My entire premise here is EXTREMELY presumptuous and arrogant. But since this blog has always been about how I feel and uncensored in that mission - I will dive right in.
The Beatles are the greatest rock-n-roll group ever, with the best songs and the best albums...
...but...
"The White Album" is too long and is loaded with less than great songs.
George Martin says it should've been one kick ass LP and I agree entirely.
The problem of course, is when they recorded this record they were pretty much fed up with each other. Also John getting into more absurdly hard drugs and latching on to a kooky avant guard screamer didn't help either. Don't get me wrong, I love Yoko these days and don't blame her for breaking up the band more than a dozen other factors - but she was one more element in the kindling that saw the boys fighting a lot more.
So when they made the record it was either John or Paul or George (and Ringo for one song) and three other lads. And when it was time to put out the record, the decision was made to make it a double LP no doubt because feelings were frayed enough at that point. I really believe, as a complete non-expert in all things Beatles, that this had to be a driving factor in the decision to just say "fuck it" and include everything, rather than make the hard choices and kill babies in the name of making a great album.
So, I took the liberty of doing it myself.
My two prime missions in track selection were -
-The record should feel more like a group rather than individuals. So it should feel balanced between John and Paul and also include George and Ringo.
-To help in this aim, of making the record more cohesive, it should be first and foremost a rock-n-roll project. There are so many great 'bangers' to choose from, it seems a natural approach that this album be focused on rocking out, rather than the more fanciful and folksy stuff.
Side 1
- Back In the USSR
- Dear Prudence
- Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
- While My Guitar Gently Weeps
- Helter Skelter
- Happiness is a Warm Gun
- Julia
Side 2
- Birthday
- Sexy Sadie
- Blackbird
- Piggies
- Don't Pass Me By
- Everybody's Got Something to Hide
- I Will
It should be noted that side one is slightly over the 23 minutes that an LP in 1968 would be capable of holding, but side two is enough under that all of these songs could indeed fit on the record. That was my rule for rebuilding this LP, it had to be doable, somewhat. In the end, I really like this sequencing of songs.
Back in the USSR segueing into Dear Prudence was and will forever be one of the greatest album transitions in rock history. Left that alone.
Omitted Glass Onion (more on the rejected tracks later) because it's as indulgent and as self-absorbed as anything the Beatles ever produced. This could only be a John song, he was very much into himself at the time.
Obla-Di gets a lot of flack for being fluff, but it's THE ear-worm of the record and as iconic as any other song on the entire original double LP.
While My Guitar is not necessarily my cup of tea as far as my personal tastes go, but there's no denying that it's an absolute statement of George's arrival as a songwriter that rivals those other two blokes. That he brought in Eric Clapton to solo only cements his commitment to making the very best song that he could. It's an epic power house that deserves to be front and center on this record.
Helter Skelter goes here because I really see the whole album as a confirmation of The Beatles as rock-n-roll artists. As you can see, I left off a bunch of the softer songs, because while they are worthy in their own right - the record really works best I think adhering to the rock aesthetic. This song follows George's crying guitar epic and cranks up the rock even more.
We slow down just a tad with probably one of the most underrated and underplayed tracks by The Beatles ever. Happiness is a Warm Gun is juvenile yes, but it's also delightful in it's bawdiness and it's hippie languishing vibe. A very unique song, a bit of a head scratcher. Both whimsical and sophomoric. I really love it and don't know what to think of it at the same time.
Julia caps off the first side with perhaps the most brutally personal song John has done before or since. Yes, this is his mom. She was struck by a car and killed when John was a kid. And although his relationship with her up to that point was complicated, her passing was still beyond traumatic for him. Plaintive and mournful, it's impossible not to be moved by this ode to John's mummy.
Birthday is indeed a bit of a gimmick, but it's also super upbeat (we need it after Julia) and catchy and now in popular culture - absolutely iconic. It is THE birthday song, after the ACTUAL birthday song.
Sexy Sadie could be passed off as just more lazy, bluesy based music by John (a trend that would stay with him as long as he was in the heroin pit, another five years or so) but what saves this track is the awesome lyrics and the story behind it. I just LOVE this refutation of the cult that was the con-artist maharishi that The Beatles sought out. For a great expose' of all of it, you could do no better than this blunt calling-out of bullshit. There's also a great chunk of the new Peter Jackson documentary that deals with it and makes this song even more delightful to listen to.
Blackbird is simply one of Paul's best songs. That is all.
Piggies is a bit odd, but as with Warm Gun, it has a delightful and somewhat dated hippie vibe that makes it fun. I also think it's important that George have at least a song on each side.
Don't Pass Me By is Ringo's contribution, and his first crack at songwriting that makes it onto a record - and it's great. Best of all, it gets us back to rocking out.
Me and My Monkey is a kick ass rocker. Love it so much. Reminds me in the best way of The Beatles best uptempo bangers. This goes alongside 'Hey Bulldog' as my favorite underrated, underplayed and under-appreciated Beatles bops.
I Will and we slow things down for the capper. A lovely bookend, soft yet upbeat to close it out. A simple love song, but very powerful - as this is what was ultimately The Beatles best selling point. Yes, the L word. Unconditional and forever.
As always, when you kill babies, you're going to lose some that you really love. There were indeed tracks that I adore that did not make the cut:
Mother Nature's Son - Paul does melody better than anyone, and this track is one of his loveliest. But as I mentioned, my goal with the white album was to make it first and foremost a Beatles album (meaningful equal attention to both Paul and John as well as room for George and Ringo), and the best way to accomplish this in my view was to make it primarily a rock-n-roll record. There are only so many slots available for the soft stuff, and though Paul is the master, this is not his album alone.
Martha My Dear - committed for the same reasons as MNS. Too similar to Paul's other work, and too much of it. I do absolutely LOVE this song though.
Savoy Truffle - I absolutely love this rocker, and probably should've found room for it - but again I didn't want to shove aside another Beatle to make room for more of the same from John. He's got the 'Monkey' song as his big banger, as well as Prudence (one of his all time greats) and Gun and Sadie, plus Juila as his ballad. He gets 5 and Paul gets 6, George 2 and Ringo 1. I didn't necessarily want to be bean counting to determine the track selection - I thought it more important that the album FEEL balanced. If I added Savoy then I have to lose a Paul song, and sorry - those are all just too strong and iconic to remove
And then there are the leftovers - some of these I still like quite a bit, but others I think belong in the Anthology box set rather than on an actual Beatles album.
Glass Onion - see above comments. Fart sniffing nonsense.
Wild Honey Pie - a non-song, They Might Be Giants Fingertips filler nonsense. Indulgent and mildly off-putting.
I'm So Tired - I know there are those who love this sort of thing, but to me it's just more heroin rock from John. Meh.
Rocky Raccoon - Love that it inspired the name of one of my favorite Marvel characters. Yes, it's a fun and interesting Western movie ballad. Doesn't really fit the rock aesthetic of much of the album, certainly doesn't fit my mission statement of making a rock record.
Bungalow Bill - I would love to know which song came first, this one or Rocky. Both seem cut of the same cloth. Whimsical and cinematic, but ultimately more for kids and stoned 20 year olds than anyone else.
Why Don't We Do It in the Road - Speaking of kids, this one is pretty middle-schoolish. I know because when I was in middle school I thought this song was awesome. Why don't we do it in the road, heh heh, uh huh huh... Beevis and Butthead no doubt would love this song most of all. I do love that the story behind this song was Paul seeing two monkeys in India going at it in the middle of the road and musing as to why people don't typically do this as well. It makes me chuckle.
Revolution I - very strange to me this remix and rearrangement. Completely unnecessary filler, especially because it's an alt version of a completely KICK ASS single. The Beatles are unique in rock in that their singles truly do stand on their own, for the most part separate from the albums. If the original rocker 'Revolution' had been included on this album, and not this tepid John heroin version, it of course would make the cut. It's interesting, because although this bluesy version was recorded first - it was the hard rocker that we all know and love that was released first (as the other side of Hey Jude) - so in my mind, the single is the definitive version and this is just John being John.
Yer Blues - Another 'Don't Let Me Down' blues-a-thon from John. Sorry, I got rid of all of them for this record.
Long Long Long - swing and a miss for George. Sounds unfinished and experimental.
Honey Pie - lovely melody and lyrics from Master Paul. Too light for a hard rock record and also too similar to the smarmy storytelling already accounted for with Obla-Di.
Cry Baby Cry - is actually lovely as well. Love the all too brief accordion work and enjoy the lyrical play, for once uncharacteristically inspired from John in a period of time for him where inspiration didn't come around often enough. This one might not belong in this reject pile, but I still don't think it makes the cut. It does have an unfinished vibe to it, similar to the Let It Be sessions. The Paul coda is superfluous and indulgent.
Revolution 9 - pure shit.
Good Night - nice effort to give Ringo a song. But it's plodding and forgettable. Not the button they hoped it would be.
*****
So yeah, I've got a lot of nerve and no real right to be so critical of the lads. Paul says it in the anthology doc - "It doesn't need fixing, it's the fucking White Album. Get over it."
Yes, he's right of course. But I still enjoy these thought experiments - even though they are far more indulgent than any music The Beatles ever created that's for sure.
But I stand my assertion that the White Album is too long and has too much substandard stuff on it.
I really believe it would've been better had it simply been a rock record, a step away from Sgt. Peppers indulgence and a step back to what The Beatles have always done best. That doesn't mean lose the creativity, the story telling, the interesting characters and compelling melodies - but it does mean to lay off the bluesy wailing (John) and go easy on the fairy tales (Paul) and make the best damn rock record you can.
I believe my redux achieves that, and I enjoy looking at what might have been. It doesn't diminish what was, real life is often a lot less streamlined and more imperfect that what we would like it to be.
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