I've been curious about The Beatles' White Album for awhile. I would describe myself as a so-far casual Beatles fan. I have two of their greatest hits collections, Abbey Road and Let It Be. I'll confess I'm more of a fan of their songs with broad appeal (whoo, "Hey Jude" and "Paperback Writer") and not so much one who sits down and dissects their albums. Though the times I've done so for Abbey Road and Let It Be I've been pleasantly surprised ("Maxwell's Silver Hammer" isn't so bad and may have some deep meaning, but I'll never get "Octopus's Garden").
So the White Album is...
....a collection of amazing rock songs ("Back in the USSR", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "I'm So Tired")
...no, wait a minute, actually it's more like an experiment with folk ("Blackbird", "Mother Nature's Son"), country ("Rocky Raccoon", "Don't Pass Me By"), and blues ("Yer Blues", "Why Don't We Do It in the Road").
...no...it's a collection of weird psychedelic songs that make no sense unless you're on drugs ("Bungalow Bill", "Revolution 9", "The Glass Onion").
...or is it really a lot of tear-inducing odes to women ("I Will", "Julia", "Dear Prudence")?
....a collection of amazing rock songs ("Back in the USSR", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "I'm So Tired")
...no, wait a minute, actually it's more like an experiment with folk ("Blackbird", "Mother Nature's Son"), country ("Rocky Raccoon", "Don't Pass Me By"), and blues ("Yer Blues", "Why Don't We Do It in the Road").
...no...it's a collection of weird psychedelic songs that make no sense unless you're on drugs ("Bungalow Bill", "Revolution 9", "The Glass Onion").
...or is it really a lot of tear-inducing odes to women ("I Will", "Julia", "Dear Prudence")?
I'm so confused...
Says Rolling Stone, "Each of the three main songwriters was pursuing his own vision, with the other members, however reluctantly, serving as backup musicians. Once a whole far greater than the sum of its parts, the Beatles were now a tense alliance of daunting individual talents." OK, so that clears things up a little.
According to Wikipedia, there was some debate over whether it should have been released as a double album, edited down to one album with B-sides, or released as two separate albums. Separate albums, I think. Enough good stuff and enough filler for two.
Wikipedia also has some interesting nuggets about the White Album. Are there secret messages in the album? Wikipedia cites Ian MacDonald, in his book Revolution in the Head, in saying that "The Beatles was the album in which the band's cryptic messages to its fan base became not merely vague but intentionally and perhaps dangerously open-ended, citing oblique passages in songs like 'Glass Onion' (e.g., 'the walrus was Paul') and 'Piggies' ('what they need's a damn good whacking')." I kind of want to know what Revolution 9 is all about.
The White Album is definitely mind-blowing in a lot of ways. I try to imagine the youth of 1968 listening to this on a turntable for the first time. What a wonder this must have been. "The walrus was Paul"? Really?
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