LIVE: THE WHITE ALBUM CONCERT, Perth – 7 September 2023

Shane | 10 September 2023 | Reply

LIVE: THE WHITE ALBUM CONCERT, Perth – 7 September 2023
Riverside Theatre, Perth
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar

The main criticism we’re all used to hearing about The Beatles’ 1968 self-titled double opus – aka The White Album – is that it’s self-indulgent and if more quality control had been exercised it would have made a far greater single album (the same whinging would be levelled at Guns n’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion set 24 years later).

But this is completely missing the point.

Sure, the album is sprawling, hopping from genre to genre with little rhyme or reason, but it’s also one of the earliest examples of creativity let loose to defy commercial concerns (and perhaps with no little herbal/chemical involvement). It’s ground-breakingly eclectic, wildly imaginative in scope, stunningly comprehensive and inclusive in its influences and genre coverage – not to mention ahead of its time.

We’ve caught up to it by now, 55 years later, and this collective of Oz Rockers set about to deliver the album in its entirety (as they have done a couple of times before, notably in 2014 and 2018) – including the notorious Revolution 9, of which more later – in order from song 1 Side 1, through to song 6, Side 4.

As the crowd take their seats there is anticipation – how will they pull this off? We have thirty songs, many of impressive ambition and musicianship, a couple created with undeniably clever studio trickery for those analogue days of old.

In order to make it all work – almost entirely organically, as it happens – there’s a sixteen-piece band providing the music, including a grand piano, 2 drummers, a three-piece horn section and a five-piece string section. Musical Director Rex Goh (ex-Air Supply, Eurogliders) and ex-Sherbet bassist Tony Mitchell (complete with Hofner bass) lead the charge in the engine room. Out front, the ‘faces’ of the show are Tim Rogers (You Am I, Hard-Ons), Chris Cheney (The Living End), Phil Jamieson (Grinspoon) and solo troubadour Josh Pyke – none of whom try to ‘be’ any particular Beatle. The principals are all versatile enough to lend their vocals and guitars to a bit of anything.

Without preamble, Cheney takes centre stage (slacks, shirt, waistcoat, tousled hair) and the impressive band kick off Back In The USSR, Jamieson dancing balletically on to deliver Dear Prudence in a cream coloured casual suit and loud shirt. The sound is lush, layered, reflecting the multitracked intensity of the record.

Cheney returns with acoustic guitar for Glass Onion, then Jamieson leads him and Pyke through a clapalong-singalong of 1970’s Primary School favourite Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. Rogers swaggers on (word not used lightly) to finish the singalong clad in what appears to be a black denim jumpsuit/onesie zipped almost down to his nethers, cravat and wide-brimmed hat covering his tastefully dishevelled barnet, the crowd cheering like he’s a returning hero.

The You Am I frontman stays for Honey Pie, delightedly pirouetting and throwing shapes, then dons a fluffy bear cap as a prop for Bungalow Bill (presumably he couldn’t find a tiger one) and it’s his and Jamieson’s theatricality and self-deprecating humour which begin to make the show engaging. The musicianship until this point has been faultless, immaculate, but having seen some shows already this week full of passion and joie de vivre, there’s a lack of energy from the stage so far.

No sooner do I write these (valid) notes in my review notebook, than Cheney tackles While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and whatever he’s lacking in audience engagement he more than compensates in sheer musicality, delivering Clapton’s masterful solo with jaw-dropping intensity, and all is forgiven.

“I’ve always said to Chris that with a little bit of effort, he may just make it,” Rogers pronounces deferentially after Cheney’s searing delivery of one of The Beatles’ masterworks, before quipping self-deprecatingly, “then there’s the rest of us who have to just get by on our looks.”

Rogers takes on Happiness Is A Warm Gun, complete with comedy pistol and pop-out ‘BANG!’ flag, then Pyke launches Side 2 with Martha My Dear. Dressed tip to toe in black apart from chrome belt buckle, swinging keychain and collar-tips, he cuts a striking figure, every inch the serious muso.

Jamieson dances on again for I’m So Tired, Pyke plays an exquisite Blackbird, him and his acoustic guitar almost unaccompanied, then Rogers is back, a latex pig mask on the top of his head, for Piggies – inadvertently scaring a young child in the front row. “Sorry small child,” he apologises, later tearing the mask off and declaring “it was me all along!”

“Yes, I sing all the unpopular songs,” he sighs, tongue in cheek, legs dangling from the edge of the stage, before singing the intro to Rocky Raccoon, Pyke and Jamieson singing the song through. The latter two deliver an entertaining take on Ringo’s Don’t Pass Me By, Rogers joining them for the last chorus before piggybacking Pyke off, their playfulness going a long way towards warming the crowd up.

Cheney’s Why Don’t We Do It In The Road? provides a sprinkle of grit and groove, before Jamieson’s I Will and Pyke’s gentle Julia – Lennon’s declaration of love to his late mother – bring Side 2 to a tender close.

A short intermission gives everyone time to stretch their legs and reflect on the first half, and realise that musically everything is ticketyboo, and if the troupe’s audience engagement was a little slow to warm, they mostly had the crowd on side by this point.

The second half starts with Side 3 of the record (naturally), Cheney again donning his guitar for Birthday, and instantly there’s a palpable difference. The band seem louder, warmer, fuller. The room is more on their side, less reserved. Now we’re cooking, and there’s no looking back from here.

Jamieson shakes it like Lennon meets Elvis meets Nick Cave on Yer Blues, walking through the crowd as the two house guitarists share soloing duties while he exhorts everyone to clap along. Pyke lends his impressive indie folk sensibilities to McCartney’s Mother Nature’s Son, and Rogers – looking like an AI recreation of one of The Runaways as a middle-aged man – has loads of fun with Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey, which was surely the template for Slade’s glam rock a few years later.

Pyke’s back for Sexy Saidie, then Cheney declares, “It’s gonna get loud, ladies and gentlemen,” Helter Skelter’s protometal riff positively leaping out of his big ole cream coloured Gretsch guitar, and another impressively fiery solo.

Pyke saunters onstage plucking at his acoustic guitar haphazardly – “he’s not the only one can do that” he quips – and closes out Side Three with George Harrison’s Long, Long, Long.

We enter the home stretch with Revolution 1, Rogers now clad in a white flares-and-smock combo with groovy embroidered collars, cuffs and button line, joking a little later that we’re privileged to see him “dressed as one of The Golden Girls,” but it’s his slow boogie shuffle on this underrated track which impresses more.

Jamieson slumps louchely on a stool seat by the piano for McCartney’s 40’s pastiche Honey Pie, Cheney rocks up Savoy Truffle, and Pyke’s moving rendition of Cry Baby Cry is another highlight in a night with plenty to choose from.

Revolution 9, created on analogue tape loops in the studio in a pre-sample, pre-Protools, pre-noisescape time, is meticulously recreated using minimal backing tapes, musical director Rex Goh conducting the band through its mentalist intricacies and, as Rogers declares afterwards, “making sense of Revolution 9!” I’m sure we’ve all gone through patches of being intrigued by this most unusual of tracks, of finding it unlistenable, and once in a blue moon finding something meaningful and engaging in its bizarreness. Tonight was definitely the latter – no small achievement.

All four of our troubadours share the spotlight for Starr’s Good Night, closing out the album and the main show charmingly.

There is, of course, an encore. Four stools are set across the stage, and Pyke, Jamieson and Rogers settle in, Cheney joining them a few moments later, declaring – seriously or jokingly, who can tell – “Tim stole my sock.” For his part, Rogers chuckles and slyly says, “well I know where I DIDN’T put it…”

Accompanied only by Rogers and Cheney’s acoustic guitars, the four voices harmonise beautifully on Two Of Us, which is simply sublime. They share some good natured jesting (“this one’s in E – follow me for the changes”) before Across The Universe and The Ballad Of John & Yoko (surely the template for Paul Kelly’s Every Fucking City), then the full band return to the stage for I Am The Walrus (“alright – time for the drugs to kick in” says Rogers) and the single version of Revolution.

It’s a grand, fun way to finish an epic night of musical entertainment, and if engagement was slow to start at the kick-off, they ensemble more than made up for that well before the end of the first act, and by the encore it felt like the performers were every bit as comfortable and familiar to us as the sings and album they come from themselves.