The "Best" Beatles Album — Was It Abbey Road?

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 the "White Album." Right now, it's ...

Abbey Road

Abbey Road, appearing in the early fall of 1969, was the Beatles' eleventh studio album. There would be just one more, Let It Be, which appeared in 1970. (The Let It Be LP was actually recorded earlier than Abbey Road, under the working title Get Back. In the U.S. but not in the U.K., there was an intervening LP, Hey Jude, a 1970 collection of non-album singles and B-sides.)

The recording sessions for Abbey Road were the last in which all four Beatles participated.

The album cover for Abbey Road itself became iconic:

Notice that no words or other identifying information was printed on the front of the album. The album title and name of the band were on the back:

There were 17 tracks on Abbey Road. Side One:

1. Come Together — The title of this U.S. chart topper (#4 in the U.K.) was both sexual and a swipe at the violent antagonisms occurring in the world at the time. "Come Together" became one side of a "double A-side" single with "Something" on the reverse side.
2. Something — Many think this song to be George Harrison's finest for the Beatles. It went to #2 on the U.S. charts. Frank Sinatra once commented that it was his favorite Lennon–McCartney (sic) composition and "the greatest love song ever written."
3. Maxwell's Silver Hammer — Ian McDonald, in Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties, called this Paul McCartney song "the cheery side of a homicidal maniac." John Lennon — who along with Yoko Ono was still recovering from injuries sustained in an auto accident in Scotland — did not participate in its recording.
4. Oh! Darling — Paul had trouble getting his voice to come out rough enough on this song he wrote. John later said,  "'Oh! Darling' was a great one of Paul's that he didn't sing too well. I always thought I could have done it better – it was more my style than his. He wrote it, so what the hell, he's going to sing it."
5. Octopus's Garden — This song was one of the two Beatles numbers written and sung by Ringo Starr. (George helped in the studio with the finishing of the song.) Ringo had spent two weeks on Peter Sellers's boat off the Sardinia coast when he briefly left the Beatles during the White Album sessions. He got the idea for wanting to be "under the sea" then, to escape the group's mounting hostility.
6. I Want You (She's So Heavy) — There's "a three-minute descent through repeated guitar chords" in the outro of this song written and sung by John, and then an abrupt ending. The initial vocal part, with the bluesy "I Want You" lyric and also the "She's So Heavy" lyric, comes before that. There's a nice guitar solo in the middle of it all, which I assume George provided. This is one of the "heaviest" songs the Beatles ever did.

Side Two:

1. Here Comes The Sun — This excellent song by George is one of the lightest, happiest Beatle songs. George played acoustic guitar, harmonium, and Moog synthesizer on this one, thanks to multitrack recording ... The Moog synthesizer was invented in the early 1960s. Says Wikipedia, it "began to gain wider attention in the music industry after it was demonstrated at the epochal Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967." It became a staple of popular music recording in the years following 1969.
2. Because — George also played Moog synthesizer on this song that was written by John. John, Paul, and George sang in harmony on this one, and each voice was "overdubbed" twice to make a total of nine voices, as heard by the listener. John wrote the song after hearing Yoko Ono play an adagio sostenuto movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" piano sonata.
3. You Never Give Me Your Money* — This Paul song begins the medley portion of Abbey Road. The medley was "conceived by McCartney and producer George Martin as a finale for the Beatles' career," says Wikipedia. Paul wrote the song "when he was staying with new wife Linda in New York in March 1969, shortly after the Get Back sessions that ultimately resulted in [the Let It Be album]. The song "documented the financial and personal difficulties facing the band."
4. Sun King* — This is the first of three songs in the medley that were written by John. The other five medley songs were written by Paul, with no songs in the medley attributable to George. The "lush multi-tracked vocal harmonies [were] provided by Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison," says Wikipedia. 
5. Mean Mr Mustard* — John wrote this song while attending the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation sessions with the other Beatles. He had based it on a newspaper article about a miser who hid his cash in order to keep people from forcing him to spend it.
6. Polythene Pam* — John wrote this one in India, as well. The protagonist, Pam, was based on a woman John had once been introduced to in Jersey. She had been dressed only in clear plastic — "polythene," as the Brits call it. John was put off by the crudity of it all. (Jersey, by the way, is a British-owned island off the coast of Normandy, France.)
7. She Came In Through The Bathroom Window* — Here begins a group of four songs written by Paul. Some "Apple scruffs" — dedicated fans who hung around outside the Abbey Road studio, the Apple Corps offices, and the individual Beatles' homes — had broken into Paul's home via a slightly ajar bathroom window, Paul found out, and he wrote this song.
8. Golden Slumbers* — This song by Paul was recorded together with the next, "Carry That Weight." This one was based on the poem "Cradle Song", a lullaby by the dramatist Thomas Dekker. Paul, says Wikipedia, "saw sheet music for Dekker's lullaby at his father's home in Liverpool, left on a piano by his stepsister Ruth. Unable to read music, he created his own music."
9. Carry That Weight* — This song's musical impact is a fitting one, considering that it directly follows "Golden Slumbers." The two songs were recorded together in the studio. Paul, according to Wikipedia, "said the song was about the Beatles' business difficulties and the atmosphere at Apple at the time."
10. The End* — Paul later said, per Wikipedia, "I wanted [the medley] to end with a little meaningful couplet, so I followed the Bard and wrote a couplet." This song "stands as the last known new recording involving all four members of the Beatles." It was originally intended to be the final song on Abbey Road, but that changed with the addition of ...
11. Her Majesty† — Not listed on the album sleeve, and arriving several seconds after the end of "The End," Wikipedia says "Her Majesty" — referring to Queen Elizabeth II — is "considered one of the first examples of a hidden track in rock music." But it was actually something of an accident. "Her Majesty" was originally slated to be part of the medley, to come between "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam." Paul felt it didn't belong there, musically speaking, and had it edited out. But a recording engineer named John Kurlander put it at the tail end of Abbey Road instead.

The tracks with an asterisk (*) form a continuous medley of short songs that segue from one to the next. These songs are all listed individually on the album cover. The track with a cross symbol (†) — "Her Majesty" — is not part of the medley and is not listed on the album cover.

* * * * *

Major events of 1969:

• January 20 — Richard M. Nixon is sworn in as President of the United States.
• January 28 — A blowout on a Union Oil platform spills 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil, threatening the beaches of Santa Barbara County in Southern California. On February 5, the Santa Barbara harbor will need to be closed. This inspires Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson to organize the first Earth Day in 1970.
• February 4 — In Cairo, Yasser Arafat is elected Palestine Liberation Organization leader at the Palestinian National Congress.
• February 9 — The Boeing 747 makes its maiden flight.
• March 2 — In Toulouse, France, the first Concorde test flight is conducted.
• March 3 — NASA launches Apollo 9 (astronauts James McDivitt, David Scott, Rusty Schweickart) to test the lunar module.
• March 17 — Golda Meir becomes the first female prime minister of Israel.
• March 28 — Former United States General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower dies in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C.
• April 9 — The Harvard University Administration Building is seized by close to 300 students, mostly members of the Students for a Democratic Society. Before the takeover ends, 45 will be injured and 184 arrested.
• April 20 — British troops arrive in Northern Ireland to reinforce the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
• April 20 — A grassroots movement of Berkeley community members seizes an empty lot owned by the University of California, to begin the formation of "People's Park".
• April 28 — Charles de Gaulle steps down as president of France after suffering defeat in a referendum the day before.
• May 15 — An American teenager, 'Robert R.', dies in St. Louis, Missouri, of a baffling medical condition. In 1984 it will be identified as the first confirmed case of HIV/AIDS in North America.
• May 18 — Apollo 10 (astronauts Tom Stafford, Gene Cernan, John Young) is launched as the full dress-rehearsal for the Moon landing.
• June 8 — U.S. President Richard Nixon and South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu meet at Midway Island. Nixon announces that 25,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam by September.
• June 18 to June 22 – The National Convention of the Students for a Democratic Society, held in Chicago, collapses, and the Weatherman faction seizes control of the SDS National Office.
• June 20 — Georges Pompidou is elected President of France.
• June 22 — The Cuyahoga River fire helps spur an avalanche of water pollution control activities resulting in the Clean Water Act, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and the creation of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
• June 23 — Warren E. Burger is sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States by retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren.
• June 28 — The Stonewall riots in New York City mark the start of the modern gay rights movement in the U.S.
• July 8 — The very first U.S. troop withdrawals from Vietnam are made.
• July 18 — Mary Jo Kopechne, American teacher, secretary, and political campaign specialist, dies at age 28 in a car accident at Chappaquiddick Island while a passenger in a car driven by U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.
• July 20 — The lunar module Eagle/Apollo 11 lands on the lunar surface. An estimated 500 million people worldwide watch as Neil Armstrong takes his historic first steps on the Moon. It was the largest television audience for a live broadcast at that time.
• July 25 — U.S. President Richard Nixon declares the "Nixon Doctrine," stating that the United States now expects its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense. This starts the "Vietnamization" of the Vietnam War.
• August 4 — At the Paris apartment of a French intermediary, U.S. representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuan Thuy begin secret peace negotiations. They will not lead to peace.
• August 9 — Followers of Charles Manson murder Sharon Tate, Folgers coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring at the Los Angeles home of Tate and her husband, Roman Polanski.
• August 14 — British troops are deployed in Northern Ireland following the three-day Battle of the Bogside.
• August 17 — Category 5 Hurricane Camille, the most powerful tropical cyclonic system at landfall in history, hits the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing $1.5 billion in damage (in 1969 dollars).
• August 21 — The political liberalization of Czechoslovakia called the "Prague Spring" ends when the Soviet Union and other members of the Warsaw Pact invade the country to halt the reforms.
• August 29 — Trans World Airlines flight 840 from Rome to Tel Aviv is hijacked and diverted to Syria.
• September 1 – A coup in Libya brings Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to power.
• September 2 — Ho Chi Minh, former president of North Vietnam, dies.
• September 5 — Lieutenant William Calley is charged with 6 counts of premeditated murder for the 1968 My Lai Massacre deaths of 109 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai, Vietnam.
• September 24 — The Chicago Eight trial begins in Chicago, Illinois.
• October 9 to October 12 — In Chicago, the United States National Guard is called in to control "Days of Rage" demonstrations involving the radical Weathermen, in connection with the "Chicago Eight" Trial.
• October 15 — Hundreds of thousands of people take part in "Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam" demonstrations across the United States.
• October 29 — The first message is sent over ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet.
• November 3 — U.S. President Richard Nixon addresses the nation on television and radio, asking the "silent majority" to join him in solidarity with the Vietnam War effort. Vice President Spiro Agnew denounces the President's critics as "an effete corps of impudent snobs" and "nattering nabobs of negativism."
• November 9 — A group of American Indians seizes Alcatraz Island for 19 months, inspiring a wave of renewed Indian pride and government reform.
• November 15 — In Washington DC, 250,000 to 500,000 protesters stage a peaceful demonstration against the Vietnam War.
• November 17 — Negotiators from the Soviet Union and the United States meet in Helsinki, Finland, to begin the SALT I negotiations to limit the number of strategic weapons on both sides.
• November 18 — Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., American businessman/statesman/politician dies. He was the father of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
• December 1 — The first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II.

Other key events of 1969:

• January 12 — Led Zeppelin, the first Led Zeppelin album, is released.
• January 12 — The New York Jets upset the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, 16-7. Joe Namath is the MVP of the game.
• January 20 — After 147 years, the last issue of The Saturday Evening Post is published. Publication will resume in 1971.
• January 26 — Elvis Presley begins recording tracks for the albums From Elvis in Memphis and Back in Memphis. Singles "Suspicious Minds," "In the Ghetto," and "Kentucky Rain" will be issued from those albums, certifying Elvis's comeback.
• January 30 — The Beatles give their last public performance, filming their playing of several tracks on the roof of Apple Records, London.
• March 4 — Jim Morrison is arrested in Florida for indecent exposure during a Doors concert three days earlier.
• March 20 — John Lennon and Yoko Ono are married at Gibraltar, and proceed to their honeymoon "Bed-In" for peace in Amsterdam.
• April 4 — Dr. Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart.
• May 25 — Midnight Cowboy, an X-rated, Oscar-winning John Schlesinger film, is released.
• May 26 to June 2 — John Lennon and Yoko Ono conduct their second Bed-In. This follow-up to their initial Amsterdam event is held at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec. On June 1, Lennon composes and records the song "Give Peace a Chance."
• June 7 — The rock group Blind Faith (Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood, Ric Grech) plays its first gig in front of 100,000 people in London's Hyde Park.
• June 22 — Longtime actress-singer Judy Garland dies of a drug overdose in her London home.
• July 3 – Musician Brian Jones, founder and original leader of the Rolling Stones, drowns in his swimming pool at his home in Sussex, England.
• August 15 to August 18 — The "Woodstock Festival" is held in upstate New York. It features some of the top rock musicians of the era. Over 400,000 people attend after knocking down fences and making the event a free one. 
• September 2 — The first automatic teller machine in the United States is installed in Rockville Centre, New York.
• September 22 — San Francisco Giant Willie Mays becomes the first player since Babe Ruth to hit 600 career home runs.
• October 31 — Wal-Mart incorporates as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
• November 10 — Sesame Street is broadcast for the first time on the National Educational Television (NET) network.
• November 25 — John Lennon returns his MBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) medal to protest the British government's involvement in the Nigerian Civil War.
• December 5  — The Rolling Stones release their Let it Bleed LP.
• December 6 – The "Altamont Free Concert" is held at Altamont Speedway in northern California. Hosted by the Rolling Stones, it is best known for the deaths and violence that occurred. It is viewed by many as the "end of the sixties."

* * * * *

On January 30, 1969, the Beatles made what was to be their last public performance, their famous impromptu "rooftop concert" atop the band's multimedia corporation Apple Corps headquarters at 3 Savile Row in London. They had just finished recording the two sides of the "Get Back/Don't Let Me Down" single which would be released in April 1969, and those songs were prominent in the "rooftop concert" lineup. Billy Preston accompanied the Beatles on organ on the record and at the concert.

Abbey Road didn't come out until September 1969 — just as I was beginning my senior year at Georgetown University. I had just turned 22.  (When I'd heard my first Beatles record, "I Want To Hold Your Hand" in December 1963, I had been 16. So the Beatles provided the soundtrack of my late teens and early 20s.)

The Beatles' only studio album after Abbey Road would be Let It Be, released in May 1970, but in the U.S. we had a compilation album, Hey Jude, that appeared in February 1970.

By then I was in Volunteers In Service To America, and my fellow VV's were just as much Beatles fans as I was. I had begun VISTA training in January 1970, and for some time afterward I was pretty much out of touch with the world of rock, beyond what I could hear on the radio. I just don't recall whether I even realized, as of April of that year, that the Beatles had broken up: Per Wikipedia, "Although in September 1969 John Lennon privately informed the other Beatles that he was leaving the group, there was no public acknowledgement of the break-up until Paul McCartney announced on 10 April 1970 he was leaving the Beatles."

Abbey Road was actually recorded after most of the tracks for the Hey Jude album were, but recording the Hey Jude tracks had been an ugly experience, one that had prompted longtime producer George Martin to exit the Beatles scene.

Martin was lured back for Abbey Road. Wikipedia says:

After the unpleasant recording sessions for the proposed Get Back album (ultimately released in 1970 as Let It Be), Paul McCartney suggested to music producer George Martin that the group get together and make an album "the way we used to do it," free of the conflict that had begun following the death of [Beatles manager] Brian Epstein and carried over to the sessions for the White Album. Martin agreed, but on the strict condition that all the group – particularly John Lennon – allow him to produce the record in the same manner as earlier albums and that discipline would be adhered to.

Yet the old camaraderie wasn't there during the Abbey Road sessions. There were arguments, often between John and Paul, and the handwriting was on the wall. So the last song to be recorded by the Beatles (though John did not even appear on it) would be George's "I Me Mine" — which became part of the Let It Be LP — work on which was finished on April 2, 1970. Eight days later would come news of the formal breakup of the band.

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.

The "Best" Beatles Album — Was It Sgt. Pepper?

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 Revolver. Right now, it's ...


Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Sgt. Pepper revolutionized the world of popular music when it appeared in the United Kingdom on Thursday, June 1, 1967. It was released one day later in the United States. Time magazine, according to Wikipedia, "declared it 'a historic departure in the progress of music.'"

In 1967:

U.S. astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee were killed when fire broke out in their Apollo 1 spacecraft during a launch pad test. On January 3, 1967, Jack Ruby, American killer of presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, died. On February 18, J. Robert Oppenheimer, an American physicist who was one of the "fathers of the atomic bomb," died. North Sea natural gas was first pumped ashore at Easington, East Riding of Yorkshire. U.S. labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa began serving an 8-year prison sentence for attempting to bribe a jury. Joseph Stalin's daughter, Svetlana, defected to the United States. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison claimed he could "solve" the John F. Kennedy assassination; his theory as based on a conspiracy that he said was planned in New Orleans. JFK's body was moved to its permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery. 

At historically black Howard University in Washington, DC, students protesting the Vietnam War draft shouted down the head of the U.S. Selective Service System, Gen. Lewis Hershey, with cries of "America is the Black man's battleground!" Martin Luther King Jr. denounced the Vietnam War during a religious service in New York City. Boxer Muhammad Ali refused military service on religious grounds and was stripped of his heavyweight title and not allowed to fight again for three years. Six days of race rioting in Newark, NJ, left 26 dead. Nine days of race rioting in Detroit left 43 dead. Race riots spread to other U.S. cities. Thurgood Marshall was nominated as the first African American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional all U.S. state laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

Murderer Richard Speck was sentenced to death in the electric chair for killing 8 student nurses in Chicago. The Six-Day War was fought between June 5 and 10 by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt (known at the time as the United Arab Republic), Jordan, and Syria. The British Parliament decriminalized homosexuality.  A bill legalizing abortion passed in the British Parliament.

American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell was assassinated in Arlington, Virginia. Communist guerrilla leader Che Guevara was captured and executed in Bolivia. Joan Baez and 38 others were arrested in Oakland, CA, for blocking the entrance to a military induction center. When tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters marched in Washington, DC, poet Allen Ginsberg symbolically chanted to "levitate" the Pentagon. 

Navy pilot John McCain, now a U.S. senator, was shot down over North Vietnam and made a POW. U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, in opposition to the Vietnam War. In Cape Town, South Africa, Dr. Christiaan Barnard carried out the world's first heart transplant. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a bill establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Once again, the Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded. 

The Doors released their first album, The Doors. Later, the Doors would sing "Light My Fire" on the "Ed Sullivan Show" in the U.S. and would defy network censors by including the word "higher," seemingly a drug reference. On February 20, Kurt Cobain was born. The "Summer of Love" took place in San Francisco; it came in the wake of a "Human Be-In" in Golden Gate Park. The Velvet Underground's first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, was released in the United States. The classic "Pirates of the Caribbean" attraction opened at Disneyland in California. Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu were married in Las Vegas. The Jimi Hendrix Experience released their debut album, Are You Experienced. The three-day Monterey Pop Festival occurred in California. 400 million viewers watched "Our World," the first live, international, television broadcast via satellite; it featured the debut of the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love." 

The Bee Gees released their first album, Bee Gees' 1st, in 1967. Pink Floyd released their debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The original lineup of Fleetwood Mac made its live debut in the U.K. at the Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival. Beatles manager Brian Epstein was found dead of a barbiturate overdose in his locked bedroom. The final episode of the TV series "The Fugitive" aired in the U.S. The TV series "The Prisoner" had its world broadcast premiere in Canada. The musical "Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical" opened off-Broadway. The Jimi Hendrix Experience released their Axis: Bold as Love album. The only psychedelic rock album by the Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesties Request, was released. On October 3, American folk singer Woody Guthrie died; the father of folk musician Arlo Guthrie, he was an early hero of Bob Dylan's. The Beatles released their Magical Mystery Tour LP.

* * * * *

The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper was manifestly a concept album. The idea was that the Beatles would wear uniforms and adopt the imaginary identities of four members of a once well-known marching band. This "Lonely Hearts Club" band, led by the fictional "Sgt. Pepper," would now cease "going in and out of style" and accordingly make its big comeback: "... may I introduce to you / The act you've known for all these years ... ." That song, the first track on the album, segued into "With A Little Help From My Friends," in which a sad-voiced band member, Billy Shears —portrayed by Ringo — tells us exactly how he "gets by" in life.

Sgt. Pepper was the first Beatles album to be issued with the same song lineup in the U.S. as in the U.K.:

1. Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
2. With A Little Help From My Friends
3. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
4. Getting Better
5. Fixing A Hole
6. She's Leaving Home
7. Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!
8. Within You Without You
9. When I'm Sixty-Four
10. Lovely Rita
11. Good Morning Good Morning
12. Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
13. A Day In The Life

The rest of songs in the lineup, starting with "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," did not exactly carry forward the original idea of portraying members of Sgt. Pepper's fictional band. Yet all were exceptional songs that showcased musical ideas never before used in popular music. Often the songs segued aurally from one to the next, and they all seemed to form a whole greater than the sum of the parts. Along the way, you heard (says Wikipedia) "a range of stylistic influences, including vaudeville, circus, music hall, avant-garde, and Western and Indian classical music."

Once you got to the final track on the album, "A Day In The Life," you were reveling in ecstasy, thinking it couldn't get much better than this. But then it did get better.

"A Day In The Life" commented on news stories John Lennon had read in the newspaper: "a lucky man who made the grade" and "blew his mind out in a car"; later "a crowd of people turned away," even though "the English army had just won the war." After several verses like that, John indicates "I'd love to turn you on" and steps aside, and we hear a seeming non sequitur from Paul:

Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late 

Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
Somebody spoke and I went into a dream

So both song motifs turned out to be about drugs! Then John returns to his main theme:

I read the news today, oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall 

And again he sings:

I'd love to turn you on ...

Then comes a musical cacophony, followed by a slowly fading piano chord ... and finally some incomprehensible voices occupying the "inner groove" of the vinyl LP. There have been many theories about who is saying what in that gobbledygook groove; I have no real thoughts on the matter. However, the main idea was to make the record player keep playing this incomprehensible hash over and over, instead of lifting the tone arm and stopping play of the record. Yet the record player I used would quit playing the record even before reaching the inner groove, so I had no idea of this behavior until years later. And on a CD or digital version of the recording, there is of course no mechanical way to keep playing the "inner groove" over and over and over ...

* * * * *

Sgt. Pepper was the first popular music LP whose (back) cover featured song lyrics:

Notice that the photo of Paul has him with his back to the camera. In 1966 a rumor had started that Paul was dead and had been replaced by a near-lookalike. Many fans thought this photo, inasmuch as it didn't show his face,  confirmed that!

* * * * *

Now: I invite you to listen to all the great stuff on this album ...

The "Best" Beatles Album — Was It Revolver?

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 Rubber Soul. Right now, it's ...


Revolver

The studio album that succeeded Rubber Soul, the Beatles' Revolver arrived in America on Friday, August 5, 1966, and in the U.K. on Monday, August 8.

In 1966:

The first "acid test" — a party promoting the use of the still-legal LSD — was held in California. Later in the year, LSD would be made illegal. 

In January, the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam reached 190,000; then, in April, 250,000. In March, race riots erupted in the Watts section of Los Angeles. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) endorsed the goal of Black Power. Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton founded the Black Panther Party. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts became the first African American to be elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations were held across the U.S. 

The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded in Washington, D.C.  

Actor Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California. In the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong began his Cultural Revolution to purge and reorganize China's Communist Party. 

The Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded. 

A few days before the release of Revolver, sniper Charles Whitman killed 14 people and wounded 32 from atop the University of Texas at Austin Main Building tower, after earlier killing his wife and mother.

The legendary album Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys and Bob Dylan's seminal album Blonde on Blonde were released. Dylan was injured in a motorcycle accident in Woodstock, NY, and would not be seen in public for more than a year. Grace Slick performed live for the first time with her new group, Jefferson Airplane. 

On the day Revolver was released in the U.S., groundbreaking took place in New York City for the building of the World Trade Center. A few days later, John Lennon apologized for his "more popular than Jesus" remark. On August 29, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, the Beatles gave their final live performance as a touring band. Later in the year, John Lennon met Yoko Ono at the Indica Gallery in London. And the Beatles began recording sessions for their Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP.

* * * * *

Back to Revolver: Its front cover was a work of art in itself, and its back cover gave us perhaps the coolest photo of the Beatles ever. I found the positioning of John in that photo interesting. As the nominal leader of the Beatles, he was pictured alone on the left side, with the other three facing him. Here are the front and back covers of Revolver:

* * * * *

But what about Yesterday... And Today?

Between Rubber Soul and Revolver in the U.S., Capitol Records released Yesterday... And Today, an album that contained:

1. Drive My Car
2. I'm Only Sleeping
3. Nowhere Man
4. Doctor Robert
5. Yesterday
6. Act Naturally
7. And Your Bird Can Sing
8. If I Needed Someone
9. We Can Work It Out
10. What Goes On
11. Day Tripper

These 11 songs included some omitted from the U.S. version of Rubber Soul, some other Beatles' songs that had been left out of earlier Capitol albums, and songs that had only been released as singles.

The Yesterday... And Today album cover was intended to be the one on the left below ...

... but owing to the fact that it depicted babies with severed heads and raw cuts of meat, a chastened Capitol hastily substituted the anodyne version shown on the right above.

* * * * *

Then came Revolver. In the U.S. it contained:

1. Taxman
2. Eleanor Rigby
3. Love You To
4. Here, There And Everywhere
5. Yellow Submarine
6. She Said She Said
7. Good Day Sunshine
8. For No One
9. I Want To Tell You
10. Got To Get You Into My Life
11. Tomorrow Never Knows

In the U.K.:

1. Taxman
2. Eleanor Rigby
3. I'm Only Sleeping
4. Love You To
5. Here, There And Everywhere
6. Yellow Submarine
7. She Said She Said
8. Good Day Sunshine
9. And Your Bird Can Sing
10. For No One
11. Doctor Robert
12. I Want To Tell You
13. Got To Get You Into My Life
14. Tomorrow Never Knows

The Brits got "I'm Only Sleeping," "And Your Bird Can Sing," and "Doctor Robert" on their version of Revolver — three songs that had already come out on Yesterday... And Today here in the U.S. The first and third of these were John's songs, the first bearing a message about the first-person subject's (John's own?) narcotized detachment, the second a cynical take on "doctors" who provide their patients with drugs. And so the lineup that put "I'm Only Sleeping" and "Doctor Robert" on the British version of Revolver spun the album further in a Lennon-like direction of commentary on the "scene" of the mid-1960s.

Meanwhile, George's "Taxman" was acerbic political commentary that bemoaned the huge portion of the Beatles' vast income that was being sucked up by high rates of taxation in Britain. George also provided Revolver with his raga-like, sitar-drenched "Love You To."

Paul's "Eleanor Rigby" was — surprisingly to many folks at the time, myself included — an existentialist anthem of great songwriting sophistication. I had an instructor at Georgetown — he was a Jesuit-in-training named John Cunningham — who cited it in his Philosophy of Man class as illustrative of the loss of innocence our baby-boom generation was experiencing.

Paul's other contributions to Revolver ran the gamut from the downbeat "For No One" to the unabashed love song "Here, There And Everywhere" to the pot anthem "Got To Get You Into My Life" to the upbeat, LSD-loving "Good Day Sunshine."

I have such a great memory of "Good Day Sunshine." In the summer of 1968,I had to take makeup courses in the early evenings at Georgetown. One evening I exited my classroom building and found its brick facade saturated with the red-tinted strong sunlight of the ending of the day. Out of the open window of a nearby dormitory, I could hear one of the Georgetown students playing "Good Day Sunshine" quite loudly on his record player. I was so thrilled at hearing and seeing "good day sunshine" at one and the same time, and I've never forgotten it.

John's "Tomorrow Never Knows" is extra special. John wrote, "Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, it is not dying." You could call this song philosophical; you could call it psychedelic. Whatever it was, it was and remains unique. John worked with Beatles' producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick to compress the sound of his voice and to include several aurally uninterpretable tape loops into the background accompaniment. This was an engineering tour de force in the days before digital audio made "sampling" easy. What you heard in "Tomorrow Never Knows" was like nothing you had heard before, but it also hung together as a song — unlike "Revolution 9" on the White Album.

So: Following Rubber Soul and preceding Sgt. Pepper, Revolver was a huge step in the evolution of the Beatles' music from rock 'n' roll to rock per se. Many fans consider Revolver to be the Beatles' finest album.

The "Best" Beatles Album — Was It Rubber Soul?

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 and the next few posts, I'll take a look back at all five of those. Right now, it's ...


Rubber Soul

Rubber Soul was the Beatles' sixth "studio" album — meaning an album of never-before-issued tracks recorded not in live performance but in a recording studio. This, like most Beatles LPs, was recorded in the famous EMI studio at Abbey Road.

According to Wikipedia, Rubber Soul "was the second Beatles album – after the British version of A Hard Day's Night – to contain only original material." Hence, it was the first original-material-only Beatles LP that we Americans could buy.

An early Christmas present, Rubber Soul arrived on Friday, December 3, 1965, in the United States and on Monday, December 6 in the U.K.

In 1965, the year Rubber Soul was released:

The first U.S. ground combat troops arrived in Vietnam. There were soon protest marches at the University of California, Berkeley. 

It was the year in which the miniskirt arrived, and it was the year advertising cigarettes on TV was banned in Britain. 

In the U.S., the Rolling Stones had their first no. 1 hit "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." 

Alabama state troopers attacked 525 civil rights demonstrators in Selma as they attempted to march to the state capitol of Montgomery. The event was called "Bloody Sunday." A second march, led this time by Martin Luther King, took place, but by prior agreement turned around peacefully at the Edmund Pettis Bridge. 

On December 8, the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council ("Vatican II") finished the four years of work that would modernize the church. 

In the U.S., the Rolling Stones finally had their first no. 1 hit "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction."

* * * * *

Wikipedia says the album name Rubber Soul came "from the term plastic soul, which popular African American soul musicians coined to describe Mick Jagger, a white musician singing soul music." I myself don't hear much Jagger-like "plastic soul" on Rubber Soul. To my mind, the Beatles could never compete with the Rolling Stones when it came to sounding black.

Instead, the Beatles have said that their inspiration for making an album such as Rubber Soul, one that clearly celebrates its folk-rock influences, came from Bob Dylan, with whom they had become friends and whom they wanted to emulate. Wikipedia:

Virtually all of the album's songs were composed immediately after the Beatles' return to London following their North American tour. The Beatles expanded their sound on the album, with influences drawn from African American soul music, the contemporary folk rock of Bob Dylan and the Byrds.

Dylan, by the way, has been credited with introducing the Beatles to marijuana. I think that occurred when the Beatles were on the North American tour mentioned in that quote.

For today's youngsters who don't realize who the Byrds were, they were a California group of (originally) five members who had been blown away by the Beatles' popularity but whose sound came from taking acoustic folk-style music and recording it with electric guitars. They were among the pioneers of folk rock, and their first hit was a cover version of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man." Later in the decade, David Crosby of the Byrds helped found the group Crosby, (Steven) Stills & (Graham) Nash.

* * * * *

The Rubber Soul I personally first heard was, of course, the American version:

1. I've Just Seen A Face
2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
3. You Won't See Me
4. Think For Yourself
5. The Word
6. Michelle
7. It's Only Love
8. Girl
9. I'm Looking Through You
10. In My Life
11. Wait
12. Run For Your Life

The English version, unbeknownst to me as a Yank, had:

1. Drive My Car
2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
3. You Won't See Me
4. Nowhere Man
5. Think For Yourself
6. The Word
7. Michelle
8. What Goes On
9. Girl
10. I'm Looking Through You
11. In My Life
12. Wait
13. If I Needed Someone
14. Run For Your Life

Stripped off in the U.S. were:

• Drive My Car
• Nowhere Man
• What Goes On
• If I Needed Someone

Added in the U.S. were:

• I've Just Seen A Face
• It's Only Love

This was to me the first "serious" Beatles album. The Beatles were not just trying to make hit songs now, but to take their music in new, more-"adult" directions. The group was now aiming in the direction of what in the late 1960s came to be called "rock" music, as distinguished from rock 'n' roll.

George Harrison was beginning to assert himself as a songwriter, instrumentalist, and lead singer. He played, quite surprisingly to most people at the time, an Indian sitar on John's "Norwegian Wood." And, per Wikipedia (I would learn later):

In the main guitar riff to [George's own song] "If I Needed Someone," the Beatles returned the compliment paid to them earlier in 1965 by the Byrds, whose jangly guitar-based sound [Roger] McGuinn had sourced from Harrison's playing the previous year.

Rubber Soul was the first Beatles compendium of songs written and sung by the various Beatles in their own individual rights, it seemed to me, rather than a group-oriented sound. I felt I could "hear" John's distinctive mentality in "In My Life," Paul's in "You Won't See Me." If Capitol had not stripped it out, I would have heard George's in "If I Needed Someone." Ditto, Ringo's distinctive mindset in "What Goes On."

On Rubber Soul and on the albums that came after it, you could always tell which Beatle's view of the world was being voiced by who was doing the lead singing.

There was also an international feel to Rubber Soul, with songs such as "Michelle" using French phrases and sounding French, and songs like "Norwegian Wood" sounding, in some indescribable way, sere and Scandinavian. That international approach impressed me as a freshman at Georgetown University who was making friends with students in the School of Foreign Service and in the Institute of Languages and Linguistics — many of whom were foreign-born or had spent time abroad.

It seemed to me in 1965 that as I was growing up and putting adolescence behind me, the Beatles' music, as evidenced by Rubber Soul, was likewise "growing up."

I should add, however, that not everybody who adored the Beatles in their "early Beatles" phase liked this new music of the group. I had a friend, Ricky, who was about four years younger than I was. He and his sister Gretchen (a year older than I) had every Beatles LP prior to Rubber Soul. When Rubber Soul came out, Ricky lost interest in the Fab Four, and I think Gretchen did too. And it was true to an extent: some of the raw excitement of the Beatles' early music had vanished.

"Introducing... the Beatles" Was on Vee-Jay — not on Capitol Records!

When Beatlemania struck America in early 1964, we had not one but two of the Fab Four's albums to choose from. One was Meet the Beatles! on Capitol Records:

The other was Introducing... the Beatles, on Vee-Jay:

Notice how Ringo's hair on the Introducing... the Beatles album cover is not yet really a "mop top." The photo must have been taken just after Ringo replaced Pete Best as the Beatles' drummer. Ringo had moved over to the Beatles from Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Here's what Ringo looked like, pre-Beatles:

Introducing... the Beatles was not released by Capitol Records because Capitol had turned it down.

Capitol Records was the North American subsidiary of EMI, a British multinational music recording and publishing, electronics, device and systems manufacturing company headquartered in London. The record label Parlophone, the one which Beatles records came out on in Britain, was a sister label to Capitol in the U.S. So it was natural that Capitol had first dibs on releasing Beatles records in this country. But Capitol didn't "get" the Beatles — thought their popularity would not translate to this country — when their first crest of popularity arrived in England in 1963, and it passed on releasing its own version of the very first Beatles LP that came out on Parlophone.

At that point, Vee-Jay, a canny independent record label, picked up the rights to the album. After dithering during much of 1963, Vee-Jay released Introducing... the Beatles on January 10, 1964.

It's a kind of poetic justice that that happened. Vee Jay was known for its roster of "some of the most talented rhythm and blues artists of the era," according to Earl L. Stewart's African American Music: An Introduction (p. 210). For example, "Vee-Jay scored its first million seller in 1961 with the release of 'Duke of Earl' by Gene Chandler."

Vee-Jay's artists were mostly African American, although Vee-Jay was the first record company to release early hits by the Four Seasons. It released "Sherry," the Four Seasons' first No. 1 hit, in 1962, and several of the other early Four Seasons hits subsequently were released on Vee-Jay.

It was truly appropriate that the earliest Beatles music came out here on an R&B label such as Vee-Jay, because the early Beatles were inspired by black R&B and by early rock 'n' roll records by both black and white artists that R&B helped spawn.

Vee-Jay, which was African American-owned, released records by:

• The Dells
• The Spaniels
• The El Dorados
• The Impressions
• The Pips (later Gladys Knight and the Pips)
• Jerry Butler
• Dee Clark
• Betty Everett
• Priscilla Bowman
• Gene Chandler
• Jimmy Reed
• Memphis Slim
• John Lee Hooker
• The Five Blind Boys
• The Staple Singers
• The Highway QC's
• The Harmonizing Four
• The Sallie Martin Singers
• The Swan Silvertones
• The Gospel Harmonizers
• Comedian Dick Gregory

(I get this list from Earl L. Stewart's book and from Wikipedia.)

To be fair, the early Beatles' repertoire did not "mine" the music of black Vee-Jay artists the way it did the black artists of other record labels such as Smokey Robinson ("You Really Got a Hold on Me"), Chuck Berry ("Roll Over Beethoven"), Little Richard ("Long Tall Sally"), the Marvelettes ("Please Mister Postman"), etc.

But it's hard to see why not. After all, R&B, early R&R, soul, gospel, blues — it all came out of the same African American musical tradition, even when it was interpreted by white artists such as the Beatles, the Four Seasons, the Beach Boys, the Righteous Brothers, and the Rolling Stones.

Clever Ruse Gets These Teens in to Meet the Beatles

On this date 50 years ago — Monday, August 15, 1966 — a bunch of 15- and 16-year-old boys cooked up a scheme that would get them into D.C. Stadium (as it was called before it was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Stadium) to actually meet the Beatles and then watch their Washington D.C. concert.

They did so by impersonating the group that was the opening act on the program. That group was called the Cyrkle, and it had scored a big hit with a song called "Red Rubber Ball" that was co-written by Paul Simon of Simon & Garfunkel.

Today's Washington Post's story is told here.

Ticket to the Beatles'
Aug. 15, 1966, show at D.C. Stadium
Note: Upper Deck seat was just $4.00!

 Beatles take a bow,
Aug. 15, 1966, D.C. Stadium

The Beatles were on what turned out to be their last tour ever. (It was also their third U.S. tour.) I was not able to go to the show, as I was working evenings at an Arthur Murray Dance Studio. I was supposed to be on hand to sell (expensive) ballroom dancing lessons to potential female customers, with whom I would dance briefly and then make my pitch. I was 18 years old. Problem was, ballroom dancing was in serious decline. There were few potential new customers at the best of times, and on this particular evening there were none. At the moment I imagined the Beatles were taking the stage at the stadium, I was stranded in a lonely office and wishing I was on hand for the concert.

I may have dreamed this part up, but my recollection now seems to be that the windows of this office were open — even in the hot Washington summertime — and I could just barely hear the sound of fans screaming as it wafted in from the open-air concert several blocks away.

By the way, this tour came right on the heels of John Lennon's faux pas in stating the the Beatles were "bigger than Jesus" ... The final show was the now-famous one at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966.