The Beatles ninth album is self-titled, but it became known as The White Album. It was riddled with turmoil and Yoko Ono-ism. John Lennon had started dating her and she already had influence over him. He must have been a weak man.
The album explodes with a Paul McCartney tune “Back in the U.S.S.R.“. This song has flashes of The Beach Boys’ “California Girls” and Chuck Berry’s song “Back in the U.S.A.”. It is nice when an artist pay respect to another artist.
It quiets down a bit with Lennon’s “Dear Prudence“, which was written in Rishikesh, India. Many of the songs were written during their time in India meditating with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Oddly, they went away to mediate and all they did was argue and fight when they returned to the studio after returning from India. If you read the history about this album you will see it was a miracle they finished this album.
As I move on, I realise that McCartney liked to rock and Lennon liked to meditate. I also think this album will take me forever to listen to because it has 4 sides and it is 93:35 minutes. I will just write about the songs I like on this album.
It is almost safe to say I will like the McCartney tunes. I like his style and vocals, even when the song is a bit silly like “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da“. It is gibberish, but fun gibberish. “Mother Nature’s Son” and “Helter Skelter” are two other good songs from McCartney. “Helter Skelter” was made more famous because of Charles Manson. He thought some of the The Beatles song on this album were part of a coded prophecy of an apocalyptic war. The title was used for a book about the Manson trials.
One of McCartney’s best songs is “Blackbird“. What is the song about is anyone’s guess. He has stated many different things over the years. It might be about a blackbird’s call that he heard in India and it might be about the racial problems for black people in the USA. Lyrically it is a simple song, but it is a strong song emotionally.
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Long, Long, Long” are both great tunes from George Harrison. He stated that the latter song was him speaking to his god. The former is about the disharmony after their mediation trip to India.
The worst songs are “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” and “Revolution 9“. I could mention a few other bad ones, but why make Ringo Starr feel worse off than he is now. The latter sounds like a bunch of noises. I would not call it music. It sounds like Lennon was just being weird for the sake of it.
This album took a long time to listen to and to write about. It is really long and I had to listen to it several times to make my decision about it as an album. As one album, I think it is shit. It is way too long and does not feel consistent. In pieces there are brilliant moments, but there are too many filler songs. If they had cut all the crap off then this would have been a great album. It is difficult one to score because some of the songs are great. I think the album is barely okay. 6/10.
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