The Beatles at their very worst.

The White Album was made when all the Beatles were sour and angry. Paul and George hated Yoko being in the studio, and John disliked that. Ringo just kept with the flow of the group. The White Album is considered good because of the excellent songs it contains, like Back in the USSR, Dear Prudence, and others. But I think the White Album is the very worst Beatles album because of the ear-splitting trash it contains. Wild Honey Pie just makes my ears bleed, and Revolution 9 isn't even a song.



But, even through all that, die-hard Beatle fans who don't have it should buy it anyway, and try to ignore the horrible songs. Disappointing, but still good.

The greatest album ever made!

The White Album is not just music it is an experience and a world unto itself.  I am not a professional music critic and my words fall far short of conveying the absolute brilliance of the album (for a truly worthy analysis check out the work of famous Beatlologist John C. Winn) Some critics say this was the death nell of the Beatles pointing to the extreme variety of the style of the songs on the album.  Others critics go further to say it is a collection of solo songs.

In my mind nothing could be further than the truth. On one level it reflects the chaos of the year was released (1968) on while another it is a continuation of the Sgt. Pepper album as their are definite unifying elements to this work. Further it is the final mature flowering of the whole Beatles musical aesthetic. 

The Beatles flirtation with sounds and visually evoking lyrics of Victorianna began as early as the song "Penny Lane" and continued through Sgt. Pepper and into the White Album. Whereas Sgt. Pepper (even with it having the song "Day in the Life") is the bright and happy side of psychedelia, The White Album (despite a song like Oba-de-obla-da), while I still consider it psychedelia, is dark and brooding (helping with this is a dominating bass through out) . All of the songs are musically constructed in a way that dramatically emphasize contrast as if they were all played with the keys at the opposite ends of the keyboard while neglecting the keys in between as if, if I may wax poetic, the bright high notes are akin to the prevailing low notes as if aurally we are staring at stars on a black sky.  The placement of the songs are no accident as they flow well into each other. This was no cut and paste job by George Martin.

In some ways the record is reminiscent of the Christmas recordings put out in a limited edition to members of the Beatles fan club as there is much under its moodiness that is tongue in cheek. Are the Beatles putting on false whiskers and playing the fool or is there something darker? I think there is. While like any great piece of great art it is open to interpretation but allow me to take the liberty of analyzing the album one song at a time for a section. As the album brings me into a state of rapture I could easily write about each and every song but I will limit myself so that I do not bore the reader to tears.

I do not mean to dissect so as to try to discover true meaning along the old saw of "taking apart the baby's rattle only to find that it doing so it no longer rattles". I endeavor rather to give some of my own interpretations to an album that is in the end undefinable while attempting to debunk some of its critics.

Back in the USSR: In my mind this song sets the stage for the entire album. It is both a parody of the Beach Boys and the Soviet Union. Their is a contrast to the high falsetto background (ALA Beach Boys) and the deep voice manic singing of the song itself.  Is it political or musical satire? Well, yes and no.  But it sets us up for a somewhat paranoiac vision of the world that continues through out the album. At the end of the song the singing of the high falsetto (whooweee wooowoo, whooweee wooowoo) merging into the sound of a jet aircraft engine is answered with the  single pinging of a guitar in the next song.

Dear Prudence: Starting with an unaccompanied pinging of slow paced notes on the single string of a guitar the song starts off starkly (at the very beginning of the song we still hear the sound of the jet engine in the background providing another linkage). Where was that aircraft of the previous song going? We can assume it was going to India into the recent past of the Beatles trip to India as "Dear Prudence" was written for Prudence Farrow, sister of Mia Farrow, and played to her to comfort her as has John Lennon said on a Bootleg of the making of the White Album "the poor girl was slowly going insane".After a few versus the pinging guitar is accompanied by a deep heavy fuzzy bass, Harrison trills, and a now driving piano continuing to make another song with somewhat sweet lyric schizophrenic in the dark music that accompanies the words. The song ends with the following streaming high notes of on a piano. Which flows into...

Glass Onion:The song starts abruptly with quick sharp drum beats. The back beat of drums actually dominates the song. But Lennon's voice and the accompanying violin strings continue the the aethetic of the streeming piano effect of the previous song. The notes of violin strings themselves rise and fall like an angry sea. The lyric of the song itself is a sweeping history of the Beatles making thinly masked references to earlier Beatle songs. The title of the song tells it all -a "glass onion" made of layer up layer yet transparent. Though a somewhat upbeat song with dark over tones the song ends with ominous violin music (de-de-de-de. DE-DE-DE-DE) which flows into...

Obla-de-obla-da: The song starts out with the happy ching-a-ling on the piano (an aesthetic continuation and metamorphosis from the notes of the violin now modified into a bright De-Dah-DEE-DEE DEE from the last song) and is followed by bass note reminiscent of a German Ompa band. The lyrics are again somewhat simple, telling a simple story of the  love affair of Desmond and Molly ("Desmond has a barrow in a market place Molly is a singer in a band") that is somewhat reminiscent of Victorian ballads (see the book printed in Victorian times "Bab Ballads" -again Victorianna !) but towards the end Desmond and Molly are changing roles! (cross dressing as it were) where Desmond is now doing his "pretty face" and is a singer in a band.  In the background one hears sardonic syncopated laugher ("hah-hah-hah"). We find ourselves originally being sucked in by sweetness that comes close to banality into confusion and darkness. The conclusion of the song lyric  gives us even more confusion and a sense of paranoia with the line "if you want some fun take Obla-de bla -da." Turning the song on its head into a possible drug song. Flowing into...

Wild Honey Pie: The high ching-a-ling of the piano of Obla-de-obla-da continues as an even higher pinging of a guitar sounding almost bell like. It is musically and lyrically sparse but also complex. The springy pining is answered by deep drum strokes that almost resemble a heart beat.

Some critics call the song a cast off but the melody is quite reminiscent of some medieval minstrel songs (It is also somewhat musically akin to the song "Fixing a Hole" that appears on the Sgt. Pepper album). The words "honey pie" are almost screamed and almost off key. The song ends with the almost spoken singing "whoa honey pie whoa" And whoa it goes in that the word signals a slight shift in the musical flow. Yet the resonance of that spoken word flows into the resonance of the guitar in the next song...

The Continuing Story of Bungalowbill: The song starts out with the sound of a Spanish guitar. The acoustic guitar solo's last notes are slowly spaced lulling us again into a type of complacency, a trick we should be now be familiar with from those lads from Liverpool, as it is followed by raucous singing of the chorus "Hey Bungalowbill, what did you kill Bungalowbill?" except or the chorus most of the words are spoken on the back drop of a creepy sounding bass. The song tells a somewhat absurd satirical story of a hunter ("an all American bullet head Saxon mother's son" -now there's social satire for you). The story concludes with Bill's hunting part being "taken by surprise" but then it continues ambiguously "Bill and his elephants were taken by surprise so Captain Marvel zaps him right between the eye's -zap!" Is Captain Marvel a member of Bungalowbill's hunting party (or is the name Captain Marvel synonymous with Bungalowbill himself) shooting a tiger ("where the mighty tiger lies")? Or is Bungalowbill and his party taken by surprise and subsequently shot by Captain Marvel?

The story ends with an epilogue in the form of a joke "The children asked him if to kill was not a sin""Not when he looked so fierce" his mommy butted in"(these words being spoken by Yoko Ono)"If looks could kill it would have been us instead of him".

I could go on but I will spare you (unless you want me to go on) but I hope by now I have enticed you to enter the complex dark psychedelic world of The White Album (my favorite song on the album is "Cry Baby Cry" a song that would require an entire page for me to extol its virtues).

To quote the first line of the last song on the album "Now it's time to say goodnight". Happy listening but don't forget to check for the monsters under your bed.

The White Album

This supremely eclectic and sublime collection of songs and sounds by the "Fabulous Four" most assuredly bumps the Christ out of one Engelbert Humperdinck. No fooling.