To get back to the origins of this thread: AndersonCouncil was not saying Abbey Road is a hard rock album. His point is that certain themes from the album (which might not be hardrockish at all) are later used by hardrock bands. So the thing is not to proof that AR isn't a hard rock album (that's quite obvious), but to proof whether themes and guitarriffs are or are not used in later years by other bands.
Exactly.
The Beatles only have about a handful of truly "hard" rock pieces, but I think that it has to be acknowledged that the image the band conveyed, even in their early years was so threatening in its very attitude that they could almost be seen as the origins of The Clash (you can lynch me now, if you'd like) and other punk bands, because the ideas that they expressed, just as Dylan, Barrett, and Clapton, were those that assaulted ideas and created their own rules, and really, in essence, thats real hard rock. You don't have to be loud and abrasive sounding to be hard rock. Anyone else in a band knows what I'm talking about.
