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Meet the Beatles (Again) - The Beatles [aka The White Album]

Posted at 2:08 AM on September 9, 2009 by The Current (3 Comments)
Filed under: Meet the Beatles (Again)

The Beatles [aka The White Album]
Originally released in 1968
By Mac Wilson

The White Album It is August, 2000. My knowledge of the Beatles is gradually expanding beyond the 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 compilations (colloquially known as the Red and Blue Albums) as my sister and I amuse ourselves by perusing the trippy booklet accompanying my father's Magical Mystery Tour vinyl. But I've been holding back in my thirst for exploring the Beatles' music, and my dad knows it. He comes upstairs, nods knowingly for a moment, and asks, "Are you ready for the White Album?"

It August, 2009. I am standing at the Minnesota State Fair with my month-old son, Theo, having just finished watching Jeremy Messersmith perform a handful of his Beatlesque songs at the MPR booth. As the sun begins to dip behind the trees in the late afternoon sky, I strike up a conversation with my boss, Jim McGuinn, about Theo's musical tastes. Jim is about to leave, when he casually mentions, almost as an afterthought, "Oh yeah, your copy of the White Album is in your mailbox at work."

In 2000, I lift the first record from its sleeve (wait, the Beatles made a double album?) and carefully set it onto the turntable. As I drop the needle, I hear a familiar jet plane noise, but also feel like I'm being transported somewhere altogether new and unfamiliar...

In 2009, Theo has just gone down for a nap. As I remove the shrinkwrap from the brand new, remastered edition of the Beatles' self-titled record, I slip on my headphones and press play, fully knowing every note of what is to come, yet feeling excited for the rush of re-discovery...

By 1968, the tensions within the Beatles had reached heretofore unforseen levels. The sessions for what would become band's eponymous double record, also known as the White Album, were fraught with all sorts of quarrels and disputes, leading to several instances of band members and producers quitting the band, albeit for temporary periods. John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who once scored single after hit single by way of their songwriting partnership, had abandoned all but the vaguest pretensions of true collaboration (the famous 'Lennon/McCartney' credit) as each man pursued his own ideas and sound. Only one song on the White Album features Lennon and McCartney singing together, and yet that song feels like as good a starting point as any: "Birthday." Written and recorded in a single day, McCartney and Lennon swap vocal lines while Yoko Ono (Lennon's controversial muse) and Pattie Boyd (George Harrison's wife) add backing vocals. Why? Because they happened to be in the studio that day. It appears, for just a moment, that the tension has drained away, but look closer: that's Paul McCartney on drums. Ringo Starr had quit the band a few days earlier and would not return until the band had recorded a handful of songs without him. Even on the album's loosest, most carefree and communal moment, there was a band member too peeved to participate. Such is one of the White Album's core paradoxes.

Even for a longtime fan of the album, one of the record's delights is identifying the ways particular songs play off of one another, sometimes back-to-back, sometimes separated by 25 songs. The album's eclecticism has laid the template for virtually every double album since: any artist who wishes to make a "sprawling" album with many diverse songs usually references the White Album. While many have tried, very few have even come close to capturing the Beatles' spirit.

The White Album is a continual game of one-upmanship: Lennon and McCartney present similar songs, as if to invite subconscious comparisons. Both men present their own versions of 12-bar blues, acoustic love songs, sharp rockers, odes to animals, and demented children's songs. For as agonizing as it must have been to properly sequence the album (McCartney has said that the sequencing was done in a single, 36-hour session along with Lennon and producer George Martin), the band is able to keep the listener engaged and interested at all turns. Sometimes things veer into the pretty, sometimes into the bizarre, but even after a hundred listens, the element of (pleasant) surprise allows the record to flow perfectly: the White Album is the ultimate display of the maxim "an album where you don't skip a track." By six songs into Side 1, the band has already thrown everything onto the table: a sterling opening pair of songs with the "classic" Beatles sound, Lennon's brief yet messy trip through the band's past on "Glass Onion," before veering into the silly with "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," "Wild Honey Pie" and "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill." A reggae experiment, a minute-long joke song, and a jaunty, Vietnam-by-way-of-Kipling fable may lead the listener to roll their eyes a bit: oh, those silly Beatles are having a joke. Which makes it all the more jarring (and satisfying) that we are then pummeled with one of the most artistically serious songs of the album, hell, the history of rock: George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." The song feels both like a harbinger of wonderful things to come in Harrison's career and the capstone of his life's work. "Guitar" feels more monumental to me every time I hear it, maybe because Harrison was my age (25) when he wrote and recorded it; even more startling, Eric Clapton was just 23 when he added the famous guitar solo. George Harrison adds a much-needed dose of sanity to the record, also adding "Piggies," "Savoy Truffle," and the terminally underrated "Long, Long, Long." Even Ringo adds spice to the record with "Don't Pass Me By," delivering the funniest line on the album ("you were in a car crash/and you lost your hair!") as well as the closing lullaby, "Good Night."

The most notorious song on the White Album may very well be Lennon's nine-minute sound collage, "Revolution 9." It is every bit as strange as its reputation would imply; in the CD/digital era, it could very well be the most-skipped song of all time. There is a certain beauty to its disjointed bizarreness, with its own distinctive series of nooks and crannies ("El Dorado," the baby's gurgle, "block that kick!"); after 28 disparate songs, it feels like the last imaginable avenue for the band to traverse on the record. In Alan W. Pollack's indispensable Notes on the Beatles series, he writes, "You can derive, as if by corollary, the notion that the "White Album" would not be improved by the omission of "Revolution #9" but rather would be somehow lacking something essential in that case." It's an infinitely strange piece that could be pored over until doomsday, but I was struck recently how the Beatles effectively prime their audience as the album progresses for the colossal mess towards the end. Lennon's own "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" patches together several discrete pieces into one two-and-a-half minute song; Side 2 whirrs by in a blur of many brief (two minute or so) songs; and Side 3 slowly ratchets up the tension to the crash at the close of "Helter Skelter." The record's last side, Side 4, begins with the stripped-down "Revolution 1" and gradually allows each of the three principal songwriters to exit one by one. McCartney leaves us by journeying back to the 1920s in "Honey Pie," Harrison supplies the inexplicably intense "Savoy Truffle," and Lennon the creepy fairytale "Cry Baby Cry." There's a ghostly, unbilled McCartney interlude, and before you know it, "Revolution 9" is in full swing. By the time Ringo shows up to end the show with "Good Night," we realize we've been had: Side 4 has been an extended curtain call, and we didn't even realize it until it was over. Even 40 years later, the Beatles haven't lost the ability to surprise us.

I haven't fully delved into Charles Manson, Yoko Ono, the Maharishi, or whether or not "Hey Jude" should have appeared on the album. You'll find plenty of books written about the White Album and the circumstances surrounding its recording, but what makes the White Album so endearing to me is its distinctiveness. Each listen is a journey anew through its many twists and turns; anticipation of particular songs often makes the surrounding songs even better. In a nutshell, the White Album is the quintessential example of the old cliche, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." Rock music doesn't get any bigger, stranger, or more wonderful than the White Album.

2000. My father comes into our living room when the album is over. I am sitting on the couch, completely drained and stunned by what I've just listened to. "What the hell was THAT??...."

2009. I am finishing my review of the Beatles' self-titled double album, a draining experience that has nonetheless allowed me to view the album in a new light. I look forward to many such instances of re-discovery when the remastered Beatles' catalog is issued in September, but my time with the White Album remaster has come to a close. There is only one place for it now: I shall present it to my dad, as my own personal way of repaying him for that wonderful day a decade ago when I borrowed his double-gatefold vinyl and embarked on the journey of a lifetime.

Mac Wilson is a weekend host for The Current. He looks forward to one day sharing the Beatles' music with his son.

Comments (3)

Imagine multiplying your awe in 2000 by... I don't know... a very large number. That was 1968, when we swiped Gary's older brother's brand new copy during a sleepover and proceeded to (Unknowingly) wear it out on his parents' giant Magnaxox console with the 3 pound tone arm. You never mentioned the pictures and stuff that came in the early releases. At the time, they were considered the coolest thing about the album. Oh... Revolution #9 was usually skipped even on vinyl. To be truthful, it nearly made the White Album a 3-sided record. Maybe that's where Monty Python got the idea for Matching Tie and Handkerchief.

Posted by Tim Pierson | September 9, 2009 8:14 AM

When I was a teenager, just about 14, I started getting into the Beatles (this was around 1984, so they still sold records). I bought Sgt. Pepper first, then Magical Mystery Tour and loved them both. Not knowing what to get next, I went to Great American Music in Signal Hills and pulled the White Album out of the bin. It just said "Beatles", so I didn't really have any idea what songs were on it. I asked the clerk and he said it was like a greatest hits album, with "Yesterday, and Day Tripper and stuff like that probably...". So, liking the hits, I bought it. Well, the clerk was wrong about the songs, but it was a greatest hits anyway of sorts--though I'd never heard any of them before. The album was weird and scary and not much like Sgt. Pepper and I wondered what each next song would be like. And it had the poster with the lyrics, so I could read along and just immerse myself in it. And with all those songs, The White Album continues to hold surprises all these years and versions later. Thanks, for the misinformation clerk!

Posted by scott peterson | September 20, 2009 9:15 PM

I was in 3rd grade when my folks bought the White Album. My record player ground those grooves down. Great for kids! Lessee - a sfari hunter, pigs, a monkey, a black bird & the best birthday song ever. That year my music teacher played John Cage for her 3rd graders. That singluar experience and hearing Number 9 has kept with me to this day - a door opened and stayed there.

Posted by Thomas Viele | September 23, 2009 8:51 AM

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