When Abbey Road was released in September 1969, the Beatles were already coming apart.
Yet amid the tensions, the band delivered a record that sounded polished, coherent… and startlingly forward-looking.
Nowhere was that clearer than on the album’s second side, where John, Paul, George and Ringo stitched together fragments of unfinished songs into a sprawling medley that felt less like a series of tracks than a single, flowing work. It was innovative, meticulously crafted, and oddly prophetic. In its gleaming production, bold sequencing, and genre-fluid playfulness, Side Two of Abbey Road foreshadowed much of what defined 1970s pop and rock.
The idea of a suite wasn’t entirely new to pop music. Back in 1966 and 1967, the Beach Boys’ Smile sessions had gestured toward modular songwriting, and The Who were in the middle of rethinking the album as opera with Tommy.
But Abbey Road brought those tendencies into the mainstream with a warmth and accessibility that millions could grasp. And its influence radiated through the following decade, most obviously in the studio-crafted pop of 10cc, Sparks and Electric Light Orchestra, but also in the rise of progressive rock and the increasing willingness of bands to treat an LP side as a canvas for a larger statement.
Abbey Road's three key inheritors
1. Electric Light Orchestra
Perhaps no band ran more directly with Abbey Road’s aesthetic than Birmingham’s progressive pop collective, Electric Light Orchestra. Leader Jeff Lynne was unabashed about wanting to continue where Abbey Road left off, and Side Two’s layering of rock instrumentation with quasi-symphonic gestures was a clear model. The way ‘Golden Slumbers’ swells into orchestral grandeur before crashing into ‘Carry That Weight’ is the kind of drama that ELO would build entire careers on.
Lynne and Roy Wood founded ELO in 1970 specifically to fuse rock with classical textures – cellos, violins, and choirs – but they never lost the pop heart that made the Beatles’ medley resonate. Songs like ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ or ‘Evil Woman’ mirror the Abbey Road ethos: they’re adventurous yet tuneful, studio-slick but unafraid of excess. Where other bands rushed headlong into prog rock’s self-seriousness, ELO inherited the Beatles’ knack for balancing sophistication with unabashed pop appeal. In that sense, Side Two is less a precursor to progressive rock and more a godparent to orchestral pop as a whole.
2. 10cc
If ELO picked up and ran with the sheer sweep of Abbey Road, 10cc absorbed the medley’s wit, intricacy, and love of juxtaposition. Side Two of the Beatles masterpiece, after all, is full of abrupt shifts. There’s the jump from the meditative, hazy dream of ‘Sun King’ into ‘Mean Mr Mustard’, a gritty, music-hall stomp about a man who hides money in his nose. Or listen to how ‘Polythene Pam’, a frantic, acoustic-driven rocker that builds to a screaming guitar solo, morphs into the sophisticated, bluesy strut of ‘She Came In Through the Bathroom Window’.
For their part, 10cc turned this strategy into an art form. Songs like ‘Une Nuit à Paris’ (from their 1975 album The Original Soundtrack) or ‘Rubber Bullets’, from their eponymous 1973 debut, revel in sudden pivots, switching styles and tones mid-track with a wink. Much as the Beatles layered in-jokes, voices, and harmonies, 10cc treated the studio like an instrument, splicing together fragments with seamless precision.
Their vocal interplay also echoes Abbey Road. Listen to the way John Lennon’s ‘Because’ stacks harmonies into a cathedral-like soundscape, then hear 10cc’s ‘I’m Not in Love’ with its choir of multi-tracked voices. The lineage is unmistakable.
What 10cc added was a sharper edge of satire. Where the Beatles’ medley balanced irony with warmth, 10cc leaned harder into parody and cleverness. But without the Beatles’ model of using studio craft to elevate humour into high art, 10cc’s whole approach might never have gained lift-off.
3. Sparks
California’s art-pop eccentrics Sparks, meanwhile, took the operatic and eccentric side of Abbey Road and ran with it to extremes. Ron and Russell Mael thrived on theatrical shifts, oddball juxtapositions, and high drama, qualities that leap straight out of Side Two’s playbook.
‘Golden Slumbers’ dissolving into ‘Carry That Weight’ is dramatic enough, but the Maels built their careers from pushing such juxtapositions into absurdity. Tracks like their 1974 single ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us’ (1974) or the 24-second ‘Propaganda’ thrive on the same logic: sudden swerves in tone, hyper-theatrical vocals, and arrangements that feel both tongue-in-cheek and dead serious.
The Beatles proved that pop didn’t have to stay in its lane. A suite could jump from lullaby to rock anthem to baroque pastiche – and still work. Sparks made that principle their entire aesthetic. If Abbey Road’s medley hinted that rock could be a kind of musical theatre, Sparks were its most committed disciples.
Beyond: Queen, Supertramp and more
The echoes of Abbey Road’s Side Two don’t stop with ELO, 10cc, or Sparks. Elsewhere, Queen’s multi-part epics, particularly ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, owe a debt to the medley’s fusion of operatic ambition with pop accessibility. Supertramp’s big 1970s albums Crime of the Century and Breakfast in America likewise embrace Side Two’s template of stitching together varied moods into seamless wholes. Even Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk – sprawling, experimental, stitched from fragments – has roots in the Beatles’ willingness to make fragmentation feel cohesive.
Perhaps most tellingly, the 1970s saw the rise of the album as a narrative or conceptual whole. Whether in prog suites or pop masterpieces, the notion of building a side of music as a journey owes much to the Beatles’ final flourish together.
Side-long epics and prog rock
But what of progressive rock, with its penchant for side-long tracks like Yes’s celestial Close to the Edge or Jethro Tull’s gritty, sardonic Thick as a Brick? Did those directly descend from Abbey Road’s medley? The answer is complicated.
Prog bands were already gravitating toward extended forms, influenced by jazz improvisation, classical music, and psychedelic experimentation. The Moody Blues had experimented with orchestral rock on 1967’s Days of Future Passed, and the Nice and King Crimson were pushing boundaries before Abbey Road.
Still, Side Two gave the idea mass-market validation. By weaving fragments into a coherent suite, the Beatles proved that listeners would embrace a continuous, album-side experience. Unlike the meandering jams of psychedelia, the Abbey Road medley was tightly constructed and accessible, showing prog bands a way to stretch without losing the audience. Yes and Genesis might have leaned more on virtuosity, but the Beatles gave them a proof of concept: a side of music could be a complete statement.
They closed one era... and invented the next
Ironically, the Beatles’ medley was born from fragmentation. Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison each had half-finished scraps they weren’t sure how to use. Producer George Martin suggested stitching them together, and in doing so, the Beatles created something bigger than any of the fragments could be on their own. That act of collage, elevated through meticulous production, became one of the most influential gestures in modern pop.
The sound of 1970s pop – lush harmonies, theatrical juxtapositions, orchestral flourishes, ironic asides – is everywhere in Abbey Road’s Side Two. ELO inherited its symphonic sweep, 10cc its studio wit, Sparks its theatrical juxtapositions, prog its suite-like ambition, and Queen its operatic grandeur.
Abbey Road was the Beatles’ swan song as a band, but Side Two made it something more: a launching pad. In those 16 minutes of seamless transition from ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ to ‘The End’, the Beatles closed one era and inadvertently sketched the blueprint for the next.
Six classic tracks born from Abbey Road
1. Supertramp – ‘School’ (1974)
Begins as a delicate vignette before swelling into full-band grandeur – very much in the ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ tradition of fragment blooming into anthem.
2. ELO – ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ (1977)
The orchestral sweep and sheer sonic polish feel like the ‘Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight’ crescendo made into an entire song. It’s joyous, layered, and unapologetically symphonic.
3. 10cc – ‘Une Nuit à Paris’ (1975)
A multi-part, witty mini-opera that mirrors the Abbey Road medley’s structural playfulness and shifts in mood, while pushing satire to the forefront.
4. Queen – ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (1975)
Perhaps the ultimate descendant: multiple movements, sudden stylistic changes, and operatic ambition, but still accessible enough to become a worldwide hit.
5. Sparks – ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us’ (1974)
Theatrical, jarring, and melodramatic: Sparks distilled the eccentric juxtapositions of Side Two into pure operatic pop oddness.
6. Yes – ‘Close to the Edge’ (1972)
A full side-long piece, expanding on the Beatles’ medley logic: fragments seamlessly merged into a larger arc, but gilded with prog rock’s customary virtuosity.
Pics Getty Images
