Beatles – The White Album

The year is 1968. Like the dinosaurs before them, The Beatles rule the Earth. They are at their most personally fragmented, musically at their most self-referential (see Glass Onion: “I told you about the walrus and me-man/You know that we’re as close as can be-man/Well here’s another clue for you all/The walrus was Paul”), enlightened by spiritual escapades in the Indian sun and at the cusp of everything that followed, deaths, Wings and whinges.

It is the little songs that work so well here too. Yes, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and the Beach Boys winking of Back In The USSR have probably had more airplay than all the other tracks on the first LP put together, but they’re in no way the best.

The White Album isn’t the Holy Grail that some fawners seem to be adamant about pushing, but it is still a terrifically diverse and, at times, frenetic artefact and as listenable on the hundredth playing as the first. Like the Libertines some 35 years later, the White Album is the stage on which the original boys in the band played out their soap opera. The artistic one-upmanship of Lennon and McCartney, the directional pulls, the self-obsessions, the nods to the most observant fans, the spin-off legendary tales of feuds and sojourns… And sometimes they even sound like they’re having fun: Wild Honey Pie.

Lennon gets to put all his rock n’roll sensibilities into a big prom dress and swing them around, pleading and whining to his heart’s content. McCartney gets to go mad with the studio equipment and branch into the sub-genre-plundering that would mark out much of his post-script work. Harrison gets his mates involved and Ringo… well, Ringo is just Ringo.

They bask in the ability to pastiche their heroes (Rocky Racoon’s not a long shot from a bad Bob Dylan impression) and Lennon’s well documented love of the rock and the roll (his infamous jukebox was of course stock full of the stuff) is as well-hidden as a ferret in Compo’s trousers.

Stupid songs, they’ve made a few. In no particular order: Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Piggies and the irrepressible The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill. I know I shouldn’t… but I love it! The really wonderful thing about Bungalow Bill is that it gets you all silly and singing along and then plunges you headlong into one of the most beautiful guitar songs ever written.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps, with its dream line up of Clapton and Harrison, climbs and chimes, gripping your heart and forcing it upwards, forming a lump in your throat the size Andover. While My Guitar Gently Weeps, with its quasi-sexual moans and groans and unstoppable electric wail, is the stuff of wet dreams for any subsequent pretenders. And ha! In your face Lennon and McCartney, one of the most endearing, enduring tracks was written by the boy, George Harrison. I love that.

Happiness Is A Warm Gun follows, with it’s poster-ready phrases “Mother Superior jumped the gun…” “bang, bang, shoot, shoot”. Again Lennon’s rockabilly cravings are indulged, and this is surely an uncomfortable listen for anyone who knows the story of St John’s death. Which would be everyone.

I’m So Tired, while nice and cute, highlights that whatever people say about Paul, John was just as incapable at resisting cringing throw-away rhymes. “I’m so tired/I haven’t slept a wink/I’m so tired/My mind is on the blink”. But it’s all forgiven with the little rock-breakouts throughout.

The piece de resistance of the ‘little’ songs is Blackbird. So simple “Blackbird singing in the dead of night/take these broken wings and learn to fly”, so lilting, gentle and sweet.

And by stark contrast: Piggies. Less said about that the better.

Why Don’t We Do It In The Road? serves more as a jaunty commercial break betwixt Don’t Pass Me By and I Will. A commercial that is advertising al fresco shagging that is.

And then there’s the ladies: Prudence, Martha, Julia, Sadie. Yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn. I don’t know why it is but whenever there’s a girl involved, the quality of the song takes a nose dive. Hmn…

Birthday, the opening track of the second record, is a fantastic explosion of rock. Made to be played loud it isn’t a far cry from the White Stripes. Not a far cry at all. A blistering opening to another jam-packed record. And Yer Blues, again, indulges the explorer, nay tourist, at the heart of The Beatles. A rocksteady Blues number, not an overly great one, but a valiant crack at pacing out a much-trodden path.

Mother Nature’s Son could have been lifted – except for issues of era and logistics – from Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. Lovely. And then in the style to which we’re now accustomed the tune, genre and pace takes a hard left and we’re thrown from the buggy and into Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey. Actually, while it’s a toe-tapper enough, the name is far better than the actual song. Don’t you just hate that? A bit like getting a cat just because you think of a great name for it (nearly did that myself… one day I’ll get my Chairman Miaow).

And then there’s the punk – yes PUNK as in “make my day” as in nearly ten years later officially – freak out of Helter Skelter. If you haven’t heard this, and you have previously marked Macca’s card as a Frog Chorus-writing, puppy faced, vegetable lover with a penchant for slightly battered looking blondes, you’d be right. But he also managed to write some amazing, Stand Up Today And Be Counted, corkers.

And then there are the Revolutions (1 and 9 respectively). Ridiculously over-indulgent of course but come on, at the time they were pretty much demi-gods and the fact ego didn’t take over for all 30 tracks is something of a small mercy. I think we can forgive two. Besides if you ever need to scare some animals out of a room or perhaps make insurgent terrorists talk, the track that put the ‘mental’ in experimental (Revolution 9) is handy to keep in the premises.