Thirty incred­i­bly diverse songs made the albums final cut

Most of the songs that even­tu­ally ended up on “The Bea­t­les” were con­ceived dur­ing the group’s visit to Rishikesh, India in the spring of 1968. There, they had under­taken a tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion course with Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi. Although the retreat, which had required long peri­ods of med­i­ta­tion, was ini­tially con­ceived by the band as a spir­i­tual respite from all worldly endeavours—a chance, in Lennon’s words, to “get away from every­thing” [1] — both Lennon and Paul McCart­ney had quickly found them­selves in song­writ­ing mode, often meet­ing “clan­des­tinely in the after­noons in each other’s rooms” [2] to review the new work. “Regard­less of what I was sup­posed to be doing,” Lennon would later recall, “I did write some of my best songs there.” [3]

The Bea­t­les left Rishikesh before the end of the course, with Starr and McCart­ney depart­ing first, and Lennon and Har­ri­son depart­ing together later. Accord­ing to some reports, Lennon left Rishikesh because he felt per­son­ally betrayed by rumours that Mahar­ishi had made sex­ual advances toward Mia Farrow’s sis­ter Pru­dence, who attended Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion classes in Rishikesh, India at the same time as the group. Shortly after he decided to leave, Lennon wrote a song called “Mahar­ishi” which included the lyrics, “Maharishi/You lit­tle twat”; the song became “Sexy Sadie”. Accord­ing to sev­eral authors, Alexis Mar­das (aka “Magic Alex” ) delib­er­ately engi­neered these rumours because he was bent on under­min­ing the Maharishi’s influ­ence over each Bea­tle. [4] [5] [6] Lennon him­self, in a 1980 inter­view, acknowl­edged that the Mahar­ishi was the inspi­ra­tion for the song. “I just called him ‘Sexy Sadie’.” [7]

The Bea­t­les trav­eled to Rishikesh in Feb­ru­ary 1968, along with their wives, girl­friends, assis­tants and numer­ous reporters.

Acousti­cally Speaking

The only west­ern instru­ment avail­able to the group dur­ing their Indian visit was the acoustic gui­tar, and thus most of the songs on The White Album were writ­ten and first per­formed on that instru­ment. Some of these songs remained acoustic on The White Album (notably Rocky Rac­coon, Black­bird, I Will and Mother Nature’s Son), and were recorded in the stu­dio either solo, or by only part of the group.

The Kin­fauns Demos

Close to forty new com­po­si­tions had emerged in Rishikesh, a lit­tle more than half of which would be laid down in very rough form at Kin­fauns, (photo left) George Harrison’s bun­ga­low home in Esher. In May 1968, John Lennon, Paul McCart­ney, and George Har­ri­son assem­bled at Kin­fauns. They recorded demos of 27 songs, to be put for­ward as poten­tial titles for the White Album. Of these songs, 19 even­tu­ally found their way onto the album.

Indi­vid­ual Compositions

Although most songs on any given Bea­t­les album are usu­ally cred­ited to the Lennon/McCartney song­writ­ing team, that descrip­tion is often mis­lead­ing, and rarely more so than on The White Album. With this album, each of the four band mem­bers began to show­case the range and depth of his indi­vid­ual song­writ­ing tal­ents. They also began to dis­play styles that would even­tual be car­ried over into their solo careers. Indeed, some songs the indi­vid­ual Bea­t­les were work­ing on dur­ing this period were even­tu­ally released on solo albums. John Lennon’s “Look at Me” and “Junk” by Paul McCart­ney are just two of those examples.

Lennon’s con­tri­bu­tions to the album are gen­er­ally more hard-edged lyri­cally than his pre­vi­ous out­put, a trend which car­ried over to his solo career. Exam­ples include his pleas for death on “Yer Blues”, his par­o­dic “Glass Onion”, which mocks fans who read too much into The Bea­t­les’ lyrics (see also Paul is dead), and what may be ref­er­ences to drug addic­tion in “Hap­pi­ness Is a Warm Gun” (“I need a fix…”). Lennon’s intensely per­sonal “Julia” may be seen as fore­shad­ow­ing his later song “Mother” from his first solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band; the polit­i­cal “Rev­o­lu­tion 1″ begins a pat­tern of overtly polit­i­cal songs like “Give Peace a Chance” and “John Sin­clair”; “Rev­o­lu­tion 9″ reflects exten­sive con­tri­bu­tion and influ­ence from Ono, another fea­ture of much of Lennon’s solo out­put. Lennon’s songs on The Bea­t­les embrace a wide array of styles, includ­ing blues (“Yer Blues”), acoustic bal­lads (“Julia” and “Cry Baby Cry”), and rock (“Everybody’s Got Some­thing to Hide Except Me and My Mon­key”). Lennon would later describe his con­tri­bu­tions to the White Album as among his favourite songs recorded with The Beatles.

McCartney’s songs for the album include pop bal­lads “I Will”, the proto-heavy metal “Hel­ter Skel­ter”, a Beach Boys homage “Back in the U.S.S.R.”, the up-beat “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”, and a music-hall fox­trot (“Honey Pie”) among oth­ers. The sooth­ing, stripped-down “I Will” fore­shad­owed themes of McCartney’s later solo career.

Harrison’s sparse bal­lad “Long, Long, Long” is styl­is­ti­cally quite sim­i­lar to much of his ear­lier solo out­put. His songs on The Bea­t­les also includes the lyri­cally sophis­ti­cated “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps”, a chron­i­cle of gas­tro­nomic excess and den­tal trauma in “Savoy Truf­fle”, and a class-driven piece of social com­men­tary in “Pig­gies”.

Even Starr was given leave to include the first song com­posed entirely by him­self on a Bea­t­les’ album, the coun­try num­ber “Don’t Pass Me By”.

The album is the first by the group not to fea­ture any gen­uine Lennon-McCartney col­lab­o­ra­tions; in fact, there would only be one more co-write from the pair in the remain­der of the band’s career (“I’ve Got a Feel­ing” from the Let It Be album). This new lack of co-operation and focus is reflected in sev­eral frag­men­tal, incom­plete song ideas that were recorded and released on the album (“Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?”, “Wild Honey Pie”, and an offi­cially unti­tled McCart­ney snip­pet at the end of “Cry Baby Cry” often referred to as “Can You Take Me Back”).

On pre­vi­ous albums, such under­tak­ings might have been either aban­doned or col­lab­o­ra­tively devel­oped before release, but here again, The Bea­t­les rep­re­sented a change of course for the band. The trend con­tin­ued for the rest of the band’s record­ing career: such song frag­ments were pre­sented by join­ing them together as a long suite of songs on side two of Abbey Road.

Pat­terns and Symmetry

The arrange­ment of the songs on the The White Album fol­lows some pat­terns and sym­me­try. For exam­ple, Wild Honey Pie is the fifth song from the begin­ning of the album and Honey Pie is the fifth song from the end. Also, three of the four songs con­tain­ing ani­mal names in their titles, (Black­bird, Pig­gies, and Rocky Rac­coon) are grouped together. Savoy Truf­fle, the fourth song from the end of the album, con­tains a ref­er­ence to Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, the fourth song from the begin­ning. In addi­tion, the four songs com­posed by Har­ri­son are dis­trib­uted with one on each of the four sides.

Self-Reflection and Change

Many of the songs are per­sonal and self-referencing; for exam­ple, “Dear Pru­dence” was writ­ten about actress Mia Farrow’s sis­ter, Pru­dence, who attended the tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion course with The Bea­t­les in Rishikesh. Often she stayed in her room, engaged in Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion. “Julia” was the name of Lennon’s beloved but fre­quently absent mother, who died dur­ing his youth. “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” expresses con­cern over being “bought and sold,” a theme in later songs about Har­ri­son him­self, such as “Han­dle with Care”, recorded with The Trav­el­ing Wilburys. “Glass Onion” is a Bea­t­les song about Bea­t­les’ songs.

Some of the songs on The Bea­t­les mark impor­tant changes in the band’s record­ing style. Pre­vi­ously, no female voices were to be heard on a Bea­t­les album, but Yoko Ono made her first vocal appear­ance on this record, adding back­ing vocals in “Birth­day” (along with Pat­tie Har­ri­son); she also sang back­ing vocals and a solo line on “The Con­tin­u­ing Story of Bun­ga­low Bill” and, as noted ear­lier, was a strong influ­ence on Lennon’s musique con­crète piece, “Rev­o­lu­tion 9,” an avant-garde sound col­lage that McCart­ney ini­tially did not want to include on the album.[8]

Edit­ing Con­cerns, and Release

‘The Bea­t­les’ was the first Bea­t­les’ album released by Apple Records, as well as their only orig­i­nal dou­ble album. Pro­ducer George Mar­tin has said that he was against the idea of a dou­ble album at the time and sug­gested to the group that they reduce the num­ber of songs in order to form a sin­gle album fea­tur­ing their stronger work, but that the band decided against this.[9] Inter­viewed for the Bea­t­les Anthol­ogy, Starr said he now felt it should have been released as two sep­a­rate albums (that he appropi­ately named The White Album and The Whiter Album). Har­ri­son felt on reflec­tion that some of the tracks could have been released as B-sides, but “there was a lot of ego in that band”. He also sup­ported the idea of the dou­ble album, to clear out the back­log of songs the group had at the time. McCart­ney, by con­trast, said it was fine as it was and that its wide vari­ety of songs was a major part of the album’s appeal.[10]

Note: The Bea­t­les (1968) shares the same Nov 22 release date as The Bea­t­les’ sec­ond album, With the Bea­t­les (1963).

Com­po­si­tions Not Included

A num­ber of songs were recorded in demo form for pos­si­ble inclu­sion but were not incor­po­rated as part of the album. These included Mean Mr. Mus­tard and Poly­thene Pam (both of which would be used for the med­ley on Abbey Road); Child of Nature (recorded with dras­ti­cally dif­fer­ent lyrics as Jeal­ous Guy for Lennon’s Imag­ine), (later retitled Junk and released on McCartney's first solo LP); Etcetera (a McCartney composition later recorded by the Black Dyke Mills Band as Thingumybob); Circles (which Harrison would return to fourteen years later on his 1982 album Gone Troppo); The Long and Winding Road (completed in 1969 for the Let It Be LP); Something (which ended up on Abbey Road); and Sour Milk Sea (which Harrison gave to friend and Apple artist Jackie Lomax for his first LP, Is This What You Want).

Other songs recorded for, but ultimately left off 'The Beatles' received significant exposure via bootlegs, notably Harrison's Circles and Not Guilty (which he would eventually re-record as solo tracks and release on his 1982 album, 'Gone Troppo' and 1979 self-titled album, George Harrison respectively) and Lennon's manic What's the New Mary Jane.

The Singles

Although "Hey Jude" was not intended to be included on any LP release, it was recorded during the White Album sessions and was released as a stand-alone single before the release of "The Beatles" album. "Hey Jude's" B-side, "Revolution", was an alternate version of the album's “Rev­o­lu­tion 1″. Lennon had wanted the orig­i­nal ver­sion of “Rev­o­lu­tion 1″ to be released as a sin­gle, but the other three Bea­t­les objected on the grounds that it was too slow. A new, faster ver­sion, with heav­ily dis­torted gui­tar and a high-energy key­board solo from Nicky Hop­kins was recorded, and was rel­e­gated to the flip side of “Hey Jude”. The result­ing release — “Hey Jude” on side A and “Rev­o­lu­tion” on side B — emerged as the first release on the Bea­t­les’ new Apple Records label, and went on to become the best sell­ing sin­gle of their career.

Four tracks from the “White Album” were released on two Amer­i­can and one British sin­gle almost eight years after the orig­i­nal album was released. In the sum­mer 1976, to pro­mote the com­pi­la­tion album, Rock ‘n’ Roll Music, EMI’s Par­lophone label in the UK and its Capi­tol label in the US each released a sin­gle that con­tained A and B-sides that appeared on the com­pi­la­tion album. In Britain, Par­lophone issued “Back in the U.S.S.R.” backed with “Twist and Shout”.

In Amer­ica, Capi­tol released “Got to Get You Into My Life” (from the group’s 1966 album, Revolver) on the A-side, but selected “Hel­ter Skel­ter,” to serve as the flip side. “Hel­ter Skel­ter” was likely cho­sen for the B-side because a cover ver­sion of the song had been promi­nently fea­tured in a made-for-tv movie about the Charles Man­son mur­ders that had aired on CBS shortly before the release of Rock ‘n’ Roll Music.

Instead of tak­ing two more tracks from Rock ‘n’ Roll Music, how­ever, Capi­tol selected two “White Album” tracks—“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” as the A-Side, and “Julia” as the B-Side. The “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” sin­gle was sold in an individually-numbered white pic­ture sleeve that mim­ic­ked the design of the orig­i­nal album. It did not dupli­cate the suc­cess of its pre­de­ces­sor, stalling out at No. 49 on Bill­board Hot 100.

The sin­gles were suc­cess­ful, with “Got to Get You into My Life” hit­ting No. 7 on the Bill­board Hot 100 in the US and “Back in the U.S.S.R.” hit­ting No. 18 on the New Musi­cal Express chart in Britain. Both records also helped sell Rock ‘n’ Roll Music, which hit No. 2 in the United States and No. 10 in the UK. With the suc­cess of the sin­gles from the com­pi­la­tion album, Capi­tol followed-up “Got To Get You Into My Life” with the release of another sin­gle in Novem­ber of 1976.