The Beatles: The Beatles (aka "The White Album" ) 1968
"Sgt. Pepper was shaped by LSD, but the Beatles took no drugs with them to India aside from marijuana, and their clear minds helped the group with their songwriting" - Ian MacDonald
Hmmm. Despite MacDonald's odd claim, The Beatles had gone weird, their recording sessions had become increasingly strained and what we got was this bloated offering. An album composed of material from four distinct individuals as opposed to a group. It plays out like that too.
The album, in many ways, is a collection of solo numbers from each of the band members, with the others sitting in almost as session musicians. Quite why many of the songs are still credited to the songwriting “team” of Lennon-McCartney is becoming increasingly mystifying, (despite their honourable pre-fame agreement to always split the credits) as they are clearly the product of one or the other. What is notable, however, is that at times the songwriters came up with songs that were diametrically opposite to their perceived personae - Lennon writing a cloying lullaby in Good Night, (imagine the stick McCartney would have got for submitting a song like that), McCartney a Lennon-esque searing rocker in Helter Skelter and Harrison contributing a song with no Indian influence in the classic AOR of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. It was an album that constantly gave out varying signals, perplexing at every turn. Maybe this was the result of the fragmented and genuinely tense sessions.
Let's do it in the road....
Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da was a somewhat clumsy calypso take-off that I can't help but like. McCartney's serving of reggae-calypso-ska is a bit dispensable but one can't avoid singing along to it and it provides some levity to the proceedings. Incidentally, as someone who was ten when this album came out I went several years thinking that Marmalade's hit version of the song was the only one. It took years before I realised it was a Beatles song. That was the way it was back then - one could take years to get round to listening to stuff. The radio was all I had, along with the few singles/albums that I could afford, which weren't many. Nothing was instant as is it today. The same applied to films, it could be years after a release that you actually got to see it.
Now the quality starts to tail off for a couple of songs. Wild Honey Pie was an utter, pointless waste of everybody's time, while The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill, which marked Yoko Ono's first appearance on a Beatles album, is just plain nonsense. However genuine the song’s anti-animal hunting genesis, I just can't get into this, no matter how many times I listen to it. It's just not for me.
Thankfully, then there is Harrison's classic mature melodic rock, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, a track I have always felt would have better suited Abbey Road than this one. Oh, and it's Eric Clapton on guitar. What more could you ask for? Great song. It is so good that it stands head and shoulders above much of the material on the album.
Like The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill, though, more attention must be given to another Lennon track that has always frustrated me - Happiness Is A Warm Gun, a serving of half genius and half-baked unfinished rubbish. I have always found that just as I start enjoying this track, it either changes to another section or it ends. Most frustrating. I just can't get to grips with it, despite its status among aficionados.
Now we really get a proper turn for the worse.
I'm So Tired was a precursor to Lennon's solo work here in this cynical song that finds him ranting about "stupid git" Sir Walter Raleigh. McCartney's Blackbird was said to be an allegory for the US Civil Rights Movement and was a beautiful, haunting acoustic song. I could never quite link it with the Civil Rights Movement in my head, really. Its folky beauty seemed incongruous. It is a gem amidst the mud of this side, however.
From the sublime to the ridiculous now - Piggies is next. My oh my, this side isn't up to much in places is it? This puerile piece of garbage was Harrison's worst work for The Beatles. Surely he could have done better than this? Well, we know he did, of course, there in all its beauty on side one. This was positively dreadful. I won't have anyone convince me otherwise. Any regular reader of my reviews will know that I give most things a fair chance but you just can't tell me that rubbish like this is a work of genius!
As regards Rocky Raccoon. Oh for fuck's sake. You want me to review this?
This side was so bloody bad in places that Ringo's contribution, Don't Pass Me By, sounds like a thing of great importance and quality. Actually it was just a country violin and drum stomper. Look, it's ok, but it's still a "Ringo song", bless him.
Could things get any worse? You betcha. On Why Don't We Do It In The Road? McCartney tries unsuccessfully to be Lennon and Yoko with a truly execrable offering. Tongue-in-cheek or not, it is eminently forgettable. Only him and Starr were involved in the song, to Lennon's annoyance.
With I Will McCartney redeems himself (sort of) with this nice little Buddy Holly-influenced song, as does John on Julia, a perhaps surprisingly touching and beautiful ballad to his mother, Julia, who had died in 1958, aged only 44. Despite ending with a good song, what a bloody awful side of music this was. Sorry and all that. No, actually, I'm not sorry. It's largely rubbish.
Ah! At last! Birthday - some bloody rock. Then we get some authentic, searing guitar-driven blues as well from John on the excellent Yer Blues. Two favourite tracks of mine in a row, after the first four good ones on side one followed by the dross - things are finally looking up. Funnily enough, many reviewers I have read over the years don't seem to rate Yer Blues. Strange. I think it's great. There you go.
Paul's bucolic "back to the country" number, Mother Nature's Son, is perfectly pleasant but there is nothing particularly memorable about it. It is over-raucous at times, too, particularly near the end. Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey is an upbeat rock number with some nonsensical lyrics and some good guitar, but, again, it isn't a track that you remember this album for. Indeed, in writing this review I had almost completely forgotten about it. I still quite like it, though, so there you go. A very 70s feel is found on Lennon's anti-Maharishi gripe, Sexy Sadie. By the way, this one sounds really great in mono, something that surprised me.
McCartney's "heavy" Cream-Hendrix-influenced Helter Skelter that mass murderer Charles Manson unfortunately so loved is the album's one genuine piece of heavy rock. It's bloody great. Siouxsie & The Banshees also did a really good cover of it in the late seventies. This has been much more like it, knocking spots off anything on side two. The Beatles start to sound like a rock band again, thank God. I guess Harrison's beguiling Long Long Long creeps into the rock category as well, with its powerful drum parts. Only just, though.
There's even more great chunky rock as Lennon evokes the spirit of 1968 with his magnificent, relevant, rebellious yet cynical Revolution 1 (although I prefer the version on the Blue Album). I love the fuzzy guitar and the general upbeat, in-your-face confrontation and turmoil expressed throughout the song. It's up there as one of the album's genuinely credible highlights.
Oh dear though, just when I thought it was safe to dig The Beatles again...
Harrison's contributions to this album were somewhat schizophrenic - the excellent While My Guitar Gently Weeps; the acceptable Long Long Long; the highly questionable Piggies and this throwaway but infuriatingly catchy number, Savoy Truffle, a song about choosing chocolates from a box that has a bizarre appeal, but is certainly no work of creative inspiration, is it? As for Cry Baby Cry, it is slightly unnerving, as Lennon's childhood memory songs often were.
Regarding Revolution 9, it seemed that in 1967-68 any light-hearted relatively unfinished studio doodlings could find their way on to an album and be hailed as a work of genius. I am sure Lennon said as much, didn't he? The Beach Boys' execrable Smiley Smile is a perfect example as was this sonic abomination. Had these bands become too big for their boots and taking their assured market for granted?
For every piece of gushing retrospective praise the album has garnered it must not be forgotten that at time memories were fresh of the band’s execrable Boxing Day movie disaster and a popularly held view was that the previously unassailable quartet had, as I said, “got too big for their boots”. There was considerable evidence here, wasn't there? Maybe it was just one big con on the band's part. Indeed, I'm pretty convinced they didn't give a fuck half the time while recording this.
Finally, to help back up that theory, there is Lennon’s dreadful closer, Good Night, sung/spoken/whispered by Ringo which is as eminently dispensable as any of the McCartney floss Lennon so despised.
In conclusion, like one of its worst tracks in Savoy Truffle, this album is like a box of chocolates. Some you prefer more than others. Some you avoid like the plague. For what it's worth, here are my strawberry creams (the review will have told you which are my coffee creams!):-
Back In The USSR
Dear Prudence
Glass Onion
Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Happiness Is A Warm Gun
Blackbird
Julia
I Will
Mother Nature's Son
Birthday
Yer Blues
Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And Monkey
Sexy Sadie
Helter Skelter
Long, Long, Long
Revolution 1
Now - that's not a bad album is it? But it still has a few low points too, even after the paring down.
The 2018 Remix
We all know the songs, so I will just speak about the sound. It is truly superb and a most enjoyable listen. I can't stress that enough. Now, I love the 2009 stereo remaster as well, but listening to this (especially through headphones) I find all sorts of little nuances that seem new to my ears. Whether they are there or whether I just think they are there - either way it sounds wonderful. I am not one for studying waveforms and the like and I am certainly no audiophile, but to my ears it sounds revelatory. I am loving it. The stripped-down "Esher" demos are interesting, but they are not something I will return to very often, whereas the remixed album will be played a lot. That is what I am most interested in. Personal highlights are the sheer resounding thump of Birthday and USSR, the percussion on Dear Prudence, the bass, drums and searing guitar solo on Yer Blues and the brass on a song I usually hate, Martha My Dear.
The other alternative versions are often short and incomplete, frustrating if listened to as a whole, but in amongst these are seriously stonking versions of Helter Skelter, Glass Onion, Revolution, Happiness Is A Warm Gun and a semi-instrumental (with guide vocals in the background) Yer Blues. As with many of The Beatles' alternatives, it is the bassier, straight up rock versions that float my boat. For me, they are much better than the versions that everyone knows. Also included amongst all the incomplete experimentation is the previously unreleased chunky rock of Not Guilty (which should easily have replaced at least one of the "dross" tracks on the eventual album) and the Indian instrumental Within You Without You cousin, The Inner Light.
The best thing I can say to back up my point is that it makes the "rubbish" on the album sound better! That can only be a good thing for this appropriately chocolate box of an album. No amount of remixing can change my mind about Rocky Racoon, however....
