I have shared at a Pink Floyd board I am on that I believe The Beatles and particularly the album Abbey Road was the beginning of hard rock in my view. The only members who agreed were two huge Beatles fans. One of them introduced me to this site. I have recently looked back on Abbey Road, my personal favorite Beatles album, and cannot see how anyone could disagree. The Doors, The Who, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, Cream Jimmy Hendrix, and Iron Butterfly are routinely called hard rock, however they aren't any harder than The Beatles. This isn't because they aren't hard I believe. This is because for some reason people accept popular belief and refuse to examine The Beatles classic works enough to realize how hard they are. Abbey Road holds riffs that have been copied several times in the hard rock world. I have heard the fade out riff on Maxwell's Silver Hammer dozens of times on other artists albums, I swear. I Want You (She's So Heavy) is so clearly the beginning of the blues based hard rock Led Zepplin made a fortune in its influences
are practicallyy beating you over the head in Led Zepplin II. Octopuses Garden is certainly the first of many trippy vibes created by bands and long before Abbey Road The Beatles had taken that trippy feel and invented some of the first phychedelia. I'm sure more will agree here than they did at the PF site.

You make some good points, but I think hard rock showed up even earlier in The Beatles... I'd say White Album-era.

Yeah, Helter Skelter, Glass Onion, Why Don't We Do it in the Road, Birthday, Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey, and Revolution(which I know the harder version wasn't on this album, but came out around the same time) all had a hard edge to them. Especially Helter Skelter and Revolution. But I find the Abbey Road observations fascinating.

I've always been very aware of the early origins of hard rock in The Beatles work, even looking back on the beginning when they were more blues-based they were the direct fathers of Zepplin. I just feel that in Abbey Road the hard rock was stronger than most other aspects and most clearly defined.

And Yer Blues. I forgot Yer Blues. I think Lennon's songs on Abbey Road have more of and edge. But then, some of the songs sound like he didn't want to be there. Come Together of course is one of the greatest songs ever. I guess it could be considered hard rock.

Y'know Come Togethor is a great song, but it gets so much damn attention!  I really don't get it, comparing it to other Beatles tunes and even to other tunes on Abbey Road I think its slightly overrated. But its still a fantastic song. I like how it runs through the entire album.

I'm not seeing this. Abbey Road rocks in some spots, but the majority of it I wouldnt classify as rock. I'd almost say pop/adult contemporary.

I really can't imagine anything by The Beatles being more pop than rock. I mean, it seems to me when The Beatles are classified as pop its more of an imagery thing than a musical. All the screaming girls at the concerts of 4 cleanly shaven men in business suits. The music has very little pop in it I feel.

^Thank you! Yes! I totally agree! I was talking with a bunch of metalheads and they were saying that the Beatles were pop or soft rock... and I'm like, "HELLO?! Just because they weren't HARD rock doesn't mean they were SOFT rock! They were plain old rock and roll!" If you see my point of reasoning.

Abbey Road is a a great album with some kick a** hard rock in it but the White Album WAS the first during their late 60's era.

Nonsense, andersonCouncill. Abbey Road hard rock? Eh? Sorry, that's ridiculous.

I was going to write a huge detailed reply, but I didn't because Tkitna said it the way it was.

There is some rock verging on "hard" (in Come Together, and I Want You). But forget the rest. The Beatles rocked better and harder up to and including the White Album.

Quoted from Mairi

^Thank you! Yes! I totally agree! I was talking with a bunch of metalheads and they were saying that the Beatles were pop or soft rock... and I'm like, "HELLO?! Just because they weren't HARD rock doesn't mean they were SOFT rock! They were plain old rock and roll!" If you see my point of reasoning.

You have to realize most people only know the Beatles from what they hear on certain radio stations. And it's overwhelmingly their soft and poppy stuff that gets played.

Look at "1" even. Many strong fans hate it because it's very unrepresentative of the band. It shows them mostly as softies. WE know they aren't, but you can't blame non-fans.

Quoted from andersonCouncill

Y'know Come Togethor is a great song, but it gets so much damn attention!  I really don't get it, comparing it to other Beatles tunes and even to other tunes on Abbey Road I think its slightly overrated. But its still a fantastic song. I like how it runs through the entire album.

I don't think it's overrated at all. One of the things about Lennon that made him such a freaking genius was his ability to take a bunch of nonsense words and phrases and turn it into a superior song. I really can't think of many other songs that use this approach. I mean by non-Beatles artisist. Maybe there are, I just can't think of any of the top of my head.

I think what andersonCouncil was trying to put out is that modern metalbands seem to use certain themes that were first present on Abbey Road. With riffs that were copied and things like that. It's clear that Abbey Road itself is not a hardrock album.

Yeah. The album itself isn't hard rock. Hard rock is Zepplin and AC/DC and Sabbath. But the spirit of Abbey Road and indeed the whole of The Beatles career sent them to expieriment ithat makes it the definite beginning of what would eventually become hard rock, the same being obvious for artists such as Syd Barrett.