EMI, currently Tone Deaf’s favourite media tart because it seems we have to write something about it every couple of days: is selling its legendary Abbey Road studios.
Purchased in 1929 for £100,000 in the exclusive London suburb of St John’s Wood, the studios have played host to some of the biggest names in music – from Pink Floyd to Radiohead. Oh and a little band called The Beatles recorded most of their work there and named one of the most famous albums in the world after it.
According to London’s Financial Times, EMI is selling it off to help raise part of the £120 million it needs by June to avoid a massive £3.3 billion loan being called in by bankers Citicorp with whom it is having a massive public scrag fight. Valued at a minimum of £10 million, the sale could raise considerably more because of the connotations associated with the name.
A massive studio complex located in a Georgian townhouse, it was first used to record full orchestras in the 1930s before being taken over by indulgent pot smoking rock musos in the 1960s. Today it is considered somewhat redundant as a working studio due to the proliferation of cheaper home recording operations most artists now use and the relatively prohibitive cost of recording in it.
Nonetheless it’ll be sad to see it go – vale Abbey Road.
