The Beatles White Album (1968)

From altrockchic.com

The White Album should have been the first signal to the music-listening public that the dream was over.

At the time, the music-listening public was either too stoned, too devoted to their gods or too hungry for anything Beatles (it had been well over a year since their last full album) to receive The White Album with anything but automatic adoration. Thirty tracks! That’s an early Christmas present if there ever was one!

I think the more relevant fact about the timing of The White Album was not that it came at the start of the holiday shopping season, but on the fifth anniversary of the murder of John F. Kennedy. Although the assassination had far more impact on history, both senseless disasters occurred on November 22.

I’m sure there’s a conspiracy theorist out there who will make something out of that.

It certainly doesn’t seem you’re about to experience the beginning of the painfully slow demise of the Fab Four when you put needle to wax. The opening track, “Back in the U. S. S. R.” must have delighted and thrilled Beatle fans of the time with its breezy, playful humor. Ah! The sound of happy, happy Beatles all playing nice together. Just like on Thornbury Playing Fields in the “Can’t Buy Me Love” scene from A Hard Day’s Night.

That might be the sound, but it was not the reality. Ringo doesn’t play a single beat on either “Back in the U. S. S. R” or “Dear Prudence.” He’d been spending most of his time waiting for the others to show up to work, a drag in itself. When they did get to work, Paul started picking on his drumming, so Ringo said fuck it and left for a couple of weeks. Because of the rising enmity between the band members, all four Beatles only participated on a little more than half the tracks, justifying the inclusion of four individual glossy photos of our heroes in the album’s innards.

The critics of the time were not as enthusiastic as the fans. The critics of our time, looking back through nostalgia-tinted lenses, have reached consensus that The White Album was one of the greatest albums ever made.

According to Kenneth Womack in The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles, John Lennon said, “the break-up of the Beatles can be heard on that album.”

That’s what I hear, too.

I also hear a serious decline in the quality of the recording, probably due to George Martin taking an unexpected leave of absence and lead engineer Geoff Emerick getting fed up with the bullshit and beating a hasty retreat. I also hear song fragments rather than complete compositions, lyrics that go nowhere and a distinct lack of musical originality.

I guess that’s where six weeks of hanging out with Donovan will lead you.

Think about it. When you’ve found yourself in the mood for music, have your ever thought, “Man, I’d sure like to hear ‘Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey?’” Or “Yer Blues?” Or “Honey Pie?”

Let’s go back to the promising beginning. “Back in the U. S. S. R.” is an irresistible hoot, and had they continued to connect with that spirit throughout the album, they might have had something. This is The Beatles not taking themselves seriously, trampling all over the image of them as generational gurus. When I listen to “Back in the U. S. S. R.” they seem like accessible, approachable blokes and not at all like rock royalty.

“Dear Prudence” is a solid effort from Mr. Lennon, with lyrics expressing sincere concern for another flowing over pleasant rhythmic and melodic variation. Unfortunately, he follows it with the dreadful “Glass Onion,” where his attempt to poke fun at the tendency of fans to over-interpret Beatle lyrics and the whole Paul-is-dead thing falls flat due to the absence of the insightful absurdist wit Lennon had displayed in his earlier days. It’s also a musically awkward song that never really comes together.

“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” was selected as the worst song ever in one online poll. I don’t think it’s that bad, but it does not seem that the effort put into this song (retakes, remakes galore) is reflected in the outcome. It’s basically on of those cute McCartney songs (what John called his “granny songs”) partially redeemed by the accidental gender-bending line in the last verse. It’s followed by “Wild Honey Pie,” a silly and stupid waste of time.

Once again Lennon’s wit is absent in “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill,” as any attempt to satirize gun-loving Americans or argue the frequently-made point that killing is wrong are interrupted by the ex deus machina appearance of Captain Marvel for no discernible reason whatsoever. George then gets his turn with “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” overrated by many due to the presence of Eric Clapton on lead guitar (it’s really one of Clapton’s most pedestrian solos). The lyrics, where George assumes the role of guru to the masses, are both insufferable and inane. The real cringer is “With every mistake we must surely be learning.” I can hear the acidheads saying “Wow” as they ponder the obviousness of it all.

“Happiness Is a Warm Gun” is a stream-of-fragmented-consciousness piece that works because of the obvious commitment The Beatles made to get this challenging piece of music right. The connections between the four disparate pieces are very well executed (especially the sudden shift to “Mother Superior jump the gun”). The last verse perfectly encapsulates the uniquely American love affair with guns and links that obsession to a people who are as paranoid as paranoid can get. “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” is a small journey through modern consciousness, and the fragmented nature of the song perfectly reflects the fragmentation of the modern mind.

Now we’re on to Side 2 and McCartney’s “Martha My Dear.” The piano pattern is rather clever, with interesting dissonance thrown in from time to time, but the lyrics—whether they’re about McCartney’s sheep dog or Jane Asher—leave me feeling empty. This is the problem with all the McCartney songs on The White Album except “Blackbird”: the lyrics are throwaway lyrics, as light as diet lemonade. There was a certain amount of truth to the “Paul is dead” hysteria: at this point, the man who wrote “Eleanor Rigby” is deader than Kelsey’s nuts, and what we will hear throughout the rest of his long, drawn-out career is McCartney Lite.

Although he was definitely running out of gas as well, Lennon still had enough left in the tank to give us more memorable lines, as demonstrated in “I’m So Tired.” What I find impressive about this song is that John actually wrote it while suffering from insomnia in Rishikesh. I don’t know about you, but when I haven’t had my sleep I’m barely capable of a complete sentence and most of what tumbles out of my mouth is pure bitch. Lennon manages to not only capture the irritability of the insomniac but also the stray brilliant thoughts that sometimes come to the fore when we’re half-conscious:

I’m so tired, I’m feeling so upset
Although I’m so tired I’ll have another cigarette
And curse Sir Walter Raleigh
He was such a stupid git

Easily the tightest and best-performed song on The White Album, “I’m So Tired” also features an absolute knockout vocal performance by John, who must have temporarily found his inner Lennon.

“Blackbird” follows, and while McCartney has claimed the song dealt with race relations in the United States, that may be what today we call “spin” in response to charges (like the one I made above) that he’s a lyrical lightweight. Sometimes lyrics work because they sound good (ever hear of lyric poetry?) and contain enough concrete imagery to make the moment come alive for the listener (or reader). That’s the case in “Blackbird,” where the images of utter darkness are balanced by images of freedom in the form of flight.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly, blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night

Oddly enough, my father—one of the most fanatic of all Beatle fans—can’t stand this song. “I heard so many lousy versions by friends and street musicians after it came out that I just can’t hear the original anymore,” he explains. Poor dad.

George gets another go with “Piggies,” one of the songs Charles Manson used to justify his psychotic theory of existence. I guess it was supposed to serve as relevant social satire, but the lyrics so heavy-handed and obvious that it sounds more like pandering in an attempt to remain relevant to the anti-establishment crowd. Harrison didn’t even write the two best lines (“what they need’s a damn good whacking” came from his mother, and “clutching forks and knives to eat the bacon” came from the still occasionally agile mind of John Lennon).

“Rocky Raccoon” was inspired while Paul was playing acoustic guitar with Donovan, and when most Donovan songs end, you inevitably ask, “And the point was . . .?” We stay in country mode for Ringo’s contribution, “Don’t Pass Me By,” which seems to drag on forever. “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?” is Paul’s reaction to seeing monkeys humping in the street. “And the point of recording this was . . .?”

Side 2 closes with two quieter numbers. The first is “I Will,” an insipid piece of tripe lasting a grand total of 106 seconds that took three Beatles an amazing sixty-seven takes to “get right.” Oh, for fuck’s sake. Lennon comes to the rescue with his touching ode to his mother, “Julia.” While we would hear the more angry and desperate aspect of his anguish stemming from the loss in “Mother,” this song is more contemplative and appreciative. The two-word images (“ocean child,” “seashell eyes,” “windy smile” and “morning moon”) are brilliant and evocative. “Julia” is one of the most uncontaminated songs Lennon ever wrote, and it’s a beauty.

Side 3 is an unmitigated disaster from start to finish. In the beginning The Beatles lose themselves at a birthday party; at the end George finds god. Along the way John speaks pridefully of heroin addiction, unintelligibly about Yoko and snarkily about the Maharishi. Paul goes sickly sweet on “Mother Nature’s Son” then attempts to compensate by leading the band in the noisemaking session known as “Helter Skelter.” My nomination for the worst side the Beatles ever produced.

Side 4 isn’t much better. First we have the original, slower, shoo-bee-doo-bee version of “Revolution (1),” an experience that makes one long deeply for the distorted excitement of the single version. Count me “out” when it comes to this turkey. How you can follow a song dealing with massive social upheaval with one of McCartney’s most sickeningly sweet numbers is a mystery to me, but the Beatles try to do it with “Honey Pie,” which probably made the radicals really wonder whose side they were on. George then brings us a tribute to food and drink, “Savoy Truffle,” and somehow synthesizes that with a dig at “Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da” and the pursuit of higher consciousness. Other than the work of the horn section, “Savoy Truffle” is not particularly filling. “Cry Baby Cry” is easily the best track on Side 4, thanks to Lennon’s appreciation for delightful phonetic combinations (“the Duchess of Kirkaldy always smiling and arriving late for tea) and a slightly haunting arrangement that also has the rare virtue (on this album) of being tightly arranged. Paul’s “Can You Take Me Back” fragment follows, an oddly perfect introduction to the closing act.

Inspired by musique concrète and the talent-free Yoko Ono, “Revolution 9” has the virtue of being compelling the first time you hear it, largely because your mind is reaching out to the piece in its habitual search for meaning. You might even give it a second spin if you’re feeling adventurous, but if you’re unlucky enough to listen to it a third time, you’ll finally come to the conclusion that it’s really a self-indulgent piece of crap containing only the meaning that a wacko like Charles Manson derived from it.

The album closes (hooray!) with a Ringo solo, “Good Night.” All I can say about this one is that Lennon wanted it to sound real cheesy and they succeeded.

Many albums from the 1960’s have better reputations today than they did at the time. There are two reasons for that: one, the Baby Boomers still view the period as the most meaningful fucking period in the history of humanity, so everything that happened in the 1960’s was the best ever; and two, the quality of rock music has declined so dramatically over the years that people keep going back to the 60’s to hear the real thing. So, will I take The White Album over anything the Police, Weezer or the Smashing Pumpkins did? Probably.

But what pisses me off about The White Album is that it is the official record of how four very talented people chose to piss away both their talent and a unique opportunity to produce high quality music because they chose not to honestly and openly communicate with one another but behave like adolescents.

And it only got worse on their next album.

The Beatles White Album (1968)

From sputnikmusic.com

As is well known to anyone who follows music, The Beatles were one of the most remarkable, and undeniably the most influential, recording artists of the 20th century. Their music ranged from pop, through classic rock, through psychedelic rock, through blues to songs that quite frankly resist any attempt at description. They’re one of a handful of bands that can genuinely be described as changing the face of music forever, not only with their attitude to it, but also with the music they made. This is no more evident than on this album; their double disc opus which has always traditionally got mixed reviews from critics; some saying that it should have been cut to a single disc, contains too many novelty songs, and has no cohesion as an album, and others saying that it provides the best example of their genius, transcending genres every few minutes, as well as showcasing their sheer song writing ability. What is generally accepted though is that even if you think some of the material here could easily have been scrapped, there are a lot of songs here that rank up there with anything the band ever produced.

This fact is quite remarkable when you consider how the album was made. For a start, there’s the simple fact of the band’s prodigious work rate, which meant that The White Album was released just one year after both Magical Mystery Tour and Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Given the quality of both these albums, it would have been understandable for the band to be suffering from creative burn out, as well as simple exhaustion, but, as the two discs here show, this clearly wasn’t the case. In addition to this, it’s been well documented that the band had grown apart, meaning that rather than working as a band, they were effectively making a series of solo records, with each member wanting to go in a different direction. It’s very easy to tell listening to this album which member wrote which song, and merely got the other band members to play on it. This difference between the members actually peaked during the recording of The White Album, when Ringo Starr briefly left the band, although he quickly rejoined for the majority of the recording.

So, what of the songs themselves? Although there aren’t many unifying strands on the album, with it encompassing so many styles and composers, something that does stand out is just how different the music really is. Back In The USSR is an ironic parody of a typical Beach Boys song, reflecting the band’s creative rivalry with Brian Wilson, the mastermind behind The Beach Boys, with layered vocals, and delicious harmonies. Immediately after this though, just as you think that maybe the band have done something that makes sense, and finally made a complete album designed to counter The Beach Boys, along comes the piano led ballad Dear Prudence; a genuinely beautiful listen, and one that shows Lennon’s voice at its crooning best. Glass Onion is another ironic look at the cult that had come to surround The Beatles, with lyrics such as “Here’s another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul” seemingly designed to fuel the rumours that Paul McCartney had in fact died and had been replaced by an impostor. In a way that sums up this album-a band who were at the peak of their powers, but rather than fretting over how to show this, they were still able to go out and make an album that they could have fun with. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Daa stomp through an upbeat pop song, based around a very simple piano riff, before the first of the songs that typically attracts criticism from people who dislike this album as a result of the number of novelty songs on it. Wild Honey Pie, it’s fair to say wouldn’t have won any prizes for its merits as a song, as it features a strangely styled guitar line while the only lyrics until the last 2 seconds of the song are “Honey Pie”. Although this is obviously a weak point of the album, it’s still not an actively bad song to listen to, although the fact that it’s a mere 52 seconds long helps with this.

The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill is, as its name suggests, a very odd song indeed, relating the embellished story of how a fellow guest on a Beatles meditation trip shot and killed a tiger. This features a large number of guest vocalists on the chorus, as well as Yoko Ono having a cameo line, although few people knew this at the time of the album’s release. While My Guitar Gently Weeps is one of the band’s most famous songs, as well as their most prominent Harrison composition, and also features British guitar legend Eric Clapton playing during the guitar solo. A very mournful song, it’s somewhat out of place on the album as a whole. Happiness Is A Warm Gun also fully shows the band’s creativity, somehow contriving to fit no less than 5 sections into less than 3 minutes of music, including woozy, psychedelic guitars, nonsensical lyrics, and a truly beautiful saxophone bridge, which adds a massive amount to the song. Martha My Dear is a comparatively average Beatles piano ballad, of the type that Paul McCartney was so good at composing, and serves more as a bridge between the two songs sandwiching it than as a great song in its own right. I’m So Tired is another song with musical ideas bubbling over, as well as being one of the funkiest songs recorded by The Beatles, again showing their huge musical diversity. Blackbird is another very beautiful song, with some very quiet, understated vocals, as well as the sound of blackbirds overdubbed onto the song, which combine to give it a very calm, soothing effect, which helps explain why it’s another comparatively well known Beatles song.

Piggies, another Harrison composition, shows The Beatles’s political influences, with the title referring to the pigs in the George Orwell book Animal Farm, making what at first sounds like a ridiculous song into something deeper and reflective. Revolution 1 is a similar song to this, although it’s far more down tempo and reflective, as well as being allegedly inspired by Che Guevara. Rocky Racoon and Why Don’t We Do It In The Road? can also broadly be classed together as songs, in that they’re both novelty songs that have therefore attracted more than their fair share of criticism. Rocky Racoon serves as a parody of the famous style of Western films, telling the story of an armed (and indeed dangerous) racoon. Why Don’t We Do It In The Road? features a very dirty McCartney vocal, almost screamed at times, over a simple instrumental backing, leaving a song that is stunning in its simplicity. The remaining three songs on Disc 1 aren’t especially notable, with the exception of Don’t Pass Me By being Ringo’s only composition that made the album, giving it a significance for huge Beatles fans.

On Disc 2, Birthday is an immediately more upbeat, rocking song, which shows that when Ringo Starr needs to he can definitely power the band forward with a pounding rhythm on his snare drum under some near hysterical vocals from McCartney. Yer Blues, by contrast, is probably the most depressing song on the album, imitating the blues influenced bands that were prevalent during the 1960s. As a result of this, the song is very slow moving, also showing the sheer vocal versatility of John Lennon, which allows him to turn a song that could easily have gone wrong into a triumph, with dramatic pauses in mid-chorus. Mother Nature’s Song is possibly the most forgettable song on the album, with, on one of the few occasions on the album that this happens, very little of interest. Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey is another borderline novelty song, although in this case it’s far more rocking than those which were present on Disc 1, lifting it above those which normally receive the most criticism on this album. Sexy Sadie is a surprisingly bitter song, which refers specifically to the hypocrisy of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who Lennon had lost faith in after regarding him as a guru, although the song’s lyrics also refer to a hypocritical women, making the overall mood of the song very different from the beautiful piano and guitar arrangements.

Then comes possibly the greatest, most important song The Beatles ever recorded. Helter Skelter, from its opening guitar riff which influenced metal, to Ringo’s final scream of “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” is a journey through mayhem, with McCartney’s incredibly raw vocals coming over a crunching guitar part, before the song fades out only to crash back in again. The song inspired Charles Manson to go on an infamous killing spree in the USA, believing that it referred to a potential apocalypse. Regardless of this though, the song is quite extraordinary, sounding like the equivalent of an out of control car spiralling along the road set to music, and also categorically disproving anyone who says The Beatles were just a pop band. Long Long Long is very quiet, and therefore is somewhat lost after Helter Skelter, although it’s a very underrated Harrison composition, which creates a wistful mood in the listener. As already said, Revolution 1 is a calm look at revolutionary politics, where Lennon sings about the need to “free your mind”, and reflects the band’s clear political consciousness. Honey Pie is another McCartney oddity, with a slow opening turning into a moving vocal set over a bouncy piano part while McCartney serenades a lover, before he experiments with the very upper end of his vocal range. This song is an example of a very underrated track on this album, which too frequently gets remembered for a handful of songs, rather than as an album of consistent quality.

Savoy Truffle is remarkable mainly for its use of a very dynamic brass section which is present almost to the point of overshadowing the rest of the band, and gives the song a completely different feel from a lot of the rest of the album, while losing none of its effectiveness. The section where the brass band seems to duel with Harrison’s guitar lines is a particularly stand out section in what is a very good song. Cry Baby Cry is a Beatles version of a lullaby, which, true to form, means that everything is not as it might seem. Opening with an immediate Lennon vocal, it’s a stream of consciousness sort of song, which builds and builds from a simple intro into an increasingly interesting piece of music, and one that serves as a beautifully dark song. Revolution 9 is one of the most famous songs on here, although it’s also one of the most disliked. Ignoring ideas such as melody, lyrics, and indeed actual music as fans would have expected it, it’s a collection of sounds that was basically put together by Lennon and Yoko Ono, and would serve as a very effective soundtrack to a nightmare, with screams, repeated lines, choirs, tapes played backwards, as well as indescribable white noise, sounding as if this was a band that had lost their mind. Famously divisive and avant-garde, this was a song that had no real precedent in the band’s back catalogue, and was certainly never really followed up to. The final song, Good Night, is something of a weak end to the album, with what sounds like intentionally emotive music of the type found in film credits coming under cloying vocals with lines such as “Now the sun turns out its light, good night”. The overall effect is one that leaves the listener thinking in surprise that the album has ended there, which no doubt is what The Beatles hoped to achieve with the last song of such a remarkable album.

Although this review is far longer than it would ideally be, it may surprise people who’ve never heard this album before that it would be easy to write far far more purely about the music found here. However, that’s simply the case; this album is so remarkable, and so diverse, that writing about it could take pages and pages. Containing a hugely disparate range of genres, as well as some that The Beatles pretty much invented here, it’s the kind of album that most bands could only dream of producing, especially given the friction within the band. Although not a perfect album, due to the fact that some of the novelty songs do grate after a while (it’s hard not to agree with people who say that a few songs could be cut and nobody would really notice), it’s nevertheless underrated by some, who claim that it could have been cut down to the length of other albums recorded by The Beatles. The wonder of this album lies in the fact that over 90 minutes of music the band never ceases to surprise and confuse the listener, something which few bands could really hope to achieve, and even fewer to have the confidence to accomplish.