«It’s me in the studio, in a photo taken by my mother, who was a photographer and was in a band with my father», she says Mary McCartney, the director of the documentary. Obviously her mother was Linda, her father Paul, the band Wings and the Abbey Road studio.
So it begins If these walls could singthe film tour dedicated to British historical studies, just released Disney+.
nine glorious decades
Mary, in addition to being the eldest daughter of the former Beatle, is a photographer, and in her debut as a documentary maker accepted the offer to tell the story of the more than 90-year opening of Abbey Road Studios. Strictly speaking, “EMI studios”, because although they were already known by the name of the street where they are located, they were not officially christened Abbey Road until after the Beatles album.
But how to capture nine glorious decades in less than an hour and a half? A rough answer might be: with some milestones, amazing footage, and calling some dad’s (and dad’s) friends.
That’s where they appear Paul, Ringo Starr, Elton John, Cliff Richard, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Nile Rodgers, Jimmy Page, John Williams, Noel and Liam Gallagher, Kate Bush and George Lucasamong others.
With those names, any documentary becomes attractive. to listen Elton John talk about the fear he felt when he first entered the studio, or the former Pink Floyd recalls the sessions with Syd Barrett and the recording -now without him- of The dark side of the moonIt never ceases to be interesting.
an invaluable file
To understand why Abbey Road has been so important to music for almost a hundred years, one would have to talk about more technical and -fortunately for the most part- If these walls could sing It is not so. Otherwise it would become a niche production (in any case, a documentary dedicated only to that aspect is awaited).
Despite this, the chronology of history allows us to understand the importance of its construction, the size of its rooms, the acoustics and the equipment it had -and still has-. This is where the file becomes valuable.
There are from images of the orchestra recorded in Studio One in 1931 (with amazing quality) to sessions of john williams for soundtracks Star Wars. Film music was precisely what saved Abbey Road from a terminal crisis in 1980.
Both Paul and Ringo point to the fact that orchestras were recorded in other rooms, as this allowed them – through George Martin’s enormous creativity and experience – to experiment with those sounds. Which is to say, just as Abbey Road wouldn’t be what it is without the Beatles, the Beatles wouldn’t have reached their prime without Abbey Road.
Not having George Martin (he died in 2016), it is his son Giles, also a producer, who takes care of talking about his father’s work and playing Beatles tapes on the original machines (the inexhaustible archive of these gentlemen never ceases to excite) .
The successes and the weaknesses
Throughout Mary’s work you can also see old spreadsheets with each recording plan, sessions by the Nigerian Fela Kuti (live and with the public!), those by Oasis and -another exciting moment- the cellist Jacqueline du Pré , accompanied by who was her husband, nothing less than a very young man Daniele Barenboim.
Among the successes of the documentary is the use of cinematographic recordings, where Mary, for example, exploits the file recorded on two cameras and shows it simultaneously, taking advantage of the aspect ratio of current screens.
The weakest points are – paradoxically – the original music, which sounds like that of any other documentary, and the way of narrating it: what begins as a personal story, is lost with the passing of the minutes to become another of the genre. But none of that is serious, in the case of a journey through the lives of music history’s most important studios.
It is not for nothing that John Williams points out that Abbey Road is “a sort of mother of the music that was performed there”. reason enough to see If these walls could sing.
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Source: Clarin
