The more time passes, the easier it is for some to overlook the brilliant, out-of-the-box, madcap genius that was created in one room with five men (the four Beatles and producer George Martin) and eight tracks of recording space.
To walk out of EMI Studios at Abbey Road with the final masters for this monumental album in-hand must have felt like just another day at work for those involved, as this was not exactly their first trip to the dance, so to speak.
In fact, they were the fucking dance, even though stadiums during their '66 U.S. tour had been inexplicably half-full and a trip to the Philippines had turned into an international incident. They returned home bruised, beaten, and just a tad pissed at manager Brian Epstein for his insistence on keeping up such a fever pace. Oh, and now EMI was demanding a new album.
But, instead, they gathered their wits, hunkered down, and delivered an album that nobody saw coming - an album that, even now (almost 50 years later), leaves many wondering just how on earth they did it.
Of course, back then, they didn't have Pro Tools, Autotune, or endless amounts of tracks, If they had, it's very possible that they would probably still be working on the album. If not for the limitations of the time and their unified fight to coax layer-upon layer of shimmering sounds from such primitive machines, such an album might not exist.
In fact, it is safe to say that such an album could not be recorded today and perhaps the fact that none has is the only proof we need that what is truly missing in music today is that most perfect of storms when inspiration meets limitation head-on.