So, What Did I Do This Weekend?

I finally plowed through the eight-volume video anthol­ogy of The Bea­t­les, which not only left me numb (and fight­ing to get cer­tain songs out of my head) but also with a renewed respect for this band. Some­thing must have got­ten into my head, because I found myself climb­ing through the dark­est por­tion of the Pierce Memo­r­ial Archives (“I’ve fallen, and I can’t reach the CD player”) for my bat­tered vinyl copy of their 1968 “unti­tled” album com­monly known as “The White Album.”

I had first lis­tened to this about four years ago, when I picked it up at the local used record salon for three dol­lars — and at the time, this album so con­fused me that I thought I had been over­charged. There were some great moments, sure, but an after­noon in front of the turntable had turned into one fucked-up ride that even Iron But­ter­fly couldn’t top. So, in the bow­els of the Archives it lan­guished — until this afternoon.

The Fab Four had def­i­nitely turned the cor­ner — their deci­sion to stop tour­ing and their release Revolver was proof enough of this. But the lads were com­ing off both the mas­sive suc­cess of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the abyssmal com­mer­cial flop (in com­par­i­son, any­way) of Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour. If all this weren’t enough, the four­some seemed like they could barely stand one another by this point. Throw all this into the ket­tle, and what you got was an inter­est­ing stew that is, at times, quite tasty — but you don’t dare repeat the recipe in fears of it imploding.

(Note to my astute read­ers: While many of the vinyl copies of early Bea­t­les albums I have are miss­ing some of the tracks “restored” to CD from the British ver­sion, I think The Bea­t­les was the same on both coasts. How­ever, if you notice I’ve “for­got­ten” a track, don’t blame me, blame Capi­tol for screw­ing with the originals.)

The album opens up strongly with “Back In The U.S.S.R.,” though the sig­nif­i­cance of the track and its mean­ing I still have never grasped. For most of the first side, the Bea­t­les walk the thinnest line between power-ballad (evi­denced on Lennon’s multi-tracked vocal on “Dear Pru­dence”), silly folk-rock (“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” which only McCart­ney could have pulled off so well) and balls-out rock (Harrison’s “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” fea­tur­ing a young Eric Clap­ton on gui­tar). How­ever, the pen­chant for silli­ness begins to creep in on the throw­away track “Wild Honey Pie,” as well as on “The Con­tin­u­ing Story Of Bun­ga­low Bill” and “Hap­pi­ness Is A Warm Gun.”

In fact, tracks like “Wild Honey Pie” and “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?” make it sound like the Bea­t­les are par­o­dy­ing the rock band they have become — and the pic­ture these songs paint isn’t pretty. For the two min­utes each cut fea­tures the band fart­ing around, they could have either put on one decent track or cut back on the sen­sory over­load The Bea­t­les tends to be. (Appar­ently even pro­ducer George Mar­tin thought this could have been pared down to a sin­gle album.)

The first disc proves that when John, Paul, George and Ringo were good, there was no one who could beat them at their own game. Songs like “Black­bird” show off how good of a song­writer McCart­ney was (and is), as well as how good of a musi­cian he could be. (His bass work on “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” is incred­i­ble.) Harrison’s hid­den gem is undoubt­edly “Pig­gies,” which mixes both social sar­casm with a sly grin (“What they need is a damn good whack­ing”), and is a track which must be heard a few times to truly appre­ci­ate. Lennon holds his met­tle well, both with “Dear Pru­dence” and the stark, melodic trib­ute to his mother, “Julia.” (Starr makes one vocal appear­ance on “Don’t Pass Me By,” fur­ther proof that the for­mer Mr. Starkey had been under­uti­lized as a vocalist.)

Had the first disc been trimmed a bit and had one or two songs from the sec­ond disc thrown on for good mea­sure, this album would have even topped Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Abbey Road as the must-own Bea­t­les album. Instead, the sec­ond disc — trea­sures and all — tends to drag the rest of the album down a bit.

The sec­ond record opens strongly with “Birth­day,” though I am embar­rassed to admit that my view of the song is slightly skew­ered, rem­me­ber­ing the mechan­i­cal demons at Show­biz Pizza Place mur­der­ing this song when I was 10. Those god­damn robots are either enter­tain­ing our chil­dren or pro­vid­ing future fod­der for psy­chother­apy. But I digress. The swift turn into the blues, “Yer Blues,” is actu­ally a solid effort at cap­tur­ing the emo­tion of that genre, and is applaudable.

The rest of the disc, how­ever, is quite hit-and-miss. Lennon’s attack on Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi (who appar­ently did for bull­shit what the Chicago Bulls did for bas­ket­ball), “Sexy Sadie,” seems petty almost 30 years after the fact. The “slow” ver­sion of an old favorite, “Rev­o­lu­tion 1,” is a let­down com­pared to the ver­sion found on The Bea­t­les 1967–1970. “Everybody’s Got Some­thing To Hide Except Me And My Mon­key” — what the hell was this about? Obvi­ously a warn­ing sign to kids about what hal­lu­cino­gen­ics can do to your mind. And while I loved “Hel­ter Skel­ter,” I truly think U2 cap­tured the essence of this song bet­ter on Rat­tle And Hum.

Ah, we’ve come to the “golden nugget” of crit­i­cism — “Rev­o­lu­tion 9.” Do your­self a favor — as soon as this one queues up on your CD player, hit the fast-forward but­ton pronto. Some peo­ple I’ve talked to blame this track on Yoko Ono, but I don’t think even she could have done such a hatchet job in eight min­utes. This is psy­chadelia at its ugliest.

I’m not say­ing The Bea­t­les is a bad album; it’s just a lot to stom­ach in one sit­ting. As one of my faith­ful cor­re­spon­dants put it when I told him what I was plan­ning on giv­ing this album, “But it’s the Bea­t­les !” Well, whoop-de-shit — like they couldn’t have an off day in the studio?

Maybe a good por­tion of the prob­lem was that this album was hardly a group effort — there were three dis­tinct camps: Lennon, McCart­ney and Har­ri­son. (Poor Ringo kind of just floated along with the times.) When the band worked together, the end result was usu­ally noth­ing short of mag­i­cal. Here, the ten­sions are clearly heard — and they don’t work for the good of the band.

The Bea­t­les will con­tinue to be a Holy Grail for the faith­ful, no mat­ter what I say about it. I just won­der why peo­ple get so worked up over this one — while it’s got some excit­ing mate­r­ial, is sure isn’t the band’s best work.

Rat­ing: C+
User Rat­ing: B+

Com­ments

by Tran­som on March 18, 2007 10:17:11 AM
Most of the Bea­t­les overtly “com­mer­cial” work was issued on sin­gles. Dur­ing the period when they were record­ing the White Album, they released “Lady Madonna” and “Hey Jude/Revolution” where “Rev­o­lu­tion” is the fast ver­sion you appear to pre­fer. If you are look­ing for the stuff you will like upon the first lis­ten, look to the sin­gles. Clearly, many peo­ple liked other music on the White Album; its a 19x Plat­inum album. Some of the songs take a lit­tle longer to appre­ci­ate, espe­cially 40 years later when the con­text is dif­fer­ent. That doesn’t mean you have to like it, but ou have to under­stand the dif­fer­ences between then and now, espe­cially if you are a music critic.

by sgt­pep­per on March 20, 2008 04:54:50 PM
Yes, if only sides one and two had been issued as an album, it would still have been a great album. But sides three and four have good songs too (though on the whole not as good as those on sides 1 & 2) with an even cra­zier diver­sity of music — just com­pare Hel­ter Skel­ter with Long Long Long, but after HS you need LLL! The only song I can def­i­nitely do with­out is Every­body has Some­thing to Hide Etc. As for Rev­o­lu­tion 9, that’s of course not a song but an exper­i­men­tal sound col­lage. I don’t have a prob­lem with it in the con­text of a 90-minute dou­ble album. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing lis­ten — which I can also say for the album as a whole. No other group could have pulled off an effort like this, a vast and rich land­scape of music and sounds.

by dvfounder on May 5, 2008 03:11:41 PM
Tran­som is cor­rect — up until the ‘70s, the sin­gle was the way for an artist or band to get pop­u­lar­ity, and really only seemed to become a vehi­cle to sell the whole album in the ‘70s. (It also was a time when the b-sides were just as good as the sin­gle, as the “Hey Jude / Rev­o­lu­tion” combo proves.) And, sgt­pep­per is also cor­rect in that prob­a­bly no other band could have got­ten away with doing such a disc — face it, the Bea­t­les could have recorded an album of them just breath­ing and it would have sold well, that’s just how much of a gold­mine their name was (and still is).

That said — sorry, but I’ve yet to warm up to “The White Album” in toto. I hon­estly believe that, had the band been on bet­ter terms per­son­ally, what they could have cre­ated would have blown apart what we know as rock and roll today — there were signs of what they could do on this disc, but it still seemed like it was the work of indi­vid­ual camps, rather than a whole band. Some­day (and it prob­a­bly will be sooner rather than later) this will find its way into my ear­buds for a casual lis­ten — and, who knows, I might find rea­son to revisit the orig­i­nal review.


Review: by Christo­pher The­len | mog.com
8 April 1997