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BACK IN WHITE | PAGE 1, 2
The 30 "White Album" cuts have been well chronicled so there is no need to catalog them. But here are song-by-song anecdotes gleaned from dozens of Beatles books. Side One: Paul plays drums on "Back in the U.S.S.R." because Ringo was contemplating quitting the band. "Dear Prudence" is about Mia Farrow's sister. We all know that "the Walrus" in "Glass Onion" was not Paul. But it is Paul who mistakenly substitutes Desmond's name for Molly's in "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" -- "Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face." Paul kept the mistake to make the song sexually ambiguous. "Wild Honey Pie" is from a group chant begun in India. It's Yoko's high-pitched voice that shrieks, "Not when he looked so fierce" in "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill." Yoko's "continuing" presence at the sessions pissed off George so much he brought in his own outsider, Eric Clapton, to play the guitar solo in "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." Finally, John needs a fix in "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" because Yoko got him hooked on heroin. Side Two: The Martha of "Martha My Dear" is Paul's sheep dog. At the end of "I'm So Tired, " John says "Monsieur, Monsieur, how about another one?" backwards. The Manson family believed "Blackbird" is a call for the black man to rise and eat whitey like bacon ("Piggies"). Rocky Raccoon's original last name is Sasoon. "Don't Pass Me By" fueled the Paul is dead rumors with the line, "You were in a car crash and you lost your hair." The supposed dead man, meanwhile, ditched the other Beatles in the studio one day and whipped out "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" by himself (Ringo later overdubbed drums). Later, while Paul was recording "I Will," he spontaneously sang the line "Can you take me back where I came from, can you take me back," which was later used as the segue to "Revolution 9." Then in "Julia," Lennon's song about his dead mother, the line "Ocean child calls me" refers to Yoko -- what her name means in Japanese. Side Three: In the middle of recording "Birthday," the boys took a break and watched Jayne Mansfield's rock 'n' roll film "The Girl Can't Help It." "Yer Blues" duplicates the sound of the clubs in their German days. "Mother Nature's Son" is a term from the Maharishi. The major mystery on "Everybody Has Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey" is who's playing the cow bell? One report says Patti Harrison. "Sexy Sadie" is the Maharishi. When the boys recorded "Helter Skelter," George set fire to an ashtray and ran around the studio with the flaming halo on his head. Lastly, the weird sound at the end of George's "Long, Long, Long" is the vibrations inside a wine bottle. Side Four: John was pressured into substituting this version of "Revolution" for a more upbeat B-side for the "Hey Jude" single. Paul recorded the old-fashioned "Honey Pie" in honor of his father, who was in the hospital. Harrison's "Savoy Truffle" was written in honor of Clapton's sweet tooth. Lennon disowned his lovely song "Cry Baby Cry." Manson claimed he only cared about "Revolution 9." It was his "kids" who listened to the musical numbers -- Manson himself was a big Bing Crosby fan. Finally, Ringo's vocals for "Good Night" were recorded just after midnight on July 23, 1968. It should be stressed that "The White Album" is not the album's "real" title. It's officially called "The Beatles." Whatever the name, the mono version is just as alive and mysterious as the stereo version. Remember, the Beatles made two versions of each record in the '60s. "The White Album" mono version is available on bootleg CD. Hearing it is almost like hearing the music anew. I hedge because "poppier" songs, such as "Bungalow Bill," just sound like flattened stereo versions. But other songs floor you. "Glass Onion" -- Lennon's unofficial re-renunciation of psychedelia -- is transformed from a minor derivative song into a masterpiece. The guitars are rougher. The strings sound like an organ. The song gets dangerous. Modern. It sounds like a Brian Eno-produced Talking Heads cut from "Fear of Music." Kill yourself to get a mono copy, but skip "The White Album's" outtakes. Both official and bootleg releases are a sorry bunch. There's no reason to hear Paul singing "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" on acoustic guitar more than once. That said, there is supposedly a 27-minute version of "Helter Skelter" (they lifted Ringo's plaintive cry of "I've got blisters on my fingers" from that cut) that I'd die to hear, but I've never discovered it on a bootleg. Finally, it's too bad that George's "Not Guilty" got bumped from "The White Album," but thank God they dumped John's indulgent "What's New, Mary Jane" as well. Finally, the cuts on "The White Album" seem so spontaneous, when in
reality almost every one is layered with overdubs. Even the simple songs with just John or Paul on guitar took dozens of takes. As a group, they went through as many as 67 takes to get "Long, Long, Long" right. Make no mistake -- the rough edges of "The White Album" are carefully orchestrated. We're just investing it with the consciousness that makes it sound modernly primitive. And delicious beyond belief.
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