Abbey Road Studios

Abbey Road is without doubt the best known recording studio in the world. Most famously it is where most of The Beatles albums were recorded. Abbey Road is also, of course the title of the eleventh Beatles album which included the famous scene of the Fab Four crossing the road on the black and white zebra crossing outside of the studios.

The street sign shown here has had to be placed out of reach of souvenier hunters!

History

Abbey Road Studios are based at 3 Abbey Road, St. John's Wood,London,UK. NW8 9AY in what was built as a townhouse in 1831.

The building was used as a domestic residence for many years but was set up as a recording studio in 1931 by a company called The Gramaphone Company which was the parent company of HMV and which later became EMI. EMI still own and operate the studios.

Initially the studios focussed on the recording of classical work but they became more famous for recording pop and rock music from the late 1950's onwards. Many film scores, such as for the Star Wars movies have also been recorded at Abbey Road.

The work of producer George Martin on albums such as Seargent Peppers LOnely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles helped develop groundbreaking recording techniques and subsequent engineers at Abbey Road have continued this tradition.

In 1979 Abbey Road made its first digital recordings.