On Wikipedia’s main page is a "featured article" — which may or may not be relevant to the date or something in the news.
This morning, the "featured article" was about the song "Something" that appeared on the Beatles’ album "Abbey Road.""Something" was written by George Harrison. Although "Abbey Road" was the 12th studio album released by the Beatles — and in spite of the fact that Harrison had been writing songs that appeared on albums by the Beatles for six years, including "Taxman," "Think for Yourself," "If I Needed Someone" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" as well as songs that, for one reason or another, weren't recorded by the group — "Something" was the first Harrison song to appear on the "A" side when it was released as a Beatles single in October of 1969.
This terminology may sound odd to youthful ears that have never listened to a 45-rpm vinyl recording.
But, in the years when the Beatles were making music, the "A" side was the song on the single that was promoted commercially. There might be several singles released from one album, and they were all usually used to promote sales of the long-play album.
The "B" side was the "filler" song, the one that was put on the other side because, well, something (so to speak) needed to be there.
The song on the "A" side was the one that the promoters expected to be a big hit — although there were times when my friends and I bought singles because we liked the "B" side songs.
Buying singles was an economical way to collect music if you didn’t have a lot of money to spend. But the LP ("long play") made it possible to listen to music for extended periods of time between changes.
Anyway, if someone recorded a song that was a hit as an "A" side single, it was like striking gold. The "B" side song was usually forgotten.
And, for half a dozen years, Harrison’s songs had served as the "B" side material for the group.
Small wonder, then, that, after the band broke up, Harrison — who had been feeling more and more confined in his role with the Beatles — became the first Beatle to have a #1 solo album — the ambitious three-record set "All Things Must Pass."
By George, he had to do something with that backlog of material!
(An interesting trivia point. One of the assistant engineers on the "Abbey Road" album was Alan Parsons — who was unknown at the time but went on to engineer Pink Floyd’s "The Dark Side of the Moon" and produced several successful records with his own Alan Parsons Project.)
