Help! Saving Abbey Road Studios

LONDON – It’s been a hard day’s night for lovers of the iconic Abbey Road Studios, where The Beatles recorded all but one of their albums.

A magnet for music lovers from all over the world, every year thousands of fans visit the place in north London where some the biggest albums of the last 50 years were made.

Tourists stop traffic, snapping each other giggling and stepping along the pedestrian crossing as they recreate the cover from the Beatles’ 1969 album Abbey Road.

But it now seems one of Britain’s most treasured musical landmarks has fallen on hard times. Recording company EMI owns the studios and is trying to sell the building, valued at just over $45 million.

Public outcry has followed rumors that the site could be sold for apartments.

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Richard Porter, a Beatles tour guide, holds his copy of the Beatles' Abbey Road album at Abbey Road in London. The iconic album was recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios.

Help could be at hand. Sir Paul McCartney has pledged his support to save the recording studio, and Andrew Lloyd Webber has said he’s very interested in buying it.

The theater impresario has recorded most of his musicals there, including his new production out in March, “Love Never Dies.”

“It’s vital that the studios are saved for the future of the music industry in the UK,” he told msnbc.com. “Abbey Road has such great facilities.”

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After being lobbied by fans on Facebook and Twitter, The National Trust, a body that protects England’s historical landmarks, is pushing for the studios to be given Grade II listed status.

That would protect the site from any commercial development. The trust already owns the childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney in Liverpool.

But listing the building would not prevent part of it from being turned into a museum, another idea you can hear being mooted in pubs and café’s as well as in columns in the British press.

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Graffiti graces a wall at the entrance to the Abbey Road recording studios, which have been put up for sale by their owner, EMI.

Bill Harry went to art college with John Lennon before going on to produce “Mersey Beat,” a magazine about Liverpool’s music scene in the early ‘60s.

He said he’s horrified that the studios might shut down. “It’s a magical place where some of the world’s biggest artists have recorded, such as Pink Floyd, Duran Duran and many others,” he said.

“In many ways the rock landscape that I was brought up in seems to be changing,” Harry said. “The art college where I went to school with John Lennon has been sold and will be turned into flats, and the original Cavern (the Liverpool club where the Beatles got their start) was knocked down to make an air vent for the railway.

“These are important icons, and Abbey Road in particular is one of the main tourist attractions in London."

Abbey Road Studios is still a fully functioning recording mill bursting with state of the art equipment. And it still churns out great music. Albums made there have this year won Grammys or been nominated for awards by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Fingers are crossed for the studio – let it be.