Drugs, God, and the White Album

Every double album should aim to be as discombobulated and daring as this.

design by Richard Hamilton

John Lennon: lead vocals, guitar...maybe bass on “Helter Skelter”?

Paul McCartney: lead vocals, bass, some guitar and drums

George Harrison: guitar, lead vocals on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Piggies,” “Long Long Long,” and “Savoy Truffle”

Ringo Starr: drums, percussion, lead vocals and piano on “Don’t Pass Me By,” solo vocals on “Goodnight”

and many, many guests, including Pattie Boyd and Yoko Ono on "Birthday," Maureen Starkey on "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill," and Eric Clapton on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

Produced by George Martin with Chris Thomas, engineered by Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott

Author’s Note: This post corresponds to the “White Album” episode of Double Album December, originally posted 12/20/2024. Save for audio/editing jokes that cannot be included in a text format, this is a faithful adaptation of the review chapter. To watch the full episode, scroll to the bottom of this post or visit my YouTube channel here.

The White Album is the most fallible unassailable project ever made.

The lore alone warranted 50 minutes of a 73-minute video: the death of Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ trip to Rishikesh and whatever the hell went down with the Maharishi. The Esher demos, John Lennon’s divorce and drug bust, Ringo quits the band then re-joins the band. George Martin gets fed up with all the infighting and goes on vacation. (His assistant fills in, he’ll go on to work with the Sex Pistols.) Geoff Emerick gets fed up with Paul talking back to George Martin and quits the whole project (his replacement went on to work for Bowie.) Yellow Submarine. Jane Asher dumping Paul McCartney on live TV. Magic Alex. The Tate-LaBianca murders. Apple Corps. Enter. Yoko. Ono.

Pictured (L-R): Cynthia Lennon, Jane Asher, Paul McCartney, Donovan, Mia Farrow, George Harrison, the Maharishi, Mike Love, John Lennon, and Pattie Boyd in Rishikesh.

I get the intrigue. There’s so much mystery surrounding this album. Who played drums on Dear Prudence? (Probably Ringo.) Who played bass on Helter Skelter? (Probably Paul.) Who played the stock flamenco guitar sample on The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill, and when was it recorded? What the fresh hell is Revolution 9? For 56 years now, people have been deconstructing the White Album. Fans have been taking it apart and rearranging it for as long as it’s been around.

I guess Paul isn’t a fan of that. He said in Anthology:

“I’m not a great one for that whole, ‘Y’know maybe it was too many of that.’ What do you mean? It was great, it sold. It’s the bloody Beatles’ White Album, shut up!”

quoted from: The Beatles, Anthology (2000)

Full stop: I will not be doing a track-by-track breakdown of the White Album. If I devoted just one minute of run time to every song, we’d have had a 30-minute review section on the video version ALONE. That’s just not practical, for me or you. We’d be taking time away from the songs that deserve more than one minute of run time, or one line of text. There are 93 minutes of material across 30 songs...or 28 songs, one Wild Honey Pie, and one “Rev 9.” It’s too much to account for in-depth in one video, and I don’t do two-parters. Instead,I’ll gonna state what I like, what I dislike, use specific songs as examples. I’ll try hit something about every track; elaborating on my favorites. Hopefully, I can show you why the White Album is my favorite Beatles album. I love it for everything it is.

There’s something here for everybody. Rock-and-roll? Back in the USSR. Novelty songs? Birthday. Acousticballads? I Will, Julia, and Blackbird. Sinatra-esque crooners? Goodnight. 1930s jazz? Honey Pie. Country?Rocky Raccoon. Blues? Yer Blues. Story songs? Bungalow Bill. Musique concrete? “Rev 9.” Songs about monkeys fucking, Eric Clapton eating so many sweets his teeth were rotting out of his head, and Animal Farm? Why Don’t We Do It In the Road, Savoy Truffle, and Piggies. Ska?? Why not? If you don’t like Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, congratulations you hate joy, fun, and whimsy!

A quick note: I used all three of my pressings to compile this review. I own a 1970s West German press, a ’70s American press, and the 2018 Giles Martin remix; the latter I was thoroughly disappointed by. My personal favorite of the bunch was my German pressing, I found it well-balanced on my stereo system.Though my US press really pulled through with the instrumental on “Back In The USSR” for some reason. It was completely unusable for “Bungalow Bill” though, I think whoever had my copy first was looking for hidden messages in “Bungalow Bill.”

It’s the little things on the White Album, like the tambourine on While My Guitar Gently Weeps. The off-kilter harmonies, lots of instruments, the hand claps. The double-entendres and nods to other Beatle songs. Ringo’s ever-tasteful drumming, he really was the Beatles’ secret weapon, and Paul’s bass playing, which went next-level on Rubber Soul and will only improve from here.

What’s the hardest thing to get right on any double album? Sequencing! You have to make your run time worth it. The sequencing of side one of The White Album is perfect; it really works in favor of an album as diverse as this. Side three is pretty damn good, they did the best they could with what they had for side four.Side two is the weakest. Putting “Blackbird,” “Piggies,” and “Rocky Raccoon” back-to-back is a fucking cop out, I’m sorry. I can just see 1968 Paul McCartney sitting there in the chair with his headphones on snickering to himself, “How’s about we put the critter songs together, ah Ringo?”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Every great album has a three or four-song run to start. What’s the first example I always use? The White Album! With “Back in the USSR,” “Dear Prudence,” and “Glass Onion.”

Every good album needs a thesis statement, whether its title track or opening. “Back in the USSR” is the perfect thesis statement for the White Album. It was one of many, many songs written on the Beatles’ trip to the Maharishi’s ashram in Rishikesh from February to April of 1968. One of their famous travel companions was Beach Boy Mike Love; he suggested Paul write a parody of Chuck Berry’s “Back in the USA” (which can be a jab at the good old U-S-of-A, depending on who sings it. Looking at you, MC5.) It’s punchy with great pop sensibility, a little nostalgic, and a little edgy – an old-school rock-and-roll romp about the Soviet Union? A little dangerous to be singing about in ’68! But it’s a genius twist considering “Back in the USA’”sbones. It piques your interest, right from the plane taking off. (Though I may be partial to that touch, I live behind two airports and an Air Force base.) What’s more American than Chuck Berry? His signature turnaround, his tight-knit melodic guitar solo? Nothing – but the Beach Boys are pretty close. Their fingerprints are all over this: booming drum fills, chugging surf guitar and bass, hand claps, and of course the baritone and falsetto backing vocals. My US press really pushed the backing vocals, I’d never heard thedissonance coming out of the bridge until now. Of course, we can’t ignore the nod to Ray Charles with“Georgia on my mind.”

Then we have “Dear Prudence” and Glass Onion. The other three-song runs I like usually introduce a new writer with each song, or at the very least a new singer. Not here. But here’s the thing: there’s two John Lennons writing on the White Album. Can be best summed up with this line from Julia: “Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you.”

1968 was a terrible year to be John Lennon. Though some of it was his own doing – stepping out on his lovely wife Cynthia and going through a very public divorce – a lot of it wasn’t his fault. He was dealing with mental health struggles, heroin addiction, the pain of losing one of his closest confidants Brian Epstein, and losing a child with Yoko. Some of these John songs, I’m So Tired and “Yer Blues” in particular, are harrowing. Considering the blistering openness of Plastic Ono Band, it doesn’t seem unusual now. But at this stage in his career, John is unusually confessional. He hasn’t slept in weeks, he wants to die, he’s kinda losing his marbles. But as he said in Get Back, when he’s up against the wall, you’ll find he’s at his best. John is firing on all cylinders on the White Album. Pound-for-pound, he’s writing better than Paul here.

“Dear Prudence” reaches us. He’s gentle and simple, putting this song in stark contrast with his other White Album contributions. “The sun is up, the sky is blue, it’s beautiful and so are you.” It plays well with his penchant for the surreal: “The clouds will be a daisy chain, so let me see you smile again.” Thank you Donovan for teaching John the clawhammertechnique. It totally changed how John approached guitar playing. The “Prudence” arpeggio opens like a blooming rose. We can’t count out the contributions of the other guys, they make this song what it is. Note George’s nasallybacking vocals and Paul’s stellar bass playing.

The other devastatingly sweet John song on the White Album is “Julia;” his plea to his departed mother. He says her name like a mantra as he tries to get the ocean child out of his head. But he can’t. He cannot sing his heart, he can only speak his mind. But she’s all he thinks about. She permeates everything: the ebb and flow of the guitar, the clouds, the sun, the sand.

Rounding out the three-song run is the other John, with “Glass Onion.” It’s half sentimental nods for Beatle fans (John was a lot more sentimental than he let on,) half self-parody. Like “I Am The Walrus,” name-checked in this song with “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Fool On the Hill,” “Lady Madonna,” and “Fixing A Hole,” “Glass Onion” is word-collage John. Half of what he says is meaningless. Like Bob Dylan, or even Lou Reed, John used words as placeholders. Somewhere between the two Johns are Cry Baby Cry andSexy Sadie, I’m mad I can’t talk about this more. Light instrumentation with accordion and affected acoustic guitar, bolstered by his trademark sharpness and snark. “However big you think you are, Sexy Sadie, oh, you’ll get yours yet.” He can cut like a knife, but you won’t feel it until you cut a lemon the next day.

Above: lovebirds John and Yoko the proto-"Julia." You may recognize those lyrics from somewhere...

You can tell the White Album was put together with care, even if the guys weren’t the biggest fans of each other at the time. Almost every song segues into another. The plane into “Dear Prudence,” the chipper pianointo notorious Beatle-buster “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” This theme extends into disc two; the feedback fadeout between guilty pleasure “Birthday” and “Yer Blues,” and the fiddle solo linking Don’t Pass Me By and Why Don’t We Do It In The Road. I would have killed to have been in the room when this track listing was ironed out. Though it may not seem like it when it spins out of control – looking at you, “Piggies” – this album was assembled intentionally.

The best transition? The mellotron, applause, and shout cutting into George’s tour-de-force.

Alan Smith’s review for the NME fucking mistook “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” as being sung by Paul. I get it. For the untrained ear or a new fan, it can be easy to mess up who sings what. But I don’t know how that could happen with a seasoned critic in the Beatles’ heyday. This is a George song, clear as day.

The White Album may feel unserious for those first few songs. “Guitar” is the tonal shift. It’s bitter, top to bottom, but it wasn’t always this way. Listen to the Esher Demos’ and Love’s “While My Guitar”s. They’remore supine and mournful than mean – and you’ll hear some brilliant lines that somehow didn’t make the final cut.

"As I'm sitting here, doing nothing but aging..."

The arrangement makes it bitter. The piano intro, space between the drums, stiff chugging backing guitar and bass, and bleeding lead make a tragic song imposing. It transforms lines like, “I don’t know how someone controlled you, they bought and sold you” and “I don’t know how you were diverted, you were perverted too” from detachedobservations to scathing jabs. George retains his cool front, but his delivery is loaded with sarcasm. He spits,“With every mistake, we must surely be learning.” The tense harmony vocal creeps up your shoulder, until:

Look at you all.

It feels like being talked over in a three-way argument until finally breaking; shouting over everyone to shut them up. Look at you all.

Then Eric Clapton comes through to wail away over George’s ghostly ad-libs. I’ve never heard those ad-libs as clear as on my German pressing. It’s like he becomes the weeping guitar.

“While My Guitar” is a tough act to follow. “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” is the only song on the White Album that could do it. This was the guys’ favorite song to record, and you can tell; this is absolutely electric. “Warm Gun” was a composite of three song fragments. It’s one of John’s all-time greatest writing exercises, about drugs and sex. “She’s well-acquainted with the touch of a velvet hand like a lizard on a windowpane/The man in the crowd with the multicolored mirrors on his hobnail boots/Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy working overtime/A soap impression of his wife which he ate and donated to the National Trust,” Come on! It’s edgy, slithering in an oddly erotic way. It ramps up like a rocket taking off and gives me goosebumps. John gives one of his two bestvocal performances of the record, the other being “Yer Blues.” He’s a damn good screamer.

As for Ringo. After seeing the Analogues’ White Album, I have a whole new appreciation for “Don’t Pass Me By.” We have a fiddle, sleigh bells, an organ, and a whole-ass hurdy gurdy. Thank you, Ringo, for writing a song that warranted all of those.

“I hear the clock is ticking on the mantle shelf, See the hands are moving but I’m by myself, I wonder where you are tonight and why I’m by myself. I don’t see you, does it mean you don’t love me anymore?” Don’t count Ringo out. The imperfectrhyme structure gives a stream-of-consciousness feel. “Don’t Pass Me By” starts about a girl standing our dear Ringo up. Then, it opens up to a general “you.” It makes this song much, much more than meets the eye. Or maybe it becamesuch, due to when it was recorded, the album it’s on, and the fact Ringo was the first to quit the Beatles.

Above: The Analogues' "Don't Pass Me By," featuring the superb Camilla van der Kooij on fiddle.

When is Paul at his best on the White Album? When he’s completely out of left field. We generally know what to expect from Paul songs. There’s always a glimmer of hope. “Life goes on.” “Take these broken wings and learn to fly,” “take these sunken eyes and learn to see.” He’s sentimental, cozy, and not afraid to be corny. Note hispenchant for brass, pleading his beloved doggie not to forget him on tragically sweet “Martha My Dear,” thepseudo-show-tune “Honey Pie.” He’s got this homespun quality, which he will take and run with on solo efforts McCartney and Ram.

And then there’s a song about fucking in the streets, and the heaviest song the Beatles ever did.

The other best sequencing choice on the White Album besides “Bungalow Bill,” “While My Guitar,” and “Warm Gun” is tense “Sexy Sadie” and yearning, haunting Long Long Long bookending my first favorite Beatles song.

It was to one-up the heaviest acts around at the time, the Who and the Yardbirds. No shit I love Helter Skelter. Everyone pulls their weight. Everything is LOUD. Paul’s whooping and screaming like a man possessed, the backing vocals are white-knuckled doo-wop insanity. The riff is delightfully crunchy and white-hot, the feedback winding, Ringo’s going so hard he’s got blisters on his fingers! It pulls back before another total assault. And again for good measure! As for the bass: though the Fender VI in “Helter Skelter”is officially credited to John (the Beatles Rock Band video game goes as far as to have him on bass when you play the song)...I don’t know if this is him. Sure, it’s rudimentary. But that’s because it’s supposed to be. This is the style of the song, minimal chords and maximum volume. Only two currents to alternate between.

While the White Album is at its best when it’s chaotic, unexpected, and uninhibited – unhinged, if you will – some capital-C Choices were made. “Bungalow Bill” is a bit awkward. Though I tolerate it a whole lot more than I once did, the song does more legwork for the sequencing than the music itself. “Piggies” is the weakest link, though Revolution 1 pales in comparison to its older brother. The guys went through many, MANYiterations of “Revolution” and none fit quite right. It was a “Let It Be” situation; they completely overthought it. This song was supposed to be John’s swipe at radical left-wing revolutionaries and activism bandwagoners. It feels particularly toothless on the White Album. The Esher demo has a fun sleepaway camp feel, the original concept was pretty cool. If only they’d just put the single on the LP.

And then there’s “Revolution 9.”

The NME summed up most fans’ feelings on “Rev 9,” even today. He called it a:

“...pretentious piece of old codswallop” and “no more than a long, long collection of noises and sounds seemingly dedicated towards the expanding sale of Aspro. I am angry at this because the ‘listen to me I’m being mysterious’ bit is a piece of idiot immaturity and a blotch on (the Beatles) unquestioned talent”

quoted from: Alan Smith, “Beatles Double LP In Full: The Brilliant, the Bad, and the Ugly” NME, 11/9/1968

I am a known “Rev 9” defender. It’s no secret I have a high tolerance for artsy shit, see my affinity for “Sister Ray” and “Monster Magnet.” Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m not “supposed” to like “Rev 9.” But I do. It’s intriguing. A really fucking cool listen with my headphones or with my surround sound. It’s surreal. It’s nightmarish. It’s unpleasant. Confusing. Daring. It abuses recording technology and lashes out at the listener, all expectations, and all musical conventions. It...does the watusi? It feels like a buzzing, overactive mind. Or sensory overload. Or being barraged by news of violence and upheaval left and right. Watching war on live television. “Rev 9” is 1968, baby. It’s the most realist piece on the record and the ultimate White Albumlitmus test. Buckle the fuck up.

Imagine you’re a listener in 1968, listening to TWA in full for the first time. You’d be scared shitless by Rev 9. Sometimes I still am: this is a fucking trip on my surround sound. Do not listen while high or with the lights off. I’ve made both of those mistakes!

Of course, we can’t end the album like that. Almost-Disney tune “Goodnight” plays us out of that cursed stage play – yet another genius sequencing choice. Ringo was the right choice to sing it, though I do wish we had a studio version with John on vocals. Bravo, boys.

The White Album has this I-don’t-know-what that makes songs otherwise stupid and intolerable fit right in. That intangible something that doesn’t exist on any other Beatle album. This is the first moment the guys were uncompromisingly themselves, while bound together by this thing so much bigger than them. It makes the White Album shine. It’s got this raw, uncut quality; the guys stripped their guitars of their psychedelic paint jobs. Of course, bare wood is vulnerable. It stains easy, and you can get splinters.

It’s 1968 in an album. Richard Goldstein said it first: “More than anyone else in the pop hegemony, the Beatles involve themselves in the times.” (Richard Goldstein, “The Beatles: Inspired Groovers” The New York Times, 12/8/1968) 1968 was a pressure cooker year. There were two high-profile political assassinations in two months. First the highest-profile civil rights leader, then the favorite candidate for President. A weaker candidate is nominated in his place with a literal actual riot going on in the backdrop. The winner proves to be a crook.

Kids on one side of the pond are shutting down classroom buildings to fight for their right to a quality education. On the other side, they’re protesting a war everyone’s seeing in real time, but no one wants to be part of. It was the first war like it. You didn’t have to go to a movie theater to see it anymore. The war came home. These kids know to protest it, they know the west is only involved to line their pockets. It’s poor boys fighting a rich man’s war. With Woodstock the next year, it has last burst of light. But right now, peace and love is dying on live television. Kissing it better didn’t work.

Kissing it better didn’t work for the biggest band in the world either. They’re an irrevocably fractured unit of spokesmen for an irrevocably fractured youth. All the while, they’re expected to carry on in that British way; keeping mum about India and touting an animated family movie they weren’t particularly enthused to have their names attached to. Like the peace and love thing, they’ll scrape it together for one last hurrah; Abbey Road. Their “pay no attention to the men behind the curtain!” album. But right now, the Beatles are at a crossroads. This album is the crossroads of four diverging paths. One half of a dynamic duo will set off into art and activism with a new partner in life, while doing some deep work on himself. The other half will lean all the way into quirky pop, completely unafraid to be a little weird. He’ll lean into love as well, indulging in his domestic desires. The one who feels unheard will scream out with an album so good, he never has to top it. He’s never the frontman type. But once he sets off, he never looks back. As for the one sidelined? The adventure’s only just begun. His life gets a thousand times more interesting after he’s a Beatle.

It all began here. It may have triggered a four-way divorce, but it sparked new beginnings too. The Beatles took this bare-bones thing and made it something bigger. It’s not one static thing. It’s incohesive bits and bobs that come together into something genreless. It shouldn’t work, but it does. The highs are so indisputably high, they excuse the lows.

This slot used to belong to Sgt Pepper’s. But once I got a little older, learned a bit more about the history of the 1960s, and my shell got a little harder, Pepper’s was dethroned. Every double album should aim to be as discombobulated and daring as this. The White Album is so, so much more than the sum of its parts.

Personal favorites: “Back In The USSR,” “Dear Prudence,” “Glass Onion,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Happiness Is A Warm Gun,” “Don’t Pass Me By,” “Julia,” “Sexy Sadie,” “Helter Skelter,” “Long Long Long,” “Cry Baby Cry”

Honorable mentions: “I Will,” “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me and My Monkey,” “Revolution 9”

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