Shane’s Music Challenge: THE BEATLES – 1968 – The White Album

Shane | 17 January 2014

THE BEATLES – 1968 – The White Album

You know the way it is – The Beatles are legends who can never put a foot wrong. Everything they did was gold and influential and they remain the rock n’ roll commandments as handed down to Moses from on high.

Well, that ain’t the way it actually went down, brothers n’ sisters, and The White Album (aka The Beatles) is all the evidence you’ll need to disprove that theory!

One of the original stoner rock epic opuses (opii??), The White Album is crammed to overflowing with mad, tripped out genius, some absolutely definitive moments, and some total shit.

There’s no surprise that some people think this could have been the best single album ever released had they exercised more quality control and cut out the dross – which ranges from soppy McCartney ballads and music hall pastiches (“were you feeling okay when you downloaded this music?” asked a 19 year old co-worker today), to the experimental art-as-noise horror of John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Revolution 9. And what’s with the casual racism of Bungalow Bill and Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da?

Favourite tracks – There’s many. Rockers Back In The USSR, Birthday, Why Don’t We Do It In The Road, Revolution 1, Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me & My Monkey, Savoy Truffle and the murder-inspiring Helter Skelter are all winners. The trippy psychedelia of Dear Prudence and the rootsy Americana of Ringo’s Don’t Pass Me By sit comfortably next to the beautiful ballads Blackbird and Julia, but the standout will always remain George Harrison’s stunningly beautiful Why my Guitar Gently Weeps, featuring an incredibly moving Eric Clapton guitar solo.
8/10 despite its flaws