After the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour LP the best spent the next year doing work on The White Album.'The White Album' presents the alpha and omega of Planet Beatles. From the cheery, teeth-grating pap of Macca's 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da' to the frazzled sound collage of Ono-Lennon's 'Revolution 9'. From the serious concern for the group's dwindling esprit de corps on George's 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' to the lusty debunking of Fab fanaticism on John's 'Glass Onion'. A sweetener for every bitter pill, with even Lennon - scabrous and nerve-shredding on 'Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey' - providing a final, soft-cushioned landing on the dreamily orchestrated, Ringo-sung 'Good Night'.
Their first album released on their own Apple label, 'The White Album' was conceived in a mood of increasing insularity allied to a 'we can do anything' confidence. Certainly there are songs where aloofness or polished technique - George's 'Piggies', Mr Mac's tiresome '20s pastiche 'Honey Pie' - stand in the way of feeling and substance. But the sheer abundance of material, particularly that produced by a newly activated Lennon emerging from his LSD-laced cocoon, ensures it remains a flawed, funny, mischievous and cranky masterpiece.
As even the twisted brain of Charles Manson found, 'The White Album''s array of sonic terrorism, pop disposability and finger-plucked acoustic dreamscapes provides something for everyone. Mac's heavy metal 'Helter Skelter'; John raging and suicidal on 'Yer Blues', glacial and confessional on the dead-mother-tribute 'Julia', and caustic and Maharishi-roasting on 'Sexy Sadie'.
The exuberant, opener, 'Back In The USSR', takes their ability to transform influences (namely The Beach Boys and Chuck Berry) to a soaring new level. Though the prevailing mood is towards post-Pepper studio simplicity, 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun' is the album's scintillating epic, Lennon at his most musically daring and emotionally complex.
Making a virtue of the internal dissent which would upend them over the course of the next 12 months, 'The White Album' is many things. The work of practised professional craftsmen, musical archivists, spiritual seekers (Harrison's redemptive 'Long Long Long' one of many hidden delights) and agit rockers out to capture the tenor of the times ('Revolution 1' and 'Revolution 9'), it shows that, even stretched to the limit, The Beatles' riches were manifold. Their instinctive conceptual genius was unmatched in '68 and remains unchallenged 30 years later.
Released: November 25, 1968 Label: Apple Numbers: SWBO-101 (stereo only) (some in mono) Total Time: 93:09 UK Chart Info:Entry Date: 7th December 1968
Highest Position: 1 ... for 7 weeks from 7th December 1968 + 1 week from 1st February 1969
Weeks in Chart: 22 + 2 from 5th September 1987 (CD release ... reached number 18 !)
Back In The USSR Recorded 22nd August 1968 - 5 takes. Overdubs 23rd August 1968 onto take 5, creating take 6. Final mix - take 6
