The Beatles (album)

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Template:Album infobox Template:Redirect The Beatles is a double album, released by The Beatles in 1968. It is often referred to as The White Album as it has no other text than the band's name on its plain white sleeve, designed by pop artist Richard Hamilton. The album was released at the height of the Beatles' popularity, and is often hailed as one of the major accomplishments in popular music.

In 1997 The White Album was named the 10th greatest album of all time in a 'Music of the Millennium' poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In 1998 Q magazine readers placed it at number 17, while in 2003 the TV network VH1 placed it at number 11. In 2003 it was named #10 in Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

The White Album is the Beatles' best-selling album at 19-times platinum and the ninth-best-selling album of all time in the United States.

The beginning of the end for The Beatles

With this album, each of the four band members began to showcase the range and depth of his own individual songwriting talents and styles that would be carried over to his eventual solo career. Along with such standard rockers as the opening "Back in the USSR" (widely interpreted as a parody/tribute to The Beach Boys and more specifically "California Girls"), it contains classic ballads like "I Will" and "Julia" (the latter written by John - one of his few ballads, dedicated to his mother who was killed when he was just seventeen); whimsical tunes like Paul's "Rocky Raccoon" and "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da"; social commentary such as George's "Piggies" and John's "Happiness Is A Warm Gun"; "Don't Pass Me By" (Ringo's first solo composition), and "Helter Skelter", which takes its title and central image from a spiral slide found at British funfairs, and which became notorious after Charles Manson took it as a prophecy of a future race war.

The songs

Many of the songs here are personal and self-referencing; for example "Dear Prudence" is about actress Mia Farrow's sister, Prudence, who attended Transcendental Meditation classes in Rishikesh, India at the same time as the group. In fact, many songs on The White Album were conceived during the group's ill-fated visit to India. Sexy Sadie is about the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who led those TM classes. "Glass Onion" is John's song for those fans who spent their time trying to find hidden meanings in the group's lyrics; it references several other Beatles songs. The album runs the gamut of genres from pop with tracks such as "Birthday" and Back in the U.S.S.R., hard guitar-based rock in While My Guitar Gently Weeps, British blues in Yer Blues, proto-Heavy Metal in Helter Skelter, Pink Floyd-like montages in Revolution 9 and acoustic ballads such as "Blackbird".

The only instrument that was available to the group during their Indian visit was the acoustic guitar, and several of the songs (such as "Dear Prudence", "Julia", "Blackbird" and "Mother Nature's Son") were written during their stay. These songs were recorded either solo, or by only part of the group. That guitarstyle the band learned from Donovan in India.

Yoko Ono made her first appearance, adding backing vocals in "Birthday" (along with Pattie Harrison); Ono also sang backing vocals and a solo line on "Bungalow Bill" and was a strong influence on John's musique concrète piece, "Revolution 9".

Eric Clapton, at Harrison's invitation, provided an extra lead guitar for Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."

Several songs recorded during The White Album sessions were not part of the final album, such as, "Hey Jude" (released as a single backed with "Revolution"). Other songs would later surface on bootlegs as well as on The Beatles Anthology, including Harrison's "Not Guilty" and Lennon's "What's The New Mary Jane?".

The album was produced and orchestrated by George Martin, and was the first album released by Apple Records, and the only original double album released by the Beatles. Martin was personally dissatisfied with the double album and advised the group to reduce the number of songs in order to feature their stronger work on a single disc. However, the group overruled him.

The recording sessions

The album was recorded between 30 May 1968 and 14th October 1968 largely at Abbey Road. The sessions although productive, were sometimes fractious and betrayed the growing tensions within the group. Often Paul would record in one studio whilst John would record in another at the same time using different engineers. These sessions also marked the change from 4-track to 8-track recording, although in essence this had started in 1966 and 1967 by the technique of 'bouncing down' several tracks to a single track to free up new tracks for recording.

(Source: Lewisohn, Mark (1988). The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. Hamlyn Publishing Group. ISBN 0-600-55784-7.)

Notable songs from the album sessions

"Hey Jude" was originally intended to be included on the album, but was instead released as a stand-alone single. "Revolution" was recorded to accompany the album tracks "Revolution 1" and "Revolution 9" but was also released separately, as the B-side to "Hey Jude."

The mono version

The Beatles was the last Beatles album to be released with a unique, alternate mono mix, albeit one issued only in the UK. Twenty-nine of the album's thirty tracks ("Revolution 9" being the only straggler) exist in official alternate mono mixes, all of which are popular items amongst Beatles fans.

Beatles albums after The Beatles occasionally had mono pressings in certain countries, but these editions – of Yellow Submarine, Let It Be, and Abbey Road – were always mono fold-downs from the regular stereo mixes.

The cover

The album's cover was designed by Richard Hamilton, a notable pop artist who had organised a Marcel Duchamp retrospective at the Tate Gallery the previous year. Hamilton's design was in stark contrast to Peter Blake's vivid cover art for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and consisted of a plain white sleeve. The band's name was discreetly embossed in the middle of the album's right side, and the cover also featured a unique stamped serial number, in Hamilton's words, "to create the ironic situation of a numbered edition of something like 5 million copies." [1] Later vinyl record releases showed the title in grey letters. Early copies on compact disc were also numbered. Later CD releases rendered the album's title in black or grey.

The album's inside packaging included a poster, the lyrics to the songs, and a set of photographs taken by John Kelley in Autumn of 1968 that have themselves become classic.

Two re-issues in the late 1970s (one by Capitol Records, the other by Parlophone) saw the album pressed on white vinyl, completing the look of the "white" album.

Influence

The White Album's cover has been very influential. Led Zeppelin's 1971 album (Image:Zoso.png) is similarly untitled. In the 1990s, both Prince and Metallica released self-titled albums with their names printed against mostly plain black covers, and are both informally referred to as "The Black Album". In 2003, rapper Jay-Z released an album officially called The Black Album. Two compilations of Beatles material, released in 1973 as The Beatles 1962-1966 and The Beatles 1967-1970, are often referred to as "The Red Album" and "The Blue Album" respectively, with reference to their colour scheme. Both of Weezer's self-titled albums borrow from this idea as well and fans refer to them respectively as "The Blue Album" (1994) and "The Green Album" (2001).

In the fictional world of Spinal Tap, the band's 1983 album Smell the Glove was released with an entirely black sleeve, although this was due to a controversy about the original cover art rather than a conscious homage to The Beatles. In a case of life imitating art, the soundtrack for the Spinal Tap film was itself released in a plain black sleeve, with the band's name embossed on the front. The practice of referring to an album by its colour - particularly untitled or otherwise significant releases - is nowadays widespread.

In 1979, the writer Joan Didion released a collection of essays entitled The White Album.

In 1987, Saturday Night Live comedian Dennis Miller put out his first comedy album, entitled The Off-White Album, recorded live at George Washington University, featuring a likewise colored album cover.

Electronica duo Orbital's first two albums are known unofficially as the "Green Album" (1991) and the "Brown Album" (1993), whilst their 2004 release has the formal title Blue Album.

In 1995, the Australian comedy duo Martin/Molloy released a double CD officially called The Brown Album, and in 1997 the band Primus released a CD with the same title.

In 1998, an album of new songs from The Simpsons, titled The Yellow Album, was released. The album's cover was a parody of the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, though it had already been done as a couch gag for an episode in the series.

In 2000, comedian Lewis Black released an album titled The White Album, with similar cover art, down to the capitalization scheme of "Lewis BLACK".

In 2004, Brian Burton (also known as Danger Mouse) released The Grey Album, an unauthorized remix album later distributed on the Internet using samples from The White Album against the a cappella version of Jay-Z's The Black Album. Rolling Stone called the record "...an ingenious hip-hop record that sounds oddly ahead of its time". EMI and Apple sent Brian Burton cease and desist letters which prevented official distribution of The Grey Album.

Also in 2004, Australian alternative band TISM released a 2 DVD/1 CD pack called The White Albun. An intentional misspelling of The White Album, its packaging was a white box with 'TISM' embossed on the front. At the end of the song "Cerebral Knievel" there is a short parody of "Revolution 9".

Tributes

At some point in the early-to-mid 1980s, Sonic Youth planned to cover the entire album, but this never saw the light of day.

During a concert on Halloween, 1994, Phish played all the songs from The White Album.

In December of 2005, the BBC show One World broadcast a two-hour retrospective on The White Album. Narrated by former Beatles engineer Chris Thomas - who went on to produce such luminaries as Pink Floyd, The Sex Pistols, Roxy Music, and Brian Eno - the broadcast features reworkings of songs from The White Album from a large and diverse roster of independent artists such as Bardo Pond, Deerhoof, Toy, and Bedouin Soundclash.

Track listing

• All songs by Lennon-McCartney, except where noted.

Side one

1. "Back in the U.S.S.R."
2. "Dear Prudence"
3. "Glass Onion"
4. "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" (vorbis sample 204K)
5. "Wild Honey Pie"
6. "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"
7. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (Harrison) (vorbis sample 188K)
8. "Happiness is a Warm Gun"

Side two

1. "Martha My Dear"
2. "I'm So Tired"
3. "Blackbird" (vorbis sample 140K)
4. "Piggies" (Harrison)
5. "Rocky Raccoon"
6. "Don't Pass Me By" (Starkey)
7. "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?"
8. "I Will"
9. "Julia"

Side three

1. "Birthday"
2. "Yer Blues"
3. "Mother Nature's Son" (vorbis sample 164K)
4. "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey"
5. "Sexy Sadie"
6. "Helter Skelter" (vorbis sample 147K)
7. "Long, Long, Long" (Harrison)

Side four

1. "Revolution 1" (vorbis sample 203K)
2. "Honey Pie"
3. "Savoy Truffle" (Harrison)
4. "Cry Baby Cry"
5. "Revolution 9"
6. "Good Night"

Release history

External links

• Further information, including photographs of the packaging
• Album Lyrics
• White Album Lyrics
• Template:Musicbrainz album 2

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