The Beatles' Abbey Road

On November 7, Wadham College Music Society performed The Beatles' Abbey Road in its entirety, in what has become a tradition of full-album playthroughs in the Holywell Music Room. Prior to this latest entry, the Music Society covered Radiohead's OK Computer in Feb 2023, and Amy Winehouse's Frank in June 2024.

If you would like to support the Music Society and their contribution to Wadham's community, you can give to the You can give to the Katie Pardee fund, named in honour of our former Director of Music, here.

Caitlin Russell, one of the Music Society members behind the latest production, shared her thoughts on the experience of bringing Abbey Road to life at Wadham.

We came up with the idea of doing Abbey Road while rehearsing for last term’s equally successful album play-through of Amy Winehouse’s ‘Frank’. Addy Price, our music tech extraordinaire, suggested we do Abbey Road as it had a nice broad instrumentation (which meant strings and lots of percussion) and was so widely known that it would be easy to market. So many people loved the album and were keen to get involved from the beginning. 

Albums are so carefully constructed and yet are so rarely played in their entirety, and in the order they were originally released. Performing music in this way is such a unique experience for both the audience and the musicians involved because it gives you a chance to really see and reflect on this particular arrangement of songs.

Abbey Road is a particularly good example of this because of its famous sets of ‘medley’ songs - a series of four or so songs that flow directly into one another. The album is constantly developing on, and referring back to, earlier songs which is so cool to watch play out live. Repetitions of musical lines or lyrics that we initially missed were only noticed towards the end of the rehearsal process once we’d really become familiar with the album!

It’s pretty nerve-wracking performing something you’ve only been rehearsing for a couple of weeks to an audience of 200 or so Beatles fans. We waited backstage as the room filled up and we decided it definitely did nothing to help the nerves not being able to see them come in. While we’d spent the previous day and the day of the concert rehearsing in the Holywell, it felt completely different once it was full of people. Despite our best preparations, things could go wrong (and of course they did!) But the response was incredible, we had audience members both young and old come up to congratulate us afterward for what they thought was a faithful interpretation of the album.

Many congratulations to the Music Society for such a successful performance of a revered album! To hear more about their events, follow them on the channels below.