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Introduction: The White Album : An Enigma for the Ages

2020; Penn State University Press; Volume: 22; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/intelitestud.22.1-2.0001

1524-8429

Kenneth Womack,

Musicology and Musical Analysis

In many ways, the Beatles' ninth and longest studio album is their most enigmatic release. Originally loosed upon the world as The Beatles in November 1968, the so-called White Album is easily the most contentious and least understood masterwork among the band's unmatched artistic corpus. As the essayists in this special issue demonstrate, we are only just beginning to understand the LP's unique creative achievements.In contrast with the band's previous opus Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The White Album was decidedly more fragmentary and generically diverse. But at the same time, it was also their most determined, self-conscious effort. Begun in May 1968 at EMI's Abbey Road Studios, the album was a font of creative activity that rivals, if not supersedes, some of the most prolific moments of their career. "The entire White Album was written in India," John Lennon later remarked. "We got our mantra, we sat in the mountains eating lousy vegetarian food, and writing all these songs. We wrote tons of songs in India" (qtd. in Badman 388). During the last week of May, the bandmates gathered at Kinfauns, where George Harrison had fashioned a home recording studio, complete with an Ampex four-track reel-to-reel tape recorder.At Kinfauns, the Beatles compiled 23 demos in preparation for recording the songs that would eventually comprise the White Album. In contrast with their painstaking efforts in the studio, the Esher Tapes witness the Beatles working in unison and exalting in the pure joy of their music. With its splendid acoustic introduction, the demo for "Revolution" offers a perfect case in point. The band had rarely, if ever, sounded more uninhibited and free. With its enthusiastic handclaps, ad-libs, and lighthearted harmonies, it makes for one of the Beatles' most convivial recordings. Yet for all of their geniality, the Esher Tapes were calculated rough drafts—coherent blueprints for the upcoming project. The group had seldom exhibited such a self-conscious and highly organized approach to their art.Recorded between May and October 1968, the White Album's progress from text to art concluded on October 16th, when Lennon and Paul McCartney conducted a 24-hour session at EMI Studios in which they organized the songs in an effort to establish thematic unity. As John later recalled, "Paul and I sat up putting the White Album in order until we were going crazy" (All We Are Saying 55). Their strategy distributed the heavier rock and roll tracks on side three, with the animal-oriented songs relegated to side two. In order to create a sense of balance, they apportioned George's songs across all four sides.With producer George Martin and engineers Ken Scott and John Smith in tow, Lennon and McCartney crossfaded and edited the tracks, ensuring that the album, like Sgt. Pepper, would be mastered without rills. The day-long session made for one of the most self-conscious moments in the history of the Beatles' artistry. Some eight months earlier, The White Album had found its origins in the Maharishi's ashram, only to be rehearsed and recorded at Kinfauns, reborn at EMI and Trident Studios, and transformed for the ages by John and Paul in the control room. And then there was the matter of the cover art. For several months, the group considering entitling the album A Doll's House at the suggestion of John, who wanted to pay homage to Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. But with the July release of Family's Music in a Doll's House, the Beatles were forced to go back to the drawing board.At the suggestion of Robert Fraser, Paul met with Pop Art designer Richard Hamilton, who proposed that the cover effect a dramatic contrast with the colorful albums of their recent psychedelic past. Hamilton recommended a plain white cover imprinted with individual numbers in order to assume the exclusive quality of a limited edition—although in this case, it would be a limited edition comprised, quite ironically, of some five million copies. At Hamilton's urging, the bandmates decided to name the album The Beatles, a deliberately simple title in relation to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. But as the album's title, The Beatles never really stood a chance. With its stark white cover art, the two-record set became known as the White Album within scant days of its release.In the ensuing years, there has been unremitting conjecture about the Beatles' motives in producing a double album in the first place. Some argue that they were trying to hasten the completion of their latest EMI contract. Perhaps they were attempting to sate their seemingly relentless creative impulses with the expansive artistic spaces of four long-playing sides? Yet others have suggested that the Beatles, competitive to the end, were trying to match, if not exceed, the critical success of Bob Dylan's two-record masterwork Blonde on Blonde. In spite of all the speculation, Martin has never minced words regarding his feelings about The White Album's sprawl: "I thought we should probably have made a very, very good single album, rather than a double." In retrospect, Ringo Starr has argued that it should have been released as two separate LPs—"the White and the Whiter albums" (Anthology 305)—while George felt that 30 songs was "a bit heavy" (qtd. in Spitz 794). For Paul, the question was moot. Self-reflexively withdrawing from himself and the band's art, he made no bones about the indisputable quality of their achievement: "It's great. It sold. It's the bloody Beatles' White Album. Shut up!" (Anthology documentary).Regardless of the record's impetus, the White Album's rough magic succeeded, if only briefly, in restoring the Beatles' earlier unity and cohesiveness—so much so, in fact, that they returned to the studio less than two months later, eager and energized to commence their next project. As Harrison later recalled, The White Album "felt more like a band recording together. There were a lot of tracks where we just played live." Meanwhile, Ringo saw the record as a sign of the Beatles' artistic renaissance: "As a band member, I've always felt The White Album was better than Sgt. Pepper because by the end it was more like a real group again. There weren't so many overdubs like on Pepper. With all those orchestras and whatnot, we were virtually a session group on our own album" (qtd. in Ryan and Kehew 476).Although he later described the White Album as the "tension album," Paul appreciated the opportunity to simplify and re-consolidate the group's sound, to retreat from the highly orchestrated production of their 1966- and 1967-era recordings. Perhaps even more so than Paul, John was absolutely delighted to dispense with their previously elaborate production efforts in favor of a spare and more conventional rock and roll sound. And while he later portrayed the White Album as a series of solo recordings by each of the individual Beatles with the others acting as each other's session men, he was quick to point out that, in reality, their demeanor in the studio hadn't changed all that much since the early days: "We were no more openly critical of each other's music in 1968, or later, than we had always been" (qtd. in Dowlding 219).For John, the White Album represented a spectacular return to form. His musicianship was back with a fury, his songwriting was by turns breathtakingly intricate and refreshingly simple, his lyrics as imaginative and enthralling as ever. The album was a signal moment in his recording career—and, along with John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), it is arguably his last gasp of sustained greatness and originality. As with William Butler Yeats's epic rediscovery of his poetic muse in "The Circus Animals' Desertion," John had found his way back to the "foul rag and bone shop of the heart" (472). And so, too, had the Beatles.