Your best Beatles album

Anyone who says Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is joking. And it's a given that Revolver and Rubber Soul are superb - some days I think Revolver's supreme, other times Rubber Soul gets the nod.

I can understand people picking the white album as their favourite - it shows so much of what The Beatles were about while simultaneously being the antithesis of a group album and an early example of an over-reaching double album.

But my favourite Beatles album has to be Abbey Road.

And I say has to be because I love all the Beatles albums but Abbey Road was the first one I listened to as an album and it's been the album I've gone back to the most.

I was 11 years old and I wanted to play the drums. I had had two or three lessons at school - but I was the only left-hander and so I had to wait until the end of the lesson for them to change the kit around, meaning we often ran out of time.

My first drum-kit was a hokey wee second-hand set (the bass skin had a hand-drawn cowboy hat and acoustic guitar on it with the dreaded slogan "keep it country"; I removed that immediately). And soon after setting it up in the end room of the house my mum sorted through what was left of their record collection to find Abbey Road.  She put side one down, let the needle sink in and shut the door. I sat down and scratched my head as I heard - for the first time - Come Together.

Obviously I over-played and under-delivered, thrashing about and missing the point. I knew how to play AC/DC's Highway to Hell (a good first song to learn on the drums) and, for a shuffle, I could rip through Queen's Crazy Little Thing Called Love.

Come Together was a bit tricky for a few weeks - but I got there.

Something was straightforward - but again the simplicity is something to marvel at. Those big, purposeful drum fills by Ringo.

I didn't much care for Maxwell's Silver Hammer but Oh! Darling was instantly good fun and easy enough to get the hang of. Octopus's Garden was one we used to sing in school so I was familiar with it. And I Want You (She's So Heavy) was a revelation.

And that was side one. And I worked through that over and over and over - for weeks on end. Some days I started to show promise. Other times it was ghastly. All ghastly. But very quickly I started to enjoy - especially - Come Together, Oh! Darling and I Want You (She's So Heavy).

Side two didn't offer as much to play through on the drums to begin with - starting off with Here Comes the Sun was a chance to use my recently acquired brushes. And it was also a chance to get lost rather quickly. Because offered a chance to take a drink, at which point I would realise it was best to get up and flip the record back to side one, count back in with Ringo and pound the bass drum as hard as I could - not at all keepin' it country - with another run through Come Together.

There would be other records that I would learn songs from but Abbey Road will always be significant because of that.

Because I mostly played along to side one, I used to enjoy sitting and listening to side two - The End was one of my favourite pieces of music the first time I heard it. And I loved being able to spot the samples of it when blasting The Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique album around the same time. The whole medley concept fascinated me - and I always really liked the 17-second-long "bonus track" Her Majesty, simply because of the novelty-length and placement of it.

I grew up with The Beatles - as anyone should hope to do - and going through the band's work regularly I find magic on every album. I delight in listening to Help! and Beatles for Sale; A Hard Day's Night and With the Beatles. It's obvious that the real turning point for the band was Rubber Soul. And sure Sgt Pepper's is the pop-culture milestone (it's still my least favourite of the band's albums - and by far the group's most over-hyped) but my favourite will always be Abbey Road.

Last night I sat and listened to the album for the first time in a while. I instantly forgot that I had a heap of work to do and that I wasn't feeling 100%. It all comes back to being shut in that end room and having to make a fist of some drum beats for around 20 minutes. That's the memory for me.

And that makes Abbey Road my favourite album by The Beatles. I also think it's the last time you hear the band really gel; really crank as a unit - through that medley and on John Lennon's rock numbers that bookend side one. It was a case of the band playing so totally to its strengths. George Harrison pulled out two of his best songs ever - feeding off the frustration of having to compete and only being allowed one or two songs per album. Paul McCartney got to indulge his experimental side (and when that happened it usually meant that actual collaboration with Lennon would occur) and of course Ringo's songwriting/singing contributions to the band are so often remembered as providing the novelty songs. And he certainly did that here.

Abbey Road will always be my favourite Beatles album for both the music and the memories - and crucially it's that blend of the two that tips this one over for the win.

So what's your favourite Beatles album and why?