The famed Abbey Road Studios may soon welcome you as a guest – and give you a chance to record there too. The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Pablo Casais (he made a revolutionary early recording of Bach’s Cello Suites here in 1936) have worked in the hallowed halls of this Georgian townhouse and you can imagine that their music must have permeated the walls. An Airbnb contest offers four lucky winners a once-in-a-lifetime sleepover to see for themselves if there is any magic to the place.
For one night only in October, four guests will enter the hallowed halls of Abbey Road Studios in London where they’ll be hosted by DJ, songwriter and producer Mark Ronson.
Once inside, they’ll be given free access to wander the studio and channel the musical genius of the Beatles, whose legacy remains in the cigarette burns etched in the piano used to record The White Album. Normally, given the site’s status as a pilgrimage point for Beatles fans, only those with business at Abbey Road Studios were allowed inside; the building is not a museum after all.
This is a good thing because it wasn’t only the Fab Four who recorded here. Aside from the aforementioned Casais’ Bach recordings, Abbey Road Studios bore witness to Amy Winehouse’s final recording sessions with Tony Bennett and the Pink Floyd magnum opus Dark Side of the Moon.
“Unless you are a recording artist, it is almost impossible to get inside Abbey Road Studios. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for a music lover to cross its threshold and unearth thousands of stories that live within its walls,” said James McClure, Airbnb’s General Manager for Northern Europe.
Guests will not only be able to tickle the same ivories played by John Lennon, they’ll also be able to jam out on their own with any of the instruments on hand and record their own track under the Ronson’s guidance, the hitmaker behind “Uptown Funk.”
“Abbey Road is like a second home to me,” he said in a statement.
“I was born in the neighborhood and dreamt of joining the greats and recording within its walls one day. Now I’m lucky enough to work there all the time. Over the years I’ve gotten to know the team there and had the pleasure of hearing all of the amazing stories of the many legends that have graced its studios.”
It’s the latest in a long list of exclusive sleepover experiences hosted by the short-term vacation rental site. Other recent examples include a shark tank in Paris, a floating apartment on the Great Barrier Reef, and a Danish castle that served as the setting for Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Winners will be flown from anywhere in the world. To enter, applicants must explain which song they wish they had been able to witness being recorded at the studio and why by October 6 BST.
For more info visit https://www.airbnb.co.uk/night-at/abbey-road.
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