Sir Paul McCartney has expressed hope that Abbey Road Studios can be saved, after reports that EMI has put the iconic building up for sale.
Read our feature on Abbey Road Studios.
The sale is thought to be a part of a plan by EMI's owners, private equity firm Terra Firma, to raise £120 million by June to service a £3.3 billion loan from Citigroup. The debt is a result of Terra Firma's leveraged buy-out in 2007.
I do know there have been a few people who have been associated with the studio for a long time who were talking about mounting some bid to save it. I sympathise with them, I hope they can do something; it'd be great.Obviously I've got so many memories there with The Beatles. It still is a great studio. It would be lovely for someone to get a thing together to save it.
The sale of the studios could raise £30 million. The building is most famous as the place where The Beatles recorded virtually all their music between 1962 and 1970, and was immortalised after The Beatles named their 1969 album Abbey Road after it. Formerly called EMI Studios, it was renamed Abbey Road Studios in the 1970s.
EMI bought the Georgian town house at number three Abbey Road for £100,000 in 1929, transforming and extending it into the world's first custom-built recording studios. Today it remains a working studio, and a place of pilgrimage for Beatles fans worldwide.
It is not known whether a sale would see the site continue as a studio or be converted for another purpose.
Why don't Paul just buy it? That would be awesome. I think it should continue to be a Studio and it should be a museum.
My thoughts exactly. Buy it, Paul!!
Yeah my thoughts also as I'm reading this article. Paul needs to buy it! Why not open it up for tours? It would generate some income and over time could really make some money like Graceland. People come from all over the world just to see it from the outside and to cross the Abbeyroad cross-walk so how many more people would come to take a tour of studio #2? I would.