Live from Abbey(dale) Road in Sheffield, it’s The Beatles

The view from his studio window was missing a zebra crossing, but as Dominic Ridler laid down the drum track on a Beatles classic, the other parallels were here, there and everywhere.
The Sheffield Beatles ProjectThe Sheffield Beatles Project
The Sheffield Beatles Project

Just a stone’s throw from the propitiously-named Abbeydale Road in south Sheffield, the final mix of All You Need Is Love was being locked down.

Like the 1967 original, it was designed to bring people together, even when circumstances had separated them. And like the first performance, its audience was almost unlimited.

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The latest work by the Sheffield Beatles Project, a 25-piece band of instrumentalists and vocalists who come together in concert every year to perform songs from Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the White Album, as well as Abbey Road, was conceived to prove the adage that mucic knows no boundaries.

Sheffield drummer Dominic Ridler on Abbeydale Road.  Picture: Tony JohnsonSheffield drummer Dominic Ridler on Abbeydale Road.  Picture: Tony Johnson
Sheffield drummer Dominic Ridler on Abbeydale Road. Picture: Tony Johnson

From their locked-down confinement across the city, the members filmed and recorded their parts separately. The finished mix was released yesterday on Facebook, which has a global audience of 2.8bn.

“There is a really poetic link to the original Beatles performance,” said Mr Ridler, who teaches geography at Sheffield University when not working as a session musician.

Beamed direct from the EMI studio on the real Abbey Road, it had formed part of Our World, the first TV broadcast to be relayed live by satellite across the universe, at a time of cultural and actual revolution. The two-and-a-half hour event attracted an audience of more than 400m in 25 countries, but is remembered largely for The Beatles’ contribution alone. The rest was mostly either scientific or travelogue-based.

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“The whole idea in 1967 was to bring everybody together, and that’s what we’re trying to do now as well – even when they can’t be together physically,” said Mr Ridler, who timed his drum track to Ringo Starr’s original.

“It’s become almost folklore to malign Ringo,” he said. “But if you really listen to what he’s doing, he makes every Beatles song sound terrific. There are few drummers today with that much creativity.”

The Sheffield band, comprising mostly music graduates from the city university, has its next live performance – of tracks from The Beatles’ compilation “blue album” – scheduled for December 12, but Ben Eckersley, its musical director, said that wasn’t soon enough.

“After the initial craziness of lockdown had settled, the realisation that it might be weeks, even months before I got to make music with other people again was a really frightening thought,” he said.

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“Coordinating 25 musicians was no small challenge but it’s been great to have had a proper project to get our teeth into.”

Like the Beatles themselves, his band had evolved from a live outfit into a studio ensemble.

“We have always focussed on being a live band and orchestra, so this is the first time we’ve ever recorded. I don’t think any of us ever imagined this is quite how we would do it,” he said.

Keyboardist Nick Cox, who mixed down the individual vocal tracks and instruments, including string, wind and brass orchestral sections, said the original 1967 TV performance was “a true landmark” in bringing the world together.

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“Although at the moment we’re having to keep physically distant, we’re so lucky to be able to stay socially close with the use of technology,” he said.

“It enables us to share the joy of music. What better song to play than All You Need is Love, with its message of hope and its historical link with technology bringing people together.”

The band was formed four years ago to perform the Beatles’ Revolver album, on its 50th anniversary, at the Tramlines music festival in Sheffield. It has since headlined at the O2 Academy in the city.

The new video can be viewed at www.facebook.com/thesheffieldbeatlesproject.

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