THE BEATLES (generally known as "The White Album" because of its cover) was a sprawling two-record set, highlighting the distinct personalities in the group as they matured and moved further away from each other. With the four Beatles playing like session men on each other's songs, the making of the album was fraught with tension. John Lennon's songs included a bitter take on people who read too much into the Beatles' lyrics ("Glass Onion"), reflections on loneliness and alienation ("Yer Blues", "I'm So Tired"), and the avant garde sound collage "Revolution 9".
George Harrison's songs offered black humor ("Piggies") and tender sadness ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps", with Eric Clapton on guitar). Paul McCartney provided both light, lyric songs ("Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", "Honey Pie"), and rockers ("Back In The U.S.S.R"., the explosive "Helter Skelter"). Ringo Starr made his solo songwriting debut with the goofy country/ska lilt of "Don't Pass Me By" and sang the album closer "Good Night".

Aug 2006

A self indulgent masterpiece put together under extreme duress, this is the sound of a great band barely holding it down yet still managing to produce a rock classic. John Lennon famously described the record as being a bunch of solo recordings using the other members as backing musicians, and while it may lose some cohesion as a "band" album, for wide reaching scope it can't be beaten.

Producer George Martin lobbied the group to produce a single album but the weight of material recorded meant the band went for a double LP set which means that lots of odd stuff got on the album, from Lennon's avant-garde flirtations with the unfairly derided Yoko Ono (Revolution 9) to Paul McCartney's musical pastiches (Honey Pie, Rocky Racoon, Back In The USSR). This is the Beatles album with the most amount of Harrison tunes (While My Guitar Gently Weeps) and the first one to contain a Ringo original (Don't Pass Me By).

The band rejected the flowery psyche sounds of a few years previously, instead using a more natural approach to recording, influenced by The Band's "Music From Big Pink" LP. The songs are allowed to shine through without the weight of trippy effects ala Sgt. Pepper. A classic and essential rock album.

Sam Jones, HMV Newport

• NME (10/2/93, p.29) - Ranked #8 in NME's list of the 'Greatest Albums Of All Time.'
  Q (6/00, p.86) - Ranked #7 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums" - "...[Out of] boundless enthusiasm and creeping paranoia - comes [their] most peculiar record....Childish, colorful, antiquated and faintly macabre..."
  Vibe (12/99, p.157) - Included in Vibe's 100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century

The Beatles: George Harrison (vocals, acoustic & electric guitars, violin, organ, bass, tambourine, firebell); John Lennon (vocals, acoustic & electric guitars, harmonica, saxophone, piano, organ, harmonium, bass, 6-string bass, maracas, tambourine, tape loops); Paul McCartney (vocals, acoustic & electric guitars, flute, flugelhorn, piano, Hammond organ, bass, drums, bongos, timpani, percussion); Ringo Starr (vocals, piano, drums, bongos, maracas, castanets, tambourine).
Additional personnel includes: Yoko Ono (vocals); Eric Clapton (electric guitar); Mal Evans (trumpet, tambourine); George Martin (piano, harmonium); Chris Thomas (harpsichord, Mellotron); Maureen Starkey, Patti Harrison (background vocals).
Recorded at Abbey Road Studios and Trident Studios, London, England between May and October 1968.
THE BEATLES (generally known as "The White Album" because of its cover) was a sprawling two-record set, highlighting the distinct personalities in the group as they matured and moved further away from each other. With the four Beatles playing like session men on each other's songs, the making of the album was fraught with tension. John Lennon's songs included a bitter take on people who read too much into the Beatles' lyrics ("Glass Onion"), reflections on loneliness and alienation ("Yer Blues," "I'm So Tired"), and the avant garde sound collage "Revolution 9."
George Harrison's songs offered black humor ("Piggies") and tender sadness ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps," with Eric Clapton on guitar). Paul McCartney provided both light, lyric songs ("Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," "Honey Pie"), and rockers ("Back In The U.S.S.R.," the explosive "Helter Skelter"). Ringo Starr made his solo songwriting debut with the goofy country/ska lilt of "Don't Pass Me By" and sang the album closer "Good Night."

No other band has had quite the same impact as the four lads from Liverpool. Over the course of eight years and more than a dozen albums, the Beatles changed popular music and culture forever, spearheading the 1960s British Invasion and shaping rock & roll along the way. Along with their amazing musical output and unprecedented world-wide celebrity, John, Paul, George, and Ringo were responsible for many pop music revolutions, major and minor--writing their own material, pushing the limits of the studio, making films of their music, printing song lyrics on albums--that today are taken for granted. Although the Beatles disbanded in 1970, their artistic legacy is permanently ingrained in the entire world's musical vocabulary.