The "Best" Beatles Album — Was It The "White Album"?

What was the "best" Beatles album? It seems like just about every new album by the Beatles was deemed "the best one yet" when it first came out. Looking back, every Beatles fan has his or her own favorite. I think most people would find their own personal favorite in the following list:

• Rubber Soul
• Revolver
• Sgt. Pepper
• The Beatles (The "White Album")
• Abbey Road

In this series of posts, I'm taking a look back at all five of those. In the previous post, it was Sgt. Pepper. Right now, it's ...


The Beatles (The "White Album")

The Beatles' ninth studio album was released November 22, 1968. The album whose official title was "The Beatles" — and was thereafter called the "White Album" — looked like this:

The printed words "The BEATLES" were embossed on the front cover. There was also a printed unique serial number. Everything else was pure white. According to Wikipedia:

The album included a poster comprising a montage of photographs, with the lyrics of the songs on the back, and a set of four photographic portraits taken by John Kelly during the autumn of 1968 that have themselves become iconic:

This double album consisted of two separate vinyl LP disks, with a total of 31 tracks. The track list:

1. Back In The USSR
2. Dear Prudence
3. Glass Onion
4. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
5. Wild Honey Pie
6. The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill
7. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
8. Happiness Is A Warm Gun
9. Martha My Dear
10. I'm So Tired
11. Blackbird
12. Piggies
13. Rocky Raccoon
14. Don't Pass Me By
15. Why Don't We Do It In The Road?
16. I Will
17. Julia
18. Birthday
19. Yer Blues
20. Mother Nature's Son
21. Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
22. Sexy Sadie
23. Helter Skelter
24. Long, Long, Long
25. Revolution 1
26. Honey Pie
27. Savoy Truffle
28. Cry Baby Cry
29. Can You Take Me Back
30. Revolution 9
31. Good Night

(The "Can You Take Me Back" track, shown as number 29, is only a brief snippet and is not officially listed as a song on The Beatles.)

* * * * *

Major events of 1968:

• January 21 — The battle of Khe Sanh, one of the most publicized and controversial battles of the Vietnam War, begins. It ends on April 8.
• January 30 — In the Vietnam War, the Tet Offensive begins, as Viet Cong forces launch a series of surprise attacks across South Vietnam. The Tet Offensive ends on September 23.
• March 12 — Eugene McCarthy, a Democratic Senator from Minnesota, who is running against sitting Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson as an opponent of the Vietnam War nearly wins the New Hampshire primary.
• March 16 — U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy (N.Y.), who is also running against the Vietnam War, enters the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. In the Vietnam War the My Lai Massacre takes place, in which American troops kill scores of civilians, takes place on this same date.
• March 19 through March 23 — Students at historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C., stage rallies, protests, and a sit-in, laying siege to the administration building and shutting down the university. This is done in protest over the university's ROTC program and over the Vietnam War. The students demand a more Afrocentric curriculum.
• March 31 — U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces he will not seek re-election.
• April 4 — Civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots soon erupt in major American cities, lasting for several days afterwards.
• May 17 — The "Catonsville Nine" enter Selective Service offices in Catonsville, Maryland, take dozens of draft records, burn them with napalm as a protest against the Vietnam War.
• June 5 – Senator Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Sirhan Sirhan (a Jordanian man of Palestinian descent who rued Kennedy's support of Israel) is arrested. Kennedy dies from his injuries the next day.
• June 8 — James Earl Ray is arrested for the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
• August 5 through August 8 — In Miami Beach, Florida, the Republican National Convention nominates Richard Nixon for U.S. President.
• August 22 through August 30 — Police clash with anti-war protesters in Chicago, Illinois, outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The convention nominates sitting Vice President Hubert Humphrey for U.S. President.
• October 31 — Citing progress in the Paris peace talks, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that he has ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam," effective the following day.
• November 5 — Republican challenger Richard Nixon wins the U.S. presidency over the Democratic candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey and the American Independent Party candidate George C. Wallace.

More key events:

• January 5 — In the "Prague Spring," Alexander Dubček is chosen as the leader of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia.
• January 22 — "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" debuts in the U.S. on NBC-TV.
• February 1 — The Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central merge to form the Penn Central.
• February 11 — The "new" Madison Square Garden opens at its current location in New York City.
• February 19 — The first episode of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" is televised on public television in the U.S.
• April 2 — The film 2001: A Space Odyssey premieres in Washington, D.C.
• April 23 through April 30 — Students protesting the Vietnam War at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.
• April 29 — The musical Hair officially opens on Broadway.
• May 13 — Paris student riots: One million students march through the streets of the French capital.
• May 14 — In a New York press conference, the Beatles announce the creation of Apple Records.
• June 1 — Helen Keller dies at the age of 87.
• July 18 — The semiconductor company Intel is founded.
• July 25 — Pope Paul VI publishes the encyclical Humanae vitae condemning artificial means of birth control such as "the Pill."
• August 20 through August 21 – The "Prague Spring" of political liberalization ends, as 750,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 6,500 tanks with 800 planes invade Czechoslovakia.
• August 24 (my 21st birthday) — France explodes its first hydrogen bomb.
• September 6 — 150 women arrive in Atlantic City, N.J., to protest against the "Miss America Pageant" as exploitative of women.
• September 20 — "Hawaii Five-O" debuts on CBS-TV in the U.S., and eventually becomes the longest-running crime show in television history (until "Law & Order" overtakes it in 2003).
• September 24 — "60 Minutes" debuts on CBS-TV in the U.S.
• September 30 — Boeing officially rolls out its new 747 "jumbo jet."
• October 5 — Police baton civil rights demonstrators in Derry, Northern Ireland, marking the beginning of "the Troubles."
• October 12 through October 27 — The Games of the XIX Olympiad are held in Mexico City, Mexico. On October 16, African American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their arms in a black power salute after winning, respectively, the gold and bronze medals in the Olympic men's 200 meters.
• October 15 — Led Zeppelin makes its first live performance, at Surrey University in England. The band's American debut comes on December 26, in Denver, Colorado.
• October 20 — Former U.S. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of the assassinated President John F. Kennedy, marries Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
• November 14 — Yale University announces it will admit women.
• November 17 – NBC-TV in the U.S. cuts off the final 1:05 of an Oakland Raiders–New York Jets football game to broadcast the made-for-TV film Heidi;  thousands of outraged football fans flood NBC switchboards to protest.
• December 3 — Elvis Presley makes his comeback in the form of a Christmas special, Elvis, on NBC-TV in the U.S.
• December 6  — The Rolling Stones release their Beggars Banquet LP.

* * * * *

The Beatles wrote most of the songs on the "White Album" in March and April of 1968 while they were attending a Transcendental Meditation (TM) course in Rishikesh, India. the course was led by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

The songs are more divergent in style than on many of the Beatles' other albums. They — with significant exceptions — use studio recording "tricks" less than they were used on such albums as Sgt. Pepper."

Of the album's 30 tracks," says Wikipedia, "only 16 have all four band members performing."

Some notes on the songs:

Side 1

• "Back In The USSR" — A parody of Beach Boys' songs such as “Surfin’ USA," it was written with the help of Beach Boys singer/songwriter Mike Love, who was also at the TM course in India.
• "Dear Prudence" — It was written by John Lennon for Prudence Farrow, the younger sister of American actress Mia Farrow. Both Farrows were in India with the Beatles. John wanted Prudence to spend less time meditating and instead to "come out and play."
• "Glass Onion" — The song refers obliquely to several earlier Beatles songs, including "Strawberry Fields Forever," "I Am the Walrus," "Lady Madonna," "The Fool on the Hill," and "Fixing a Hole" ... John, who wrote it, was having us on if we thought there was any real meaning to the lyrics.
• "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" — This song was written and sung by Paul. The title phrase of the song comes from the language of the Yoruba tribe of Nigeria. It means "Life goes on" ... The Yoruba phrase came to Paul from conga player Jimmy Scott, whom Paul had met ... But the style of the song is that of Jamaican reggae, and the song has been called the "first white reggae."
• "Wild Honey Pie" — In India, George's then-wife Patti Harrison had liked an original group singalong version of this song, so the Beatles decided to record it after they returned to England; they put a short version on the "White Album" to please Patti.
• "The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill" — The Beatles were in Rishikesh, India. Just three hours away from them was an American tiger hunter, Richard (Rik) Cooke III, whom they'd met. Cooke was accompanied by his mother. Cooke killed a tiger and later told the Maharishi the story of how the animal had jumped at him and his mother ... The Maharishi chided Cooke for committing a life-destructive act. John then wrote a song about all this.
• "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" — George Harrison, who sings this song, wrote it after reading the Chinese book I Ching (Book of Changes), which gives divinatory significance to random throws of yarrow stalks. George decided to write a song based on the first words of book he chose at random. The first words he encountered were: "Gently weeps." ... The lead guitar on George's song is played by his friend Eric Clapton.
• "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" — John took the title from, of all things, an article in a gun magazine ... But the "warm gun" metaphor actually applied to his growing sexual relationship with Yoko Ono ... It did not have to do with, as rumored by some at the time, heroin, even though John and Yoko were using heroin at the time.

Side 2

• "Martha My Dear" — "Martha" was Paul McCartney's Old English sheepdog. But this jaunty song was actually about Jane Asher, Paul's girlfriend at the time ("You have always been my inspiration ... ") ... The piano line and the brass-band section of the song come from English "music hall" styles, which Paul liked.
• "I'm So Tired" — John was having difficulty sleeping while in India, hence the subject of this song ... His mental state at the time he wrote "I'm So Tired" was also influenced by how much he missed his soulmate, Yoko Ono, who did not accompany him to India.
• "Blackbird" — To my mind, this is one of the best songs Paul has ever written ... According to Wikipedia, "The lyrics of the song were inspired by the unfortunate state of race relations in the United States in the 1960s" ... Paul has stated the "the guitar accompaniment for 'Blackbird' was inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach's 'Bourrée in E minor,' a well-known lute piece, often played on the classical guitar."
• "Piggies" — George Harrison wrote this song to chastise society's greed and materialism — its "piggishness" ... Two people helped him complete the lyrics. One, unsurprisingly, was John Lennon. The other was George's mother(!) ... Unfortunately, says Wikipedia, this song "was also among the tracks on The Beatles that cult leader Charles Manson used as the foundation for his Helter Skelter theory of an American race-related countercultural revolution."
• "Rocky Raccoon" — This song, basically a folk song parody, is one of the most singable of Paul's Beatles tracks ... According to Wikipedia, "Paul was inspired [to write it] while playing acoustic guitar with John Lennon and Donovan in India." (Donovan was an extremely popular folk-oriented singer-songwriter in the late 1960s, a British Bob Dylan.)
• "Don't Pass Me By" — Ringo Starr wrote two songs that appeared on Beatles albums, this one on the "White Album" and "Octopus's Garden" on Abbey Road. He's the lead singer on both ... Ringo had played this song for the group as early as August 1962, soon after he joined the Beatles ... On this track, Ringo plays drums, sleigh bell, and piano, Paul plays piano and bass, and there is a bluegrass-style violin played by a British jazz bassist born in Canada, Jack Fallon.
• "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?" — While in India, Paul McCartney saw two monkeys copulating in the street. Why not humans, he thought? Result: this song ... This song illustrates what was going on with the Beatles in 1968: they were growing increasingly independent of one another. Of the other three Beatles, only Ringo played on this track. Paul sang and played acoustic guitar, piano, lead guitar, and bass. Ringo played drums but did not sing. Both contributed handclaps ... John and George were busy elsewhere in the studio, working on their own tracks for the album.
• "I Will" — Paul began writing this song in India and finished it back in Britain ... Oddly enough, according to Wikipedia, George Harrison did not perform on this track (though John and Ringo did), yet "in the televised documentary The Beatles Anthology, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr are shown relaxing on a blanket outside. Starr asks McCartney what he wrote in India and McCartney answers, 'I Will.' Then Harrison begins playing this on his ukulele while he and McCartney harmonize with it" ... There's an interesting contrast between the vocal style Paul uses on this track and that which he uses on "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?"
• "Julia" — This is one of John's best — and strangest — songs ... It's about John's mother, who died in 1958 at age 44. She was knocked down and killed by a car driven by a drunk off-duty police officer. John was not yet 18 ... "Julia" was performed solo by John, says Wikipedia, with no help from the other three Beatles — the only time John ever recorded a strictly solo track as a Beatle. It was the last song recorded for the "White Album" ... As John was writing the song in India, he was also learning from the Scottish folk singer-songwriter Donovan how to finger-pick a guitar, a technique he uses on "Julia."

Side 3

• "Birthday" — Here's one of the few late-Beatles nominally Lennon/McCartney songs actually co-composed by Lennon and McCartney. Paul later reported, Wikipedia says (see also here), that the authorship was "50–50 John and me, made up on the spot and recorded all on the same evening." They wrote it in the Abbey Road recording studio ... They were inspired to write this straight rock 'n' roll number after seeing Little Richard's performance in the first UK television showing of the film The Girl Can't Help It.
• "Yer Blues" — John wrote this song in India. (See Wikipedia here and here.) He was influenced by the "British Blues Boom" that was happening  in 1968. The typically acerbic wit of John Lennon made this song into "a parody of British imitators of the blues" ... But the subject matter also reflects his feeling unhappy and even suicidal while in India — even though he was doing Transcendental Meditation.
• "Mother Nature's Son" — This was one of the tracks on the "White Album" that Paul recorded without the other Beatles. The others were "Wild Honey Pie," "Blackbird," and "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?" ... Paul had written "Mother Nature's Son" after a lecture he attended while studying Transcendental Meditation in India with the Maharishi (see here). The simple message is one of rural, back-to-nature peace.
• "Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey" — According to Wikipedia (here and also here), John wrote this rocker on which his is the lead vocal. It was based on a Beatles jam session held in (apparently) the Abbey Road studio ... It was one of the few songs on the "White Album" that were not written in India ... The song he made up nearly on the spot was, John said, about his future wife, Yoko Ono: "It was about me and Yoko. Everybody seemed to be paranoid except for us two, who were in the glow of love. Everything is clear and open when you're in love."
• "Sexy Sadie" — The title of this song of John's was originally "Maharishi," i.e., Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The title became "Sexy Sadie" at the behest of George Harrison ... "Lennon was disillusioned after Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had allegedly made a sexual advance towards Mia Farrow while she, the Beatles, and many other people who were learning Transcendental Meditation were attending the course the Maharishi was teaching at his ashram in India ... John said later: "I was leaving the Maharishi with a bad taste"; hence his biting lyric would say of, uh, "Sexy Sadie": "She made a fool of everyone ... ".
• "Helter Skelter" — The title of this song by Paul refers to "the British name for a spiral slide found on a playground or funfair" ... The Beatles originally recorded it in one live-in-the-studio take. That take turned out to be too long, so a shorter version, recorded later, actually appears on the album ... "Helter Skelter" has, in being so raucous, been called a stylistic precursor to heavy metal music ... "After the 18th take, Ringo Starr flung his drum sticks across the studio and screamed, 'I got blisters on my fingers!'." You can hear him say it on the record ...
• "Long, Long, Long" — George Harrison wrote and sang this song. The lyric begins: "It's been a long long long time / How could I ever have lost you?" Sound like a paean to a lost girlfriend? But George was writing not about a woman but about God ... George borrowed the chords of this song from his friend Bob Dylan's "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" ... George was influenced by "the release of the Band's [1968] debut album, Music from Big Pink [which] signaled the rebirth of 'the song' as an alternative to the excesses of 1967-era psychedelia." That album "followed [The Band's] backing of Bob Dylan on his 1966 tour (as the Hawks) and time spent together [with Dylan] in upstate New York recording material that was officially released in 1975 as The Basement Tapes ...".

Side 4

• "Revolution 1" — The Beatles started recording this song, lead-sung and written by John, on May 30, 1968, the first day of their "White Album" sessions. Originally, John Lennon viewed it as the group's next single. But it evolved into a relatively laid back, bluesy number that Paul and George thought was too slow to be a single ... The song was later recorded again in a faster moving, more hard-driving version, simply called "Revolution," that became the "B" side of a Beatles single; the "A" side was "Hey Jude" ... "Hey Jude" was a No. 1 hit here in the U.S., while "Revolution" went to No. 12, making the record a double-sided hit ... As the recording of "Revolution 1" evolved, the Beatles added six minutes of improvisational overdubs at the end of the basic four-minute song. Later, John snipped off that six-minute addition to become the basis for the album's final track, "Revolution 9."
• "Honey Pie" — This "consummate writing and performing pastiche from McCartney" drew John Lennon's scorn "as beyond redemption," says Ian MacDonald in Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties. "Honey Pie" sounds like a popular dance number from the 1920s, with numerous saxophones and clarinets laid on by session musicians — and with the (skeptical) Lennon playing lead guitar. (George Harrison was on bass.) George Martin did the "flapper dance-band" arrangement ... The lyric sung by Paul embodies his fictional character's wish that his "working girl [who has] hit the big-time in the U.S.A." might come back home to him.
• "Savoy Truffle" — George is front and center here with a jape at his friend Eric Clapton's passion for scarfing down cheap chocolates from a sampler box: "Creme tangerine and montelimar / A ginger sling with a pineapple heart ... " The line "Coconut fudge really blows down those blues" alludes to the musical style that Clapton is so famous for playing.
• "Cry Baby Cry" — With verses like "The Duchess of Kirkcaldy always smiling / And arriving late for tea / The Duke was having problems / With a message at the local Bird and Bee," this John Lennon song evokes nursery rhymes and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. John took some of his ideas, in fact, from the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence" ... The song has a brief "outro" snippet, sung by Paul, that has been given the informal title "Can You Take Me Back."
• "Revolution 9" — It's not a song, it's a sound collage. It began as improvisational overdubs recorded at the end of the basic four-minute song "Revolution 1" ... John Lennon was the main force behind it, with assistance from George Harrison and Yoko Ono. The speaking voices of John Lennon, George Harrison, Yoko Ono, and the Beatles' producer George Martin are heard. Paul McCartney declined to have anything to do with this one ... Lennon said he was trying to paint a picture of a revolution using sound ... The modus operandi included using loops of tape with sounds already recorded on them. Each tape loop played its content over and over into the finished recording.
• "Good Night"  — This final song on the Beatles' "White Album" is sung by Ringo. John Lennon wrote the song as a lullaby for his five-year-old son Julian, and he specifically wanted Ringo to sing it. None of the Beatles other than Ringo — not even John — are heard on the track ... I find the contrast between this treacly number and John's acerbic "Good Morning Good Morning" on Sgt. Pepper quite interesting.

See more about the tracks on the Beatles' "White Album" here.

* * * * *

The New Apple Label

The Beatles (the "White Album") was the third album to be released on the band's new Apple label. The first two were George Harrison's Wonderwall Music and Two Virgins by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Stereo and Mono Mixes

"The Beatles," Wikipedia says, "was the last Beatles album to be mixed separately for stereo and mono, though the mono version was issued only in the UK and a few other countries. All but one track exist in official mono mixes; the exception is 'Revolution 9', which was a direct reduction of the stereo master."

The Beatles themselves seem to have preferred mono over stereo ...

... but after receiving mail from fans stating they bought both stereo and mono mixes of earlier albums, they decided to make the two different. Several mixes have different track lengths; the mono mix/edit of "Helter Skelter" eliminates the fade-in at the end of the song (and Starr's ending scream), and the fade out of "Yer Blues" is 11 seconds longer on the mono mix In the US, mono records were already being phased out; the US release of The Beatles was the first Beatles LP to be issued in stereo only. In the UK, the following album, Yellow Submarine, was the last to be shipped in mono.

8-Track Recording in the Studio

The recording technology used in the studio grew more sophisticated in 1968. Says Wikipedia:

During the The Beatles sessions, the band upgraded from 4-track recording to 8-track. As work began, Abbey Road Studios possessed, but had yet to install, an 8-track machine that had supposedly been sitting in a storage room for months. This was in accordance with EMI's policy of testing and customising new gear extensively before putting it into use in the studios. The Beatles recorded "Hey Jude" and "Dear Prudence" at Trident [Studios] because it had an 8-track recorder. When they learned that EMI [the owner of Abbey Road Studios] also had one, they insisted on using it, and engineers Ken Scott and Dave Harries took the machine (without authorisation from the studio chiefs) into Abbey Road Studio 2 for the band's use.

A brief explanation: In a recording studio, starting in the 1960s, songs could be recorded in multiple layers. Each layer represented a different sound source: a lead vocal, a backing vocal, a particular instrument, a choral or instrumental group, an orchestra or a portion thereof, etc. The layers could be recorded at different times, i.e., completely separately; or they could be recorded all at once, albeit using separate microphones. Either way, each layer would be recorded onto a separate track on a professional-quality tape recorder in the studio.

Then there were often "mixdowns" to be done. Let's say you were using a 4-track recorder, but you wanted to record five tape tracks. To record the fifth track, you first had to combine ("mix down") two of the existing four tracks into one single track so as to make room for the fifth. That added an extra time-consuming step to the labors of the studio personnel. But if you were using an 8-track tape recorder, that extra step could be avoided.

In 1968, 4-track recorders were the norm in recording studios; 8-track gear was new. When the Beatles went into the Abbey Road studio to record "Hey Jude" at the end of August 1968, they decided they needed an orchestra to play on the extended, monumental "Nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, hey Jude" coda, behind Paul McCartney's vocal/piano/bass parts and contributions from the other Beatles. They found the 4-track recorder then in use at Abbey Road wouldn't do the trick. They shifted to Trident Studios to use the 8-track machine there. (And notice that just the fact that Paul was playing both piano and bass on "Hey Jude" necessitated the use of two separate tape tracks, recorded at two separate times.)

The introduction of 8-track recording helped the Beatles make ever more complex music in the studio — that's the bottom line here.