in the context of the 1969 contemporary music scene, and depicting the four Beatles as friends, bandmates and artistic individuals at the peak of their creative powers, crowning the many precedent-setting events of their previous six years together with this glorious parting shot.”