Would the White Album Have Worked Better as the "Kinfauns Basement Tapes"?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by mbleicher1, May 16, 2018.

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  1. Jose Jones

    Jose Jones Outstanding Forum Member

    Location:
    Detroit, Michigan
    Is there any other group of note where the presence or not of the group members' girlfriend/wives at recording sessions is such a big deal?

    I never heard of Mike Love complaining because Marilyn Wilson was hanging around, for example.
     
  2. Hardy Melville

    Hardy Melville Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    I agree with most of this, although not glad with the overall effect.

    To be clear there is much that I love about TWA, and deleting what I don't like leaves a very nice playlist. But it's probably the Beatles album at this point I would least like to sit through the whole thing for, and that is not only because of its length.

    An earlier post pointed out on the issue of overall collaboration that they did for the most part all play on the songs as they were performed in the studio. Well, there certainly were such efforts, but at the same time the percentage of acoustic dominated tracks and more spare instrumentation here and there meant that the relative number of songs they all played on was below average. But that's not the main point - the lack of collaboration started with the songwriting, by this point a case where Paul and John were basically doing the minimal when it came to working together. It also seems like arrangements were less collaborative, and mostly missing in that connection was George Martin to bring them together as it were.

    The net result is as you say disjointed. That doesn't mean, again, that there are not great songs here and there.

    It also is an album no doubt due to its length that has an above average percentage for them of mediocre songs.
     
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  3. MicSmith

    MicSmith Forum Resident

    I’m no massive fan of The White Album but having made myself a 41 minute CD this week of my favourite tracks from 1967-68 that weren’t included on Pepper or MMT or that were recorded for the WA (52 tracks by my reckoning) to see what could have resulted from picking the best material they had available for a single album, it bears very little resemblance to how the WA sounded. So there is something unique about the combination of tracks that makes up the double album that I hadn’t fully appreciated. I still prefer my single disc of the material they produced during this time but I do understand that the only version of The WA worthy of the name is what The Beatles delivered in late 1968. Anything else needs a new title. I gave my compilation the title of Blank Canvas.

    As for the material not included on my 41 minute compilation would to my mind fit better on a sequence of solo albums. But you can’t mess with history. The Beatles and George Martin made a double album called The Beatles and that’s how it has to be however much some people wish for it to be something different.
     
  4. mbleicher1

    mbleicher1 Tube Amp Curmudgeon Thread Starter

    Location:
    Washington, D.C.
    I don't want to turn this into a Yoko thread, but it's well-established that the Beatles had a self-imposed and traditionally observed rule that unless something special was going on (like the Day in the Life overdub, or Yellow Submarine sound effects), wives and girlfriends did not sit with them on the studio floor when they were recording. That system had worked for them for 5.5 years; it apparently made them feel comfortable and helped them to focus. John didn't ask the others if it was okay for him to violate that policy on an ongoing basis, with no end date in sight; he just did it. Not only that, it's also well-established that Yoko did not hesitate to offer unsolicited feedback to other members of the group, vocalize during recording (see Revolution 1, the long version), and whisper conspiratorially in John's ear. It doesn't matter if 17 year old Marilyn Wilson hanging around Brian Wilson's studio for Beach Boys sessions (which were run much differently than Beatles sessions) wasn't a big deal to the Beach Boys. It matters that Yoko's presence was distracting and uncomfortable for the other three Beatles. And it was arguably not great for John.
     
  5. Chuckee

    Chuckee Forum Resident

    Location:
    Upstate, NY, USA
    Francie Schwartz is actually singing on the released Rev. #1, Paul's girlfriend of the time.

    (at least according to Wikipedia and Beatles Bible)
     
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  6. Jose Jones

    Jose Jones Outstanding Forum Member

    Location:
    Detroit, Michigan
    Yes, I am well aware of all that, as I am sure everyone else is who is participating here. The question I posed was whether or not any notable group had such drama over their women at the studio.
     
  7. mahanusafa02

    mahanusafa02 Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Well-stated, although funnily enough, I always felt the opposite to be true of these two albums vis-à-vis one another.
     
  8. the pope ondine

    the pope ondine Forum Resident

    Location:
    Virginia

    couldn't disagree more I think johns writing was outstanding on TWA, i'd include Happiness.../Sexy Sadie/Revolution/how many gems do you need, even his lesser efforts monkee/glass onion are pretty good. (and revolution 9 was interesting musique concrete that works perfectly with his Goodnight closer)
     
  9. Arnold Grove

    Arnold Grove Senior Member

    Location:
    NYC
    Thanks. I will take a look at the Many Years From Now book later today.
     
  10. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Many Years From Now - bought the hardback for a flight( not boac) stateside '97. Fascinating read.
     
  11. mbleicher1

    mbleicher1 Tube Amp Curmudgeon Thread Starter

    Location:
    Washington, D.C.
    I thought this was a rhetorical question, i.e. "what was the big deal?"

    I don't know of any other group that had a similar issue, although I'm sure over the last 60 years of there being rock and roll groups, other bands had a problem with this sort of thing. Anita Pallenberg was the cause or subject of a fair amount of drama in the Stones' camp around this time, but that was a bit different--and it sounds like Stones sessions had a lot more hangers-on.
     
  12. mbleicher1

    mbleicher1 Tube Amp Curmudgeon Thread Starter

    Location:
    Washington, D.C.
    I think John's writing is generally stronger on White than McCartney's, actually, even though McCartney scores the big hits with USSR and Ob-la-di as far as popular awareness and radio play go. The White Album has a ton of McCartney songs that are supposed to be fun that just don't sound very fun. John, at least, seemed to have something to talk about in 1968.
     
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  13. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Thankfully Lennon kicked henry the horse with his aknowledgement single Cold Turkey( or was it food poisoning).
    He presented the song/ode to McCartney for inclusion on Abbey Road, but was rejected.
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2018
  14. DRM

    DRM Forum Resident

    I still think Happiness Is A Warm Gun is about heroin. Of course, I still think Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds is about LSD. But I realize others say and think otherwise.
     
  15. Jose Jones

    Jose Jones Outstanding Forum Member

    Location:
    Detroit, Michigan
    Obladi LaDa sounds pretty fun to me. So does Rocky Raccoon. I Will is pleasant. Martha My Dear doesn't seem to have any hidden sinister, un-fun agenda. Honey Pie is about as fun as it gets. Wild Honey Pie is a little strange, but short enough not to frighten the children. USSR and Birthday are both cheerful, chipper songs. Why Don't We Do It... is annoying, but fun to some people, I realize. Blackbird is an uplifting classic. I'm not finding any McCartney songs that are "supposed" to be fun that aren't, except for possibly Helter Skelter and Can You Take Me Back.
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2018
  16. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Helter Skelter always sounded like a blueprint for Led Zeppelin ( maybe not enough squeeze my lemon). :D
     
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  17. Shaddam IV

    Shaddam IV Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ca
     
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  18. California Couple

    California Couple dislike us on facebook

    Location:
    Newport Beach
    Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but the death of Brian (and Paul :nyah:) probably still cast a dark pale over their lives at that time.
     
  19. Chrome_Head

    Chrome_Head Planetary Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA.
    Yes, but wasn't Epstein's death a year and half to two years previous (1966)?

    Unfortunately, it was a blueprint for Charles Manson as well.
     
  20. Veech

    Veech Space In Sounds

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    I agree, I think it's Lennon's best Beatles album, or tied with AHDN. Most of his WA sogns were written in India where he was supposedly free of drugs and clear-headed. McCartney also had some fine tunes and a couple of classics but for some reason Lennon's tracks stand out more to me on this LP. Maybe because his tracks mostly have all four Beatles contributing?
     
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  21. WorldB3

    WorldB3 Forum Resident

    Location:
    On the continent.
    "the White Album seemed insular, dark, disjointed" The White Album IS insular, dark and disjointed because it was 1968.

    I have kind of come to think of the Beatles White Album as a tribute to the history of American music that they loved filtered through current events.

    That said I could be way off.
     
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  22. George Blair

    George Blair Senior Member

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    Now I'm thinking about "Back In The USSR" with John Bonham on drums... :love:
     
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  23. mbleicher1

    mbleicher1 Tube Amp Curmudgeon Thread Starter

    Location:
    Washington, D.C.
    No, it happened in August 1967.

    It's well-discussed that Epstein's death affected the group and contributed to the "rot" that set in by 1968. As far as the music on White itself, though, I don't really hear it. I don't buy the theory that he could have convinced the group to whittle it down to one record. He couldn't convince them to abandon the Pepper cover in 1967, either. I don't think his opinion carried that much weight after they stopped touring.

    That the songs are so split between Lennon and McCartney songs is puzzling, given that most of the songs were written in India, where John and Paul were living next door to each other in a way they hadn't since the touring days. It shows that they were simply beginning to diverge: even with the other one steps away, they weren't particularly interested in writing together. It's the first album where John's and Paul's songs reflect substantially different visions for what the group should be. Sure, Pepper had McCartney's music-hall influences and John's dreamy psych stuff, but both Lucy and 64 emanated from or were compatible with this psychedelically-nostalgic appropriation of the Beatles' childhoods and England's Victorian past. And Lennon is all over Paul's Pepper songs, playing the parents in She's Leaving Home and singing a very active backing vocal in "64" and "Rita" that make it clear he was onboard. Those touches mean a lot: they make it feel like a band effort, and not something that Paul's doing on a Beatles record. (Paul, for his part, was always a team player and gave John's songs his best.)

    By the time 1968 rolls around, John is either not participating or is participating begrudgingly in Paul's songs. And it makes the White Album sound, to me, like a split between Paul's idea for the band--which would pretty much be Wings, based on the type and scope of songs he recorded--and John's (a darker, heavier group that doesn't try to blend the ambitious with the elemental: Revolution 9's ideas aren't rolled into rock music, they're just put alongside everything else).

    Recording the Beatles--which I don't have handy--has quotes from the engineers to the effect that both John and Paul were really difficult to be around in summer 1968. John was always difficult, of course, but it sounds like he was more short-tempered and irascible than usual. Paul sounds like he was a bit of a mess after Jane left him and was big-headed, impatient, and, yes, bossy. It's no surprise that the sessions weren't fun, but it is a surprise that you can hear it. I mean, I can't imagine that sessions for Let It Bleed or Beggars Banquet were very fun for the Stones, what with Brian Jones decomposing and Keith jealous of Anita and Mick and getting addicted to heroin. Sure, darkness was the Stones' stock in trade, but the White Album is a different, and realer kind of darkness - more creepy and psychologically deep. "Cry Baby Cry" is, to me, one of the most disturbing songs the Beatles ever recorded. The "can you take me back" outro...no other moment in their catalog sounds less like things are going to be okay. That song, to me, sounds like the culmination of two years' worth of disorienting, frequent LSD trips in Weybridge, up for days at a time in a big empty house with twenty-seven years of issues just barely smothered up by the drugs.
     
  24. Michael

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

    not a chance...
     
  25. Arnold Grove

    Arnold Grove Senior Member

    Location:
    NYC
    Insightful points.

    In early May, John and Paul went to America to promote Apple. They were getting along quite well.

    Then by late May when the White Album sessions began, something changed.

    And the only thing that changed was John---since he became John & Yoko.

    Lewisohn has his work cut out for himself, if he dares to explain it all accurately.
     
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