Abbey Road Parodies
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About
The Abbey Roads Parodies is a photo fad or redrawn art meme referencing the cover of the Beatles record Abbey Road, in which the four members of the band are walking across a Zebra-style crosswalk at the aforementioned location.
Origin
The original cover image of Abbey Road was shot by photographer Iain Macmillian on August 8, 1969 outside EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London, England, and was released as the cover of The Beatles' 11th studio album on September 26, 1969.[1] The album has been considered to be one of the greatest in their career, and one of the best in rock history, reaching #14 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[2]
Parodies of Abbey Road predate the Internet in popular culture. One of the earliest known parodies of the album was the release of McLenore Avenue by Booker T. & The M.G.'s in April 1970, featuring the members walking across the street outside Stax Studio in Memphis, Tennessee.[3] The album payed tribute to the Beatles, consisting of instrumental covers of Abbey Road.
Spread
Since Abbey Road's release, the album has been parodied in pop culture, fan art, and Abbey Road in London has been a tourist attraction for Beatles fan around the world to try to recreate the famous album cover.
On August 7, 2009, the music site Gigwise[4] compiled the best parodies of the album art to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Abbey Road. As well as music humor site AmiRight.[5] On Deviant Art,[6] more than 4,000 deviations can be found. There are several single-topic blogs devoted to cover art parodies of Abbey Road, including one on Pinterest with 174 different parodies.[7] Fan art parodies of the logo are also commonly found on Tumblr.[8]
In 2012, The Abbey Road studios, where the Beatles album was recorded, set up a web cam outside their studio to record tourists attempting to re-stage the famous photograph.[9] The web cam website keeps extensive archives and a Wall of Fame, so that people re-enacting the shot can find themselves later, or so that people watching can record particularly interesting attempts. The camera was written about in the press on several occasions, including by the Boing Boing in 2012.[12] A post on Reddit in 2015 on the subreddit /r/videos about the crossing camera received 545 points (84% upvoted). On November 11th, 2014, the UK tabloid the Daily Mirror reported that the web cam had caught footage of a woman being hit by a car in the crossing.[10]
Notable Examples
Search Interest
External Reference
[2] Rolling Stone- Abbey Road at Number 14
[3] Michael Doherty's Music Log- McLenore Avenue
[4] Gigwise- Abbey Road's 40th anniversary
[5] AmiRight- Abbey Road Parodies
[6] DeviantArt- Search Results for 'Abbey Road'
[7] Pinterest – Art Parodies- Abbey Road
[8] Tumblr – Abbey Road Cover Parody
[9] Abbey Road Crossing Web Cam
[10] UK Mirror – Watch shocking moment woman hit by car – on iconic Abbey Road crossing
[11] Boing Boing – Webcam at Abbey Road Crossing
[12] /r/videos – Abbey road live photo cam. Literally anyday you can watch tourists making fools of themselves and obstructing traffic!
Top Comments
ChampionMan357
Sep 04, 2015 at 12:24PM EDT in reply to
Flare Dancer
Sep 04, 2015 at 12:04PM EDT