Happy Birthday White Album

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Ken_McAlinden, Nov 25, 2003.

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  1. John Carsell

    John Carsell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Northwest Illinois
    And the packaging was sensational too.

    Happy Birthday White Album!
     
  2. Joe Koz

    Joe Koz Prodigal Bone Brotherâ„¢ In Memoriam

    Location:
    Chicagoland
    I was 14 when the "White Album" came out. I think just about everybody I knew got it for Christmas that year. I loved the album from the get go, the individual color photos, the poster, just the whole packaging of the album was special.
     
  3. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    Got it on release day, for some reason it reminds me of Christmas and my Mom:(...We played it everyday thru Christmas! She loved it as much as I did:thumbsup:
     
  4. Dave D

    Dave D Done!

    Location:
    Milton, Canada
    I was 4 !:D
    One of my fave's. Love it.
     
  5. Uncle Al

    Uncle Al Senior Member

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    I first heard it on Thanksgiving Day in '68 when I was 12 years old. After the family feast, my 17 year old cousin (who already recognized the music freak in me) said "you gotta here this". Despite the extended family celebration going on in other parts of the house, I spent my post-turkey high absorbing all 4 sides. I think I even heard side 1 of The Bands second (self-titled) album that day (I seem to remember his rather cheap setup couldn't track Up on Cripple Creek. It was years later that I heard it on a system that would reveal the deep bass and explain the mystery).

    I'm still not able to say this is my favorite Beatle album, but I can say with authority that this was a time when music never meant so much - and was the common communication denominator of a generation.
     
  6. John B

    John B Once Blue Gort,<br>now just blue.

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    From now on, I will remember this album as the one the Beatles recorded while Ken was in utero.

    The truth behind the White Album revealed - the Beatles weren't writing to Charles Manson, it was to Ken:

    The recording sessions for the album began on May 30th, 1968 as Ken entered his second trimester. The first song was the aptly named Revolution 1, (Ken's first full revolution was, in fact, a few months away - he was trying hard).

    As Ken entered his third trimester, the Beatles recorded "Dear Prudence". Ostensibly a song about Prudence Farrow, lyrics such as "the sun is up the sky is blue, it's beautiful and so are you", or "won't you come out to play" were clearly written for a new baby. Also, Prudence is Senegalese for Kenneth and if you say it backwards, it sounds uncannily like ecnedurP.

    "Piggies" was a nod to baby Ken's favorite game "This little piggy went to market ... " while "Helter Skelter" conveyed the turmoil of life with a new baby - just ask Steve Hoffman.

    The pressure was on to complete the album in time for the birth and they succeeded with the final master discs being cut on October 21st.

    The actual date of Ken's birth, October 29, saw a the final mix of "All Together Now" and "Hey Bulldog" - the former an unabashed kiddie song and the latter a reference to Ken's early tendencies as an ankle biter (since cured).
     
  7. hoover537

    hoover537 Senior Member

    Location:
    Florida
    My first listen to this album was 1974. My Dad was reading the book Helter Skelter and bought the album to listen to all of the clues stemming from Charles Manson. I was 10 years old.
     
  8. Pug

    Pug The Prodigal Snob Returns!

    Location:
    Near Music Direct
    First time I heard it was in 1988. I was 14. I was just getting into the Beatles and forsaking modern music at the time. I bought my first 2 Beatles LPs: Abbey Road and The White Album the year prior, 1987. I played Abbey Road almost non-stop, that's still my fave Beatles LP, and pretty much ignored the White Album but for a few tracks that I knew (Back in the USSR, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, While My Guitar...).

    I had the flu and stayed home from school. I took that time to catch up on some hand me down records that I hadn't played yet (Tommy, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road) and came across the White Album and played it for the first time. I loved it. Except for Revolution 9, I thought the LP was flawless. Stiil sounds great. I was just playing it all last week in fact.

    I'm glad that they ignored George Martin and made it a double LP. What would you cut out??

    Take care,
    Sean
     
  9. Dugan

    Dugan Senior Member

    Location:
    Midway,Pa
    It was the fourth Beatles album I ever bought.
    Last Saturday, after listening to a bootleg stereo CD version of With the Beatles and despite all the pops, crackles, & clicks, I decided to pull out the old orange Capitol label and give it a spin. :)
     
  10. Beatle Terr

    Beatle Terr Super Senior SH Forum Member Musician & Guitarist

    I hate to say it, but there is one thing about me that if I have to I could easily say as much as I loved The Beatles. This was not my favorite album at all. Even to this day, I think it could have been 2 great albums, but that's just because I was used to a good great listen of one great album after another. I was 16 when this came out and although I did like what seemed to be the more popular songs of the LP even to this day that my friends liked and I also would say songs that were good enough for a good rock band to be able to play out live and get the crowd jumping to the music. "Birthday" comes to mind in particular:thumbsup:

    Now with the help of some good friends hear I have been brought back to this album for a revisit and I have have really come to love some songs that I had never really listened to or paid much attention to when I first heard them.

    Martha My Dear and I Will really grab me. I would actually like to rearrange Martha My Dear to what I think could make it a bit more to *MY* ears liking but all in all it's still a very nice song. Also George's Long Long Long is another song that has grown on me. I don't know for sure if it's because I have 2 mono version's and 2 stereo version's of this on CD that have given me some new insight to this album. However, I still think it would be best heard as 2 seperate LP's or CD's. IMHO!:thumbsup:
     
  11. CardinalFang

    CardinalFang New Member

    Location:
    ....
    Yes, "Long Long Long" is just beautiful. Probably my favorite song on the album. No, wait, Revolution1. No, Dear Prudence. No... My Guitar Gently Weeps. No....
     
  12. Ken_McAlinden

    Ken_McAlinden MichiGort Staff Thread Starter

    Location:
    Livonia, MI
    Re: Re: Happy Birthday White Album

    Gort John B was too tactful to mention it, but, of course, the whole thing started months earlier with the question "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?".

    Regards,
     
  13. pdenny

    pdenny 22-Year SHTV Participation Trophy Recipient

    Location:
    Hawthorne CA
    Cripes this thread makes me feel like I've been on the planet a looooong time.

    I was in the eighth grade at the time. My English teacher was a HUGE Beatles freak. He taped the four photos from the album on a wall in his classroom and brought the LP's in to play for us. I faintly recall writing an essay about the album but can't remember what the topic was. I do remember LOVING "Dear Prudence" and getting creeped out by "Happiness is a Warm Gun" and "Helter Skelter" long before anyone had heard of Charles Manson.

    Later in the year I listened to the whole album on headphones at my cousin's house, the first time I had ever listened to a record that way. Suffice to say I loved it, and even now still dig it on headphones even though intellectually I now know it should be in mono :D.
     
  14. John B

    John B Once Blue Gort,<br>now just blue.

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Re: Re: Re: Happy Birthday White Album

    To which the reply was "I'm so Tired". Weeks later the plea "(It's Been a) Long Long Long (Time)" was answered with "I Will". History was in the making. ;)
     
  15. reechie

    reechie Senior Member

    Location:
    Baltimore
    I was four when the White Album came out, and what I remember most about it from that time period was that my parents wouldn't buy it for me. The Beatles were still the band from that cartoon show to me at that time. I'd heard "Back In The U.S.S.R." on the radio around that time period, and wanted the album for that song, but I suppose being a double set, they wouldn't spring the extra cash for it. They did buy me Let It Be a couple of years later, my first real Beatles album.

    Didn't actually hear the White Album until 1978 or so, by then a confirmed Beatle fan. A friend had a bootleg 8-Track tape, which I borrowed for awhile. Being a Beatle fan wasn't easy where I grew up, in a school full of Kiss, Queen and Nazareth fans. The Beatles were incredibly unhip. But the White Album was the one Beatles album you could play for these folks, and they'd at the very least say "well...that's okay, I guess."
     
  16. TommyTunes

    TommyTunes Senior Member

    I remember me and my friends listening to it every day during Christmas vacation. How great were those times.
     
  17. Paul G

    Paul G Senior Member

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    I first heard the White Album in the summer of 1977. I was 14 years old at sleep-away camp. One of our counselors had a cassette dub that I listened to over and over and over. At the time time the only Beatles I had were the red and blue albums; this was quite an experience. "Revolution No. 9" was frightening. "Julia" and "I'm So Tired" were very distorted. A few months later I bought my own copy at Korvette's in NYC, a US pressing on the Apple label with wow and flutter on one of the discs. In the early 1980s I bought UK pressings at J&R; I unintentionally bought a mono reissue ($16.99 I think), which still sounds great.

    Paul G
     
  18. Beatle Terr

    Beatle Terr Super Senior SH Forum Member Musician & Guitarist

    I feeling a bit old now you guys!!!

    When I was 16yrs old it was 1968...Naked!!!:D

    I just had to ...do that!!!:thumbsup:
     
  19. misterbozz

    misterbozz Senior Member

    Location:
    Nerima-ku, Tokyo
    One of about three records from my parents collection I listened to when I was about 7 (the other two were Kraftwerk Man Machine and Bob Marley Legend) so its one of my formative musical experiences.
    At that time I only ever played the first record, it wasn't until I was about 10 that I actually thought to put on the second disc, and I have no idea why...
     
  20. Lord Hawthorne

    Lord Hawthorne Currently Untitled

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    I was 15 when that lp came out, and there was some astonishment and great anticipation when we heard it was a double album. Our little town had two AM stations, both of which only played top 40 between 6pm and 10pm, and one of those mixed in a lot of Vikki Carr and Englebert Humperdinck. We had no FM station, but situated between Portland and Seattle meant great reception of what was then very sedate FM programming. Portland was to get an all-new "underground" radio station on Christmas day of that year, but that was too foreign to me to even anticipate. Strangely enough, a new AM station in a neighboring town elected to preview the entire album that day after school (with a commercial between every song). I was floored.
    Confused legends also attached themselves to that album, which had a few persevering students detatching their album covers. It had already been in the press that an Apple album featuring John and Yoko (as their avant garde nature intended) naked on the cover was having problems getting released. Vague memories of the "Yesterday And Today" album cover being recalled and pasted over were repeated by DJs who had long forgotten which album that may have been, and it was soon believed to be the reason why the "White" album had a nondistinct cover on it. The serial numbers were supposed to have some relevance, but I have long since forgotten.
     
  21. Jon

    Jon New Member

    Location:
    Colorado
    Yup, Christmas present. That particular copy didn't make it through the years. The pictures from it did and are on the wall behind me. Except for Sir Paulie. Hmmmm....
     
  22. Nad 214

    Nad 214 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ohio
    Hello to all Happy Birthday to you WHITE Album
    Happy Birthday To You White Album
    Happy Birthday Dear White Album Happy Birthday TO YOU. LOL

    Ok enough Lets get serious and think some people thought it should've been a single Lp and I did see a web site once picking and letting others pick the songs to make up a single lp THANK YOU BEATLES IT"S A DOUBLE
     
  23. Joe Koz

    Joe Koz Prodigal Bone Brotherâ„¢ In Memoriam

    Location:
    Chicagoland
    It's been done here too, trust me! :laugh:
     
  24. -Ben

    -Ben Senior Member

    Location:
    Washington DC Area
  25. John Carsell

    John Carsell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Northwest Illinois
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