The Bea­t­les White Album is the stan­dard to which all other double-albums are measured

Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde Album Cover

But the imper­fec­tion of the 1968 dou­ble album is part of its charm. Instead of being one coher­ent whole, it’s frag­mented. Instead of sound­ing like a proper album, it’s really a col­lec­tion of The Bea­t­les’ best songs, com­piled together, like the ulti­mate Bea­t­les mix tape. In spite of a few clunk­ers, the bulk of the col­lec­tion con­sists of grade-A mate­r­ial. Each Bea­tle is in top form. And though Ringo’s vocal per­for­mances are fewer in num­ber than Lennon’s, McCartney’s or even Harrison’s, his con­tri­bu­tions are equally impres­sive. On this col­lec­tion, no two songs are alike and just about any­thing goes. And much in the tra­di­tion of The White Album just about every double-album since its release has been sim­i­larly frag­mented and wildly var­ied in style.

Part of the lack of coher­ence here is due in large part to The Bea­t­les begin­ning to drift apart. Ten­sions were build­ing within the band and, as heard here, so were four extremely dif­fer­ent musi­cal identities.

It’s prob­a­bly safe to say that the first disc has got­ten more mileage than the sec­ond. It’s more obvi­ously the catchi­est half and con­tains more of the hits — “Back in the USSR,” “Dear Pru­dence,” “Black­bird.” The for­mer of the three, “Back in the USSR,” begins the album, a satir­i­cal take on tra­di­tional rock form and life in the then Soviet Union. It’s witty both lyri­cally and musi­cally, as Paul sings “Georgia’s always on my mind,” with the rest of the band pro­vid­ing Beach Boys-style har­monies. “Back” segues into “Dear Pru­dence,” John’s folky med­i­ta­tion on how he and his com­pany wanted Pru­dence Far­row, Mia’s sis­ter, to focus less on med­i­ta­tion and more on enjoy­ing life while the band was in India study­ing with the Mahar­ishi Makesh Yogi. Siouxsie and the Ban­shees cov­ered it in 1983 on the album Hyaena, being one of the few Bea­t­les cov­ers that actu­ally comes close to being bet­ter than the orig­i­nal. “Glass Onion” fol­lows, includ­ing ref­er­ences to “Straw­berry Fields,” “the fool on the hill” and “The Wal­rus,” who John says, “is Paul.”

The next two songs show just how odd some of the mate­r­ial on The White Album got. The first, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” was The Fab Four’s attempt at ska, most likely inten­tion­ally nam­ing the char­ac­ter in the song “Desmond” after ska leg­end Desmond Dekker. And the next track, “Wild Honey Pie,” is truly bizarre — fifty sec­onds of woozy gui­tars and chant­ing of “Honey Pie!” Two decades later, The Pix­ies would cover the song dur­ing a BBC per­for­mance, replac­ing the chants with screams. “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” is the first Har­ri­son com­po­si­tion to pop up on the album and an imme­di­ate stand­out. Though it’s not just Harrison’s gui­tar that weeps. Eric Clap­ton plays lead gui­tars on the track, adding some slight flair to the fune­real dirge. Lennon’s “Hap­pi­ness is a Warm Gun,” inspired by a slo­gan he read in a mag­a­zine, fol­lows, mix­ing about five songs in one. In one of Lennon’s most tripped-out moments, the song starts with a minor-key bal­lad feel, then tran­si­tions to a druggy psy­che­delic mus­ing on visions he saw dur­ing an acid trip. He comes down from the trip into a woozy hang­over that sees him singing “I need a fix, ’cause I’m goin’ down.” A quick break­down fol­lows, cli­max­ing (almost lit­er­ally) into a doo-wop coda laden with sex­ual metaphors. Iron­i­cally, Paul’s “Martha My Dear,” a song writ­ten about his dog comes next. Though, it is a pretty tune.

The next notable song on the first half is Ringo’s first recorded com­po­si­tion, “Don’t Pass Me By,” which rivals many of the other three’s con­tri­bu­tions here. The song is bouncy and peppy, rolling along a steady beat and leslie piano. It’s a sim­ple pop song, but Starr got it right the first time. Lennon’s “Julia” ends the first half, sadly, as the song is a rumi­na­tion about his mother, who died when he was only twelve.

The sec­ond half, though not always as revered as the first, has some notable moments as well. Much like the first, the sec­ond disc begins with some clas­sic rock and roll stylings on “Birth­day,” which packs a shot of adren­a­line before the boozy, bluesy “Yer Blues” kicks in, turn­ing the mood com­pletely upside-down with lyrics of lone­li­ness and sui­cide. One of the real treats is “Sexy Sadie,” which comes a few tracks later. It’s one of Lennon’s most cyn­i­cal tracks, as it was writ­ten metaphor­i­cally about the lack of enlight­en­ment felt after med­i­tat­ing with the Mahar­ishi in India. Musi­cally it’s sim­ple and pretty, with piano leads that may have found their way into Radiohead’s “Karma Police.”

Paul cranks it to eleven with “Hel­ter Skel­ter,” the band’s take on British heavy metal that’s loud, a bit sloppy and ends with Ringo shout­ing “I’ve got blis­ters on my fin­gers!” Much like the con­trast between “Birth­day” and “Yer Blues,” another stark con­trast occurs between “Hel­ter Skel­ter” and sub­se­quent track “Long, Long, Long.” Harrison’s bal­lad is one of the qui­etest songs on the col­lec­tion and sup­pos­edly was skipped over in its orig­i­nal incar­na­tion as the closer of side 3. Lis­ten­ers barely noticed it after the bom­bast of “Hel­ter Skel­ter,” though any­one with the keen ear to keep lis­ten­ing would have been lis­ten­ing to one of The White Album’s bet­ter tracks. “Rev­o­lu­tion 1″ and “Rev­o­lu­tion 9″ both appear later, though nei­ther bears any resem­blance to the other. The for­mer is a bluesy track, later re-recorded as just “Rev­o­lu­tion,” while the lat­ter is nine min­utes of found sound and noise, influ­enced by John Cage and, of course, Yoko Ono. Though “Good Night” ends the album, it should have been “Cry, Baby, Cry.” It’s a bet­ter song and, if you ask me, seems to wrap things up a lit­tle better.

But again, as I said ear­lier, what marks The White Album as being remark­able is how much of an album it isn’t. It’s essen­tially two discs packed with songs, none of which seem to be related, save for the peo­ple who wrote them. It can be enjoyed as a whole or by its indi­vid­ual tracks, and the indi­vid­ual tracks are all, for the most part, some of the most mem­o­rable in the band’s whole career.

Sim­i­lar Albums/ Albums Influ­enced:
Bob Dylan — Blonde on Blonde
Wilco — A Ghost is Born
The Clash — Lon­don Calling…though phony Beat­le­ma­nia has bit­ten the dust

Review: by Jeff Terich | treblezine.com
22 Sep­tem­ber 2004