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60 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eclectic Brilliance, 19 Feb 2006
This was a brave follow up to Sgt Pepper. So completely different and so diverse, it is a virtual dictionary of all musical styles. When I first heard it in 1978 I was completely blown away. This is the album where they were not only on top of their game but also had the self confidence to put out an album of no less than 30 songs! One has often come to the conclusion that there was no room in one band for three such stupendous songwriters. So here they got around that by releasing a brilliant double album. There has been much talk of how things might have been better had they reduced this to a single album. What bollocks! For a start, no Beatles fan has ever agreed which tracks should have been shelved. As Paul says in one of his finest lines ever: ’Shut up it’s the bloddy Beatles album’. That it is, and we are eternally grateful. John Lennon never reached the peaks he reaches here. All his songs are wonderful. From the finger picking ’Dear Prudence’ with a stomping bass line from Paul to the tour de force group effort ’Happiness Is A Warm Gun’ to the supremely melodic ’Sexy Sadie’. Who ever said that McCartney wrote all the melodies is sadly mistaken. This is a melody to die for. And there is ’Julia’, the sweet and moving lament to his lost mother and the Mother he had found in Yoko. ’Revolution’ needs no introduction. Even if this slower album version is slightly inferior to the raucous rendition on the B Side of Hey Jude, it is mighty fine all the same. ’Cry Baby Cry’ is a wonderfully atmospheric piece with Paul contributing some suitably eerie piano. Even the lesser Lennon numbers are exciting: Glass Onion (with its famous tribute to Paul), ’Everybody’s Got Something To Hide’ sees The Beatles rocking like they never had before. And ’Bungalow Bill’ is a fun sing-along but with a dark lyric which is wonderful in its parody of the tiger-shooting guy who was with them at Maharishi’s camp where everyone was supposed to be peaceful! ’I’m So Tired’ has to be the ultimate Lost Album Track. No one seems to know this masterpiece outside the inner Beatles fan circle. Take a listen as Lennon said in the intro to his song ’Scared’ 6 years later. ’Yer Blues’ is another band tour de force, recorded in a small room with all four Beatles. Which was not the case for every number here. And Paul, the other half of that great songwriting partnership has never surpassed the quality of material he produces here. With the possible exception of the Beatles’ final album ’Abbey Road’. ’Back In The USSR’ is a timeless rocker, ’Obla-Di Obla-Da is effortlessly magical. As is ’Matha My Dear’ (where does he find these melodies from?!). ’I Will’ and ’Blackbird’ are two of his very finest acoustic numbers. Which as we know, again to quote Edmund Blackadder, is up against some pretty stiff competition. And then we have here from Paul ’Helter Skelter’, ’Why Don’t We Do It In The Road’ and ’Birthday’, three stupendous rockers that you could easily be forgiven for thinking that Lennon was behind them. But No. As most people know by now Paul could rock with the best of them. God Bless You Paul. And if that wasn’t enough, we have four George Harrisongs. ’While My Guitar’ is marvellous. Another masterful group performance, albeit without any contribution from Lennon. But Eric Clapton’s wonderful distorted guitar solos and Paul’s piano intro and stomping bass line make up for that. ’Piggies’ and ’Savoy Truffle’ are minor gems. But ’Long Long Long’ is a George ballad up there in the etchelons. The way it follows the mayhem of ’Helter Skelter’ is a genius of progamming. Oh I forgot ’Honey Pie’ from Paul, the superb following number to ’Revolution’. Sublime. And then buried on Side 3 (vinyl) is ’Mother Nature’s Son’ which is close to the definition of Beauty. Ringo chips in with his first composition ’Don’t Pass Me By’, which The Band told George was their favourite off the album. It is infectious. And then following the avant garde collage ’Revolution 9’ (the only track whose inclusion is even remotely controversial) we have Ringo singing ’Good Night’. A perfect close to a pretty near perfect album. They would go to produce two more albums after this but this is the last album where, despite the tensions and the obvious individuality of the 30 tracks on offer here, TheBeatles believed in themselves wholeheartedly. It is quite possibly their greatest masterpiece.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Their Tortured Masterpiece, 22 Sep 2008
It had been a tough year and a bit for The Beatles. Their manager Brian Epstein had committed suicide, their Magical Mystery Tour had seen them mauled by critics for the first time, and their attempts to practise transcendental meditation in India with the Maharishi had ended in disaster. It was during that ill-fated trip that most of these songs were written.
Inside the band itself, the situation was also far from hunky dory. Lennon would soon lose interest in the band, spending more and more time with his new partner Yoko Ono instead. Harrison was increasingly sick of being overlooked by John and Paul, who still only permitted him a few songs per album (he has four out of thirty here). Sensing this unease in the band, McCartney increasingly took charge of the group, a fatherly attitude which further annoyed the others. Meanwhile Ringo gets sole writing credit for `Don't Pass Me By', not one of the album's best but certainly pleasant enough.
It was with these tensions that The Beatles made The White Album, a self-titled song collection that derives its popular nickname from a stark white cover. Most of the songs here are pretty much solo compositions, as the band's two main songwriters had both begun to jealously guard their own work, allowing only minimal input from the other. Ironically, this is the album where George Harrison finally became their equal, writing a couple of the very best songs here.
Beginning with the sound of a plane taking off, Back In The USSR is a Beach Boys homage with a thumping piano beat and lyrics that were fairly controversial during the middle of the Cold War. This fades hauntingly into the acoustic Dear Prudence, written to encourage Mia Farrow's sister out of hut-bound seclusion during the India trip. Glass Onion mockingly references other Beatles songs, providing more fodder for those fans desperate to read hidden meanings into their work. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da is a bouncy tale of inter-racial marriage with a happy ending. Wild Honey Pie is a 50-second oddity that reinforces the strange new direction The Beatles had taken. The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill sounds more like a twisted nursery rhyme than a rock song, a trait common to much of The White Album.
Next is While My Guitar Gently Weeps, possibly the album's best song. Written by Harrison and featuring guitar from his friend Eric Clapton, it tells of spiritual pain and disillusionment. Happiness Is A Warm Gun is one of the album's most oddly structured songs, featuring several disorientating changes of tone one after another. Martha My Dear is a nice piano ditty that may or may not be inspired by McCartney's dog, depending on who you believe. I'm So Tired is another pained Lennon contribution (he was clearly not having a fun time in 1968). Blackbird is a Bach-inspired piece, once again acoustic because this was the only instrument available to the band in India, and comprising some tasteful samples of the eponymous bird's song.
Piggies is perhaps the bitterest song present, comparing Capitalism to pigs eating bacon, unfortunately a key inspiration for the Manson cult's murder spree. Rocky Raccoon is a slightly unhinged story of a spurned lover setting out (and failing) to kill his rival for the woman in question's affections, featuring some honky-tonk piano. Don't Pass Me By is a bluesy country song written by Starr, the writing of which predated recording by at least four years. Why Don't We Do It In The Road? originated from Paul seeing two monkeys doing just that, and I Will is another McCartney effort, written for future spouse Linda Eastman. The first disc of the CD version (and second side of the original vinyl) ends with Julia, written for Lennon's dead mother and the only Beatles song on which he is the sole performer. This is one of the album's most beautiful compositions, imbued with a real sense of sadness and longing.
Disc Two opens with Birthday, on which McCartney sounds near-psychotic with celebration. Yer Blues expresses suicidal intent, the sort of soul-purging that would become increasingly common during Lennon's solo career. After this, the subdued Mother Nature's Son is a relief to hear - an early version of what would become Jealous Guy was dropped from the album because of perceived similarities to this McCartney tune. Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey supposedly concerns Lennon and Ono, though alternative suggestions have been made such as drugs (it was around this time that Lennon acquired a taste for heroin). Sexy Sadie was originally called Maharishi, but George convinced John to alter the lyrics, though the sentiments remain the same. Helter Skelter is The Beatles' loudest and craziest song, the point where this album sounds most disturbed. Long, Long, Long is an extremely subtle Harrison piece, easy to overlook amidst more attention-grabbing Lennon and McCartney songs, but actually incredibly beautiful.
Revolution 1 was Lennon's response to a hippy movement that had grown increasingly violent, saying that he wants change but won't become brutalised to get it. Honey Pie is another of McCartney's music-hall-style recordings, which a lot of people sniff at but I think are actually quite good (this one especially). Savoy Truffle is probably Harrison's weakest contribution here, name-checking the contents of a chocolate box. Cry Baby Cry was inspired by fairy tales, ending with a brief McCartney segment that pleas `Can you take me back?', as though begging to return to a pre-Beatles childhood. The album's penultimate track is its most controversial, Lennon's chaotic sound collage called Revolution 9: personally I think it's interesting and genuinely haunting, though not one of the album's very best. Finally comes Good Night, a soaring ballad that Lennon wanted to sound deliberately cheesy.
And so that's it. The White Album is The Beatles' most endlessly fascinating album, simply because it features such a wide range of styles and moods. Overall the tone is dark and depressed, a result of the isolation and slight sadness felt by the band that had by now surpassed all its contemporaries. As though longing to regress to youth, many of the songs have a distinctly childhood feel, though it's not the happy one of Sgt Pepper a year earlier. My favourite tracks are `Dear Prudence', `Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da', `While My Guitar Gently Weeps', `Blackbird', `Rocky Raccoon', `Julia', `Mother Nature's Son', `Sexy Sadie', `Helter Skelter', `Long, Long, Long' and `Revolution 1'.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb Quality of the Beatles Best Album. A must Have., 9 Sep 2009
My first impression was how much better the music sounded, more musical, better balance. I was simply awestruck as the music came through with clarity & precision bettering the excellent re-masterd re-issue of the Yellow Sub CD some years ago. One of my all time favourite tracks, Dear Prudence, sounded much more open with a wide soundstage and excellent vocal and instrument separation as I could here the instruments stand out. The stereo imaging is excellent as if listening to a live rendition. JLs vocals sound very natural with excellent timbre and McCartney's bass now sounded much more natural with better definition with less boom, I could go on....
Overall the music is better separated with a rounder sweeter sound. While my guitar Gently Weeps has come alive, as the instruments stand apart with the Hammond organ cleanly separated and Clapton's guitar solo sounds like I have never heard it before, supreme. The overall sound balance is excellent in comparison to the original stereo mixes that sound course and bright and just awful in comparison.
Very impressed so far, can't wait to here Abbey Road, Pepper and Revolver.
Listen to the sax solo on Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, It's simply superb.
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