Slowly Digesting The White Album

Its a mammoth album and the one Beatles record I have neglected since I got into them around 10 years ago. I dont know why. I think my 80's fed brain looks at anything with more than ten tracks as too much of a commitment...but can listen to 22 mins of a single prog song....Suppers Ready.

Its my Lamb Lies Down On Broadway...although THIS seems easier to this Genesis obsessive.
So much going on here I can see why its regarded highly now.

Anyway, just wondered if anyone else is "trying to get into it".???

 

Strangely i had the album on CD since the 90's and it was one of my least played Beatle albums. In January i bought the 2012 Remaster of the White Album on vinyl and it appears to make sense more on vinyl than it did on the CD. Maybe each LP side had it's own mood/feel that was lost on the CD .

 

I only have the remaster now and don't remember the other copy I had to compare. I'm a massive fan of the remaster though. Its actually quite prog in its way....only spread out...several of those tracks could maybe have been combined into one. A lot of prog tracks were individual ideas that were patched together to create very long tracks. Not sure these tracks would fit that, but its the way my brain is interpreting the album.

 

I'd always taken The White Album in bite sized chunks, a tune or two, here and there ever since the CD was originally released in 1987. Before the remasters came out, one day while working in my garage/workshop on my guitar pedal board, I decided to listen to it all the way through on vinyl in stereo. MAN, it was a revelation. I GOT it. I even (gasp) enjoyed Revolution No, 9. It really is an amazing journey. Sure, its mostly serendipity that produced the cohesive feel of the album, clearly the Beatles did not meticulously plan the whole thing out as a collective unit, but whatever they did to make it a palatable sonic journey, they accomplished the feat...or would that be a fete?

 

I’ve had my rainblow copy since the 80s. I guess it has seen more play than any other record I own probably. This is partly due to my commic misadventures in trying to buy a good blue box for all these years. I really like doubles. They seem to be just about the right length for me. Side three is my fav. from The Beatles, and the only song I don’t really warm to is the first one on the record.

 

My favorite Beatles album and one of my top 3 albums by anyone, period. It's so sprawling and intense and beautiful and has so many hidden bits tucked into every nook and cranny. One of the few albums that has a true air of mystery behind it. I could go on and on, that's how much I love the album!

 

Amen!

 

It was magnificent when it came out, and it still is. There is so much to absorb and it can take years to do it!

 

Absolutely agree. I've probably heard it hundreds if not thousands of times over the past (almost) 30 years, and I *STILL* find new nuggets when I listen to it (especially on earphones).

 

I found it a return to almost the level of Revolver after the less appealing (to me) digressions of Pepper and MMT, which were less appealing to me because the sound of the Beatles playing their instruments was a bit lost in the sea of overdubs.
The only tracks that took me a while to get into were Wild Honey Pie, Piggies, Why Don't We Do It In The Road, Long Long Long, Revolution 9 and Goodnight.

 

to paraphrase Lennon, 'it even has bits to keep you interested 100 years later'

 

In a way, sides 1 and 2 are "A-sides", and sides 3 and 4 are the respective "B-sides".

Also, keep in mind that each side works as a whole, each disc works as a whole, and of course the whole thing works as a whole!

 

Ok I messed that up. Sides 1 and 3 are the a-sides, sides 2 and 4 are the b-sides. sorry!

 

It's my favorite Beatles album (or by anyone) . You have to listen to the thing from beginning to end.

 

It's my favorite Beatles album, because at any given time, there's always at least 1 of the 4 sides that can hold my interest. The diversity of emotions throughout is representative of real life. Life is heavy and wacky and sad and everything in between. Also, it really shows off the different personalities of those 4 lads.

 

I first heard a few of the songs on a Chicago radio station late at night a few weeks before the White album was released in the U.S. in 1968. Back in the "way before internet days", albums would appear like magic in a store with no warning or news about their release. You could walk in a store, bang, a new Doors album. That made going to a record store exciting. The Beatles were so high profile that as soon as a radio station got access to the new work they slowly let it out and used it to boost their listening numbers. Anyway, that added to the mystery and really churned up the excitment for me. I was floored the first time I heard "Back in the U.S.S.R. one night. I got the album the first day it was in the local record store and I have no idea how many times I've listened to it now. It has to be in the 1000's. I still hear new things. New details pop out. My attitude to it has changed as I have gotten older and hopefully wiser. I appreciate things about it now that flew over my head when I was so young. It is in my top 5 albums of all time and will never drop from that list. You have many YEARS of enjoyment coming if you let it soak in and give it a chance. Take your time. Enjoy all the little parts but also listen to the whole thing as one huge work. Every song/track has something unique going on. Don't skip anything. Use your own judgement to decide what you like. Concentrate on whatever catches your ear and just explore. The small amount of money you payed for your copy will give many, many hours of pleasure. Enjoy it for the masterpiece it is. Enjoy.

 

Exactly. Maybe it's just me but I always take issue when people say "it's just a solo album by all 4 of them...John with a backing band, Paul with a backing band, etc" I think that's a lazy way to think about and describe it. Sure, there are some tracks where it's just Paul, or Paul and Ringo, or George, Paul, and Ringo, or just John, Paul, and George, etc. But there are also a lot of full band songs, and how was that really different than prior albums where it may not be all 4 of them on a given track? (ie "Within You Without You," "Love You To," "For No One," "Eleanor Rigby," "Yesterday," etc)?

 

I never see it as a solo album by 4 people. It is a big work by a band with much freedom and the will to use that freedom to do new things. The spirit of all four of them is on every song whether they play or sing on it. It is the group with the biggest amount of freedom they ever enjoyed. The most creative moments they ever had. My opinion.

 

There's really nothing else like the White Album. It's a sprawling, glorious mess, a stylistic mish-mash that somehow maintains cohesiveness despite its incredible diversity. It's the sound of a band for the ages splintering even as they push each other to new creative heights. It's full of stark contradictions but poetic from start to finish.

Others have said you have to listen straight through it and I completely agree. I generally don't indulge in it unless I have the luxury of enough time to travel from the whine of the jet engines to Ringo's whispered "good night" with all the crazy stops in between. There's really nothing about it I don't like, and that includes John's love letter to Karlheinz Stockhausen otherwise known as Revolution No. 9. I was nine years old when it was released; I've had it on a pedestal ever since and it's never getting off.

So that's what I think of it in a nutshell. ;-)

 

The White Album is definitely best digested slowly - eat it too fast and you're in for some major stomach cramps...

 

I was 13 or 14 when I first got it and I had a hard time getting into it. It wasn't as 'poppy' as the other albums I had and it wasn't as slick as Abbey Road. At the time I only knew a handful of songs from it, so it took a while to really sink in. There were songs I didn't know but I liked right away though, like Happiness is a Warm Gun, Dear Prudence and Helter Skelter. As well as others. So I would keep going back because of the songs I liked and eventually other songs grew on me too, like Martha My Dear, Glass Onion, Sexy Sadie and Long Long Long. Some song tooks me years to like (Why Don't We Do It In The Road?) but I have to admit that I love it now, especially the drums in the intro.

So, just give it time and realize that some songs that you dislike might sneak up on you later and make you change your mind.

 

My favorite album of all time. I've been meaning to write a much longer post/story about my experience with it over the past 35+ years... maybe this would be the right thread.

 

I was a sophomore in college in Boston and met my parents in Manhattan for the weekend a couple of weeks before the album came out. The hotel had one of those crappy, multichannel radio intercoms with a variety of radio stations available. While getting ready for dinner Friday night, I listened to one of them, which announced that it had an exclusive and would be playing it that night, all the way through, at ten. At dinner, I explained that I had to be back at the room by ten to study. They were very impressed by my diligence! In one sitting, I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

 

Been a favorite of mine since 68. If I could only keep one Beatles album this would be the one. Several years ago I bought UK mono release and it's a different experience hearing it in mono.

 

don't forget to burp!



I have been into it since I was about 5 My dad a cassette of it that he would play in the family car so I grew to like the album but I still do not like Revolution 9 !