was a very happy record. I guess it was happy because everybody thought it was going to be the last," he said.

It's strange to think that, by the time they came to make Abbey Road — which was released 50 years ago today — the Beatles were a load of contradictions.

The most obvious was that while publicly they appeared united, in truth they were sick of the sight of each other.

George Martin (second from the right) was hesitant about producing Abbey Road. ( Wikipedia )

Just a few months before, George Harrison had famously walked out of the group.

Lennon's response was brutal: "Let's get in Eric [Clapton]. He's just as good and not such a headache".

They had another contradiction too — the biggest band in the world was goingbroke.

A shaky start in the studio

How they had found themselves in this situation is a story in itself.

Suffice to say it caused even greater divisions as Lennon, Harrison and Ringo Starr turned to the rapacious US accountant Allen Klein to save them, alienating McCartney.

Now here they were back in the studio to make a record that would channel their creativity and get their company Apple out of financial trouble.

Just days before recording was scheduled to begin, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were injured in a car crash. ( AP: Steve Sands, file )

The good news came in the quality of the songs they brought to the sessions.

Bizarrely, many of the tracks they would record had begun their life during the miserable recording of Let it Be.

The bad news