#Beatles poster from 1964 and the back side is interesting so there WOULD be a separate post IF I'd own a scanner

[hammill-goes-fogwalking]

June '23 the albums

[yourfavouriteadventurer]

Music Review: The Beatles' "White Album"

If you know me personally, you know I love The Beatles. And if you are “too young” to know who The Beatles are, well I’m not going to scream at you right now, but I will say that I’m sixteen and am a bit of a Beatles’ fangirl. Today, we will be looking at The White Album, released in 1968, The Beatles’ third to last album released as a band, but we will also give you listeners some history about the album and how it came to be, but I suppose for our younger audience, it’s proper etiquette to present some background on the band themselves.

The Beatles or The Fab Four were a group of lads from Liverpool, England that became a huge hit during the British Invasion. They started as a small band called The Quarrymen that performed lots of Elvis covers and some original songs at night clubs in Germany. They then moved back to England to get even bigger shows until 1964, where they were booked to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, kicking off the British Invasion as we know it, as well as paving their way through the hearts of millions, including myself. Overall in their career as a band, they released twelve studio albums, twenty-two singles, and won twenty-five various grammy awards. They split in the April of 1970, releasing their last album a month after, but being in The Beatles’ helped kick off each member’s solo careers as musicians.

The White Album showed us the boys’, now men’s, different tastes in music. They blossomed into something completely different around the time they released Rubber Soul, but it wasn’t until The White Album that they captured their separate styles and compiled them into an album. This change was evident in every member of The Beatles, but was more vivid in the music of both John Lennon and George Harrison. John was basically just mentally gone, mainly because of all the drugs he was into, but who wasn’t doing some form of drug in the late 1960s? Lennon’s drug addiction was apparent in “Happiness is a Warm Gun”, which talks about his sexual relations with his second wife, and “Revolution 9”, which we will talk about in a bit.

George Harrison didn’t really have many of the songs that he wrote debuted until this album, but during the recordings of The White Album, he started recording with a variety of different artists and bands, a couple of whom were Chris Thomas, who played piano and organ for “Savoy Truffle” and “Long, Long, Long”, and Eric Clapton, who played lead guitar for “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. It was apparent in 1966 that Harrison was mentally separating from the group, with him wanting to stop touring and make more albums, but the history in this album really shows that divide starting to form in the band.

Speaking of an unspoken divide, during the recording sessions of The White Album, there was a portion where Ringo Starr, the drummer for The Beatles, just quit the band and didn’t come back for a week. Ringo mentioned the week he quit in The Beatles Anthology, saying: “I left because I felt two things: I felt I wasn't playing great, and I also felt that the other three were really happy and I was an outsider. I went to see John, who had been living in my apartment in Montagu Square with Yoko since he moved out of Kenwood. I said, 'I'm, leaving the group because I'm not playing well and I feel unloved and out of it, and you three are really close.' And John said, 'I thought it was you three!' So then I went over to Paul's and knocked on his door. I said the same thing: 'I'm leaving the band. I feel you three guys are really close and I'm out of it.' And Paul said, 'I thought it was you three!' I didn't even bother going to George then. I said, 'I'm going on holiday.' I took the kids and we went to Sardinia.”

Ringo came back to open arms and George Harrison even decorated his drum kit in flowers for him, and the creation process for The White Album started again! This is absolutely one of my favourite albums by The Beatles. Not only is it their biggest album, with two double-sided records, but it’s their rawest album yet. Everyone’s tastes are in this. George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, John Lennon’s “Julia”, Ringo Starr’s “Don’t Pass Me By” is always a good laugh, but the real beauty is Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird”. It’s definitely one of their more well-known tunes, but I love how beautiful that ballad is, which is why it gets song of the week. Rather difficult to play on guitar, it’s truly a classic from The White Album, especially because it was all Paul. Paul singing, Paul playing the guitar, and Paul keeping time by tapping his foot. If you haven’t heard that song before and you enjoy acoustic music, definitely give that a listen.

The White Album is also unique for not identifying with just one specific genre, but many! Of course, you have your classic rock and pop in the album, but “Helter Skelter” is far away from either of those genres. “Helter Skelter” actually brought some metal into the album and really surprised me when I first gave it a listen. The rest of the album is nothing like “Helter Skelter”, and historically, this song and the album itself come to be a bit shocking, thanks to a guy by the name of Charles Manson.

Manson and his “family” committed several gruesome murders in LA in the late 1960s, including the murder of a popular actress by the name of Sharon Tate. Charles Manson is an dark, mentally ill man that believed The White Album had some biblical meaning behind it. There’s even a Wikipedia page of all of Charles Manson’s “translations” to every song on The White Album. In his trial in 1970, he actively made references to The White Album, as well as the Bible’s Book of Revelations. Charles Manson’s definition of the song “Helter Skelter” is a bit gruesome as a whole, saying that it was discussing a racist Armageddon, with whites against blacks. In reality, the British definition for “helter skelter” is a slide. It’s literally a slide that they have at British fairs.

The album has its weird spots and weird songs, obviously, with the second weirdest being “Revolution 9”, as I mentioned earlier. It’s a bunch of sound clips that John Lennon tied together in an attempt to make something in a music/art experiment called “musique concrète”, which was mainly something Yoko Ono wanted. No surprise. I won’t get into too much into detail, just because this piece is a bit odd, but there are some really weird conspiracy theories revolving around “Revolution 9”. If you choose to read more on Beatles conspiracy theories, start with the “Paul is Dead” conspiracy. Just brace yourself ahead of time.

While The Beatles’ history can get strange in certain spots, their music is still the best out there. If you haven’t listened to any of The Beatles albums before, I wouldn’t recommend starting with The White Album, just because it’s a variety of their works and is not a straight shot into one genre. If you are more into pop music, I definitely suggest to start with their earlier works. Meet the Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, anything pre-1965. If you are more into rock music, that’s where I would suggest anything post-1965. “Helter Skelter” is the closest you’ll get to them playing a song in the metal genre, sadly. Sorry! The first album I would suggest to the average rocker would be Abbey Road, another one of my personal favourites. It was the first vinyl record I got and I still have it. Remastered, in mint condition, sounds absolutely gorgeous. Let It Be is also a great album, even though it is their last album released as a band. It’s got some slow rock jams and ballads, but they are classics for obvious reasons.

The White Album may not have as iconic of a cover as Abbey Road does, but it was obvious that a lot more effort was put into The White Album compared to the other eleven albums that The Beatles released during their career. My vinyl of The White Album came with a poster and the back of the poster has the lyrics to every song on the album. It also came with portrait shots of all of the bandmembers. (George has never looked hotter, and I have seen A LOT of pictures of George Harrison. Don’t get a girl started.)

From the craziness that happened in the studios to the stupidity that happened once The White Album dropped on our shores, and let us not forget the drugs, The White Album is still by far one of the best Beatles albums. I give it a 10/10 for its diversity, but also for its incredibly ridiculous, dramatic and yet interesting history. None of today’s trash can top their iconic masterpieces.

Works Cited

"The Beatles (White Album)." The Beatles Bible. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2017. <https://www.beatlesbible.com/albums/the-beatles-white-album/>.

"Helter Skelter (Manson Scenario)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Feb. 2017. Web. 30 Jan. 2017. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helter_Skelter_(Manson_scenario)>.

Lipton, Dave. "That Time Ringo Starr Temporarily Quit the Beatles." Ultimate Classic Rock. N.p., 22 Aug. 2015. Web. 30 Jan. 2017. <http://ultimateclassicrock.com/ringo-starr-temporarily-quits-the-beatles/>.