I just found out that one of the most famous recording studios in the world offers public tours once a year. I'm too late for this year, but it's on my radar for 2015!

Anyone that knows me well knows that I'm a huge Beatles fan. 2014 is the 50th anniversary of the group coming to the United States, so I've been immersing myself in Beatles'  music, videos, and reading a lot about John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

I just found out that Abbey Road Studio 2 in London, where the Beatles recorded most of their music is open to the public for a short time each year.

Here's what Bruce Orwell wrote about the experience recently in the Wall Street journal online edition:

 

Exclusive music experiences are hard to come by in a world crowded with rock-fantasy camps and backstage ticket packages. Some other famous locales, such as the Sun and Stax studios in Memphis, Tenn., have long courted the tourist trade with museums and memorabilia.

 

Yet Abbey Road has been mostly off limits. It is in London's placid St. John's Wood, where neighbors good-naturedly tolerate a stream of global tourists, even as they slow traffic by recreating the famous Abbey Road album cover in the crosswalk out front. The studio remains closed to the public, however: It is still a working business, used mostly now to record film scores and superstar albums.

 

But for two weekends each year since 2012, Abbey Road has offered a rarity: public access to the famed Studio Two, where the Beatles recorded the vast majority of their catalog. The events are built around a lecture by Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan, authors of "Recording the Beatles," an obsessive forensic breakdown of how the band worked. This year, Ken Scott, an engineer who worked with the Beatles on "The White Album" and other classics, joined Messrs. Kehew and Ryan.
 

Participants in the tour actually get to recreate the final chord of the Beatles' classic, "A Day In The LIfe", using the same instruments that the Beatles used.

 

I must do this.

 

The next tours will take place in April and May of 2015, which will coincide with my 60th birthday. The price of admission is 144 Euros, which is about $187. I can probably scrape that together in a year, but airfare, accommodations and other costs might be hard to get together.

 

That's where you come in.

 

I'd like to announce the start of the "Send Brian to Abbey Road Studios" fundraising campaign. Mind you, it will be my 60th birthday, so I'll want to go first class all the way. So give lots of money. I promise that I'll take lots of pictures, and enjoy the experience a lot. I plan to spend all of the cash donated, so it will be in essence a non-profit deal.

 

Let's get on it people. We only have a year!

 

Now, how do I start a Kickstarter web page?

 

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