Their Most Diverse Album to Date

With argu­ments and almost knock out fights occur­ing in the stu­dio, The Bea­t­les released this sprawl­ing, 2 LP set. This has to be their most diverse album to date, cov­er­ing such gen­res as blues, rock, folk, soul, nov­elty, swinger-jazz, heavy metal, 50s doo-wop, coun­try, chil­dren sing-a-longs, reg­gae, and early elec­tron­ica. The album drew alot of crit­i­cism for con­tain­ing so much new mate­r­ial for lis­ten­ers to take in. George Mar­tin thought that the album would have been a smash­ing one LP set. But due to the fights and the diver­sity of the mem­bers of the band, they had to set­tle with the songs the indi­vid­ual band mem­bers wanted on their next stu­dio release. Although they took alot of slack from fans and some crit­ics, over the years the album has been praised as one of the ulti­mate rock record­ings in history.

The album’s title is a lit­tle mis­lead­ing as well. It does say The Bea­t­les, but really the record­ings were done, alot of the time, by them­selves in the stu­dio. There would be times though that a cou­ple of the mem­bers would get together and record a track. But, gone were the days when John and Paul would sit together, think­ing up of ideas to use in the stu­dio. There was alot of hatred within the group for some rea­son or another. George had writ­ten so much mate­r­ial, and he was get­ting shunned by the rest of the group and even the work­ers at Abbey Road. No one would want to work on any songs that Har­ri­son had writ­ten. Its not that they were all that bad really, its just that Lennon and McCart­ney were always looked upon as the main song­writ­ers. In order for George to get his mate­r­ial noticed and for the con­stant bick­er­ing to stop, he decided to bring a friend into the stu­dio. That friend was none other than Eric Clap­ton. George finally got to record While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps which is arguably the best track on the “White Album”. John would often bring his new love inter­est, Yoko, into the stu­dio which made it awk­ward for the rest of the group. Ringo even left the band dur­ing this time, because he to was upset with the bick­er­ing. He also felt that he wasnt really wanted as a drum­mer, not like he used to feel. Paul finally talked some sense into him, and the rest of the White Album ses­sions for Ringo were mem­o­rable. Most of the anger and hatred prob­a­bly drew from the fact that Paul seemed to take over in the stu­dio. What­ever he said went for the most time. He and the pro­ducer, George Mar­tin, were very close friends. The rest of the group resented the fact that Paul got to spend so much time on his mate­r­ial with con­stant rework­ings and takes to make the song sound right to McCart­neys spec­i­fi­ca­tions. Paul was a per­fec­tion­ist, and that made the rest of the band rather dis­turbed and weary by the end of the sessions.

Out of the four mem­bers, it was Lennon’s com­po­si­tions were of the best qual­ity. My favourite songs by John are fea­tured on this album which include: Dear Pru­dence, Glass Onion, Hap­pi­ness is a Warm Gun, Im So Tired, Sexy Sadie, Cry Baby Cry, and Everybody’s Got Some­thing to Hide, Except for Me and My Mon­key. Dear Pru­dence was writ­ten dur­ing the Bea­t­les excur­sion to India in early 1968. He wrote this song about Mia Farrow’s sis­ter, Pru­dence. She would spend most of her time in a tent, med­i­tat­ing. This was one of John’s most beau­ti­ful melodies he came up with. Inter­est­ingly enough, Ringo didnt drum on this track. Paul did. Glass Onion was John’s attempt at writ­ing lyrics that made fun of all the peo­ple who read too much into Bea­t­les lyrics. George Har­ri­son was par­tic­u­larly fond of this track. Hap­pi­ness is a Warm Gun is based upon 3 dif­fer­ent tunes that were spliced together. John got the title of the song from a Rifle mag­a­zine he saw on someone’s cof­fee table, but he thought more of using the phrase as sex­ual innu­endo than vio­lence. Im So Tired goes back to the Bea­t­les roots in 50s doo-wop. Sexy Sadie was based upon the Mahar­ishi who basi­cally made fools out of every­one there at the camp. He ran off with their money. Sexy Sadie also brings back those 50s roots. Cry Baby Cry is a favourite of mine, even though Lennon con­sid­ered it absolute rub­bish. There is a hid­den song within Cry Baby Cry that is writ­ten by Paul McCart­ney. The song is called, Can You Take Me Back, and it doesnt have any recog­ni­tion within the liner notes. Everybody’s Got Some­thing to Hide… is about John and Yoko who felt as if every­thing they do together is broad­cast althrough­out the media. The Bea­t­les jam best on this song, no deny­ing that.

Other Lennon com­po­si­tions which are of less impor­tance are: The Con­tin­u­ing Story of Bun­ga­low Bill, Julia, Happy Birth­day (writ­ten with McCart­ney), Yer Blues, Rev­o­lu­tion, Rev­o­lu­tion 9, and Good Night. Im not say­ing there is any­thing bad about these songs, they are just his more mediocre out­puts. The Con­tin­u­ing Story of Bun­ga­low Bill is a child sin­ga­long where Yoko makes her first vocal appear­ance within a Bea­t­les tune. Lets say this isnt par­tic­u­larly one of my favourite tunes on this album. Julia is a beau­ti­ful bal­lad writ­ten partly about Lennons mother and Yoko. Happy Birth­day is filler, but fun, nonethe­less. I kinda like that gui­tar riff. Rev­o­lu­tion is of slower tempo than what most peo­ple are used to. The Rev­o­lu­tion sin­gle is a very fast paced track, heavy on gui­tar riffs which was the pre­cur­sor to heavy metal. The album ver­sion is a slow, bluesy ver­sion that Im par­tic­u­larly fond of. The lyrics are some of Lennons best as well. Rev­o­lu­tion 9 is the most bizarre track on the album, and prob­a­bly the most bizarre track of the Bea­t­les cat­a­logue, no doubt. John recorded most of this dur­ing an acid trip he had with assis­tant, Mal Evans. This is indeed early elec­tron­ica which John thought would be very pop­u­lar in the future. Good Night is my least favourite track. Too over­lush for my taste. And Im not par­tic­u­larly fond of Starr’s vocals as well.

As far as quan­tity goes, McCart­ney gets the award for the most tracks to make it on this out­put. Paul did write some nice songs such as Black­bird, Rocky Rac­coon, Why Dont We Do It In the Road?, Hel­ter Skel­ter, and Mother Natures Son. Black­bird was writ­ten about the black upris­ing in Amer­ica. CSNY liked to cover this song in con­cert. Rocky Rac­coon is a humourous coun­try song. Why Dont We Do it in the Road fea­tures some amaz­ing vocals by Paul. That cat sure can sing! Lennon was rather upset because it was basi­cally done in his song­writ­ing style. He wished that he could have sang the vocals on that tune. Pauls vocals didnt slag in any which way though. Hel­ter Skel­ter was Paul’s answer to the sup­posed “heav­i­est” tune up until that time, I Can See For Miles. Paul remem­bered read­ing some­thing in the musi­cal papers about Town­shend being quoted for record­ing one of the heav­i­est tracks in rock. Well Paul thought he would take it a step fur­ther, and yes he did very well with this for­merly recorded rhythm and blues track.

Other songs of his which are of less impor­tance are: Back in the USSR, Ob La Di Ob La Da, Wild Honey Pie, Martha My Dear, I Will, and Honey Pie. Back in the USSR is a par­ody of both Chuck Berry and the Beach Boys. Ob La Di Ob La Da was the Bea­t­les doing white reg­gae, or ska as we now know it. The rest of the mem­bers hated per­form­ing this song, because Paul kept want­ing to do more and more takes to make it per­fect. Per­fect enough to be released as a sin­gle that would never hap­pen. Wild Honey Pie was writ­ten while in India. Rather strange track, but inter­est­ing fla­menco gui­tar pas­sage by Har­ri­son. Martha My Dear was writ­ten about Paul’s old eng­lish sheep­dog. I Will and Honey Pie are rather forgettable.

Har­ri­son finally got more than his reg­u­lar quota, as far as song out­put goes for this release. Every one of his tracks shines as well. You get the rather beau­ti­ful “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps”, the sym­phonic rock of “Pig­gies”, the majes­tic bal­lad of “Long Long Long”, and the brass-tinged “Savoy Truf­fle”. While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps has a gui­tar solo pro­vided by Eric Clap­ton. Clap­ton did not get any credit on this album due to the fact that he was on a dif­fer­ent label than the Bea­t­les were on. Pig­gies is George’s attempt at writ­ing social com­men­tary. I just love that line, “What they need is a damn good whack­ing”. Long Long Long is a rather unap­pre­ci­ated track on the White Album. It was also mixed very low, and it seems as if you have to turn the vol­ume up fairly high just to hear the vocals. George based the chord struc­ture on Dylan’s Sad Eyed Lady of the Low­lands. Savoy Truf­fle is about Eric Clap­ton. Sup­pos­edly, he had a sweet tooth, and never could stop eat­ing chocolate.

Ringo Starr’s one and only com­po­si­tion is “Dont Pass Me By”. It was also his first lone song­writ­ing credit within a Bea­t­les album. He pre­vi­ously had credit for help­ing write the instru­men­tal, Fly­ing, which is on the Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour. Dont Pass Me By is a coun­try tinged tune with a nice fid­dle passage.

Again, this was a very diverse album. Only the Bea­t­les could pull some­thing like this off. It was very ground­break­ing for the time. Not many dou­ble albums that con­tain all new mate­r­ial are very suc­cess­ful, espe­cially for that time. Yet they pulled it off. They were the Bea­t­les, they could pull any­thing off. Well any­thing but telling the world that they were big­ger than Jesus Christ. But that is a whole other story.……

Addi­tional info: the work­ing title for this ablum was “A Doll’s House”. This was also the Bea­t­les first album to be released on the Apple Records label. It wasnt the first, how­ever. George released Won­der­wall Music, and John and Yoko released Two Vir­gins before­hand.


Review: by Syd Burnz | hippy.com
Date Unknown